The Silver Stars

This story is for my sweet friend Emmie Claire who just gets a kick out of my school stories.

It's no secret that my stress level at school is over the top right now. Looming big on my horizon is prom. It is ruling my universe right now as I struggle to pull all the little details together. Forget lesson plans and grades being due in a five days with stacks of ungraded papers stuffed in every crevice of my room. And to top it off I will be going to Atlanta with freshmen at 5:00am Friday morning for an all day trip to a Medieval Times Dinner (Lunch) Theater and the big mall.

Yesterday started off with me being late to school because we had to pick up my car after taking it in because the dreaded "Service Engine" light came on. And of course my principal was passing in front of my room exactly when I was walking up at 8:01. The day progressed well. The kids were doing well and my fourth block sounded actually prepared for their test on the French Revolution. That afternoon I was scheduled to preside over a student prom committee meeting and attend a meeting for a committee I am on about improving school climate.

I love the school climate committee it really gives me hope and makes me feel like I am doing something to make my school a better place to work and learn. Cheesy. I know. So I set the kids up for their task, tracing, cutting and painting 250 silver stars to hang in our tree lined path to the Eiffel Tower. At first there were only two of them. They said things were good so I left them to it and went 50 yards down the hall to the library for my meeting. The meeting was great we were really coming up with some great things. At 4:30 we were still going strong so I ran down to check on my kids expecting them to have left. To my delight there were now seven happily tracing, cutting and laughing. I told them whenever they had to go feel free. I would clean up. I told them to close my door behind them because my purse and stuff was still in here and I had my classroom key. I went back into my meeting happy.

The meeting was going well and I had volunteered myself and a friend to make a presentation at Monday's faculty meeting(because I don't have anything else going on really) but at 5:00 I started to get nervous. I have to pick Noah up by 5:30. They are open till six but my assigned time is 5:30. I takes 26 minutes to get there. We wrapped up at 5:15. I felt great about our solutions and my day and brave enough to take Noah for a haircut. (School Spring pictures are today and it just couldn't wait any longer, literally) I walked down the hall towards my room. Surprisingly my door was open. And it smelled strongly of spray paint. No one was there but my door and both windows were flung wide open. And in the middle of my floor was a huge square outline of where newspaper had been laid down. The outline was in silver spray paint.

ON MY FLOOR.

My principal walked in right behind me to thank me for staying late and volunteering for the presentation. In the interest of full disclosure I showed her the spray paint. No sense in hiding the obvious. Right? The thing that got to me the most is that they didn't leave a note. They didn't come get me. They haven't even showed up this morning to say, "opps."

But I do have beautiful silver stars. About fifty. Only 200 more to go. Those we will paint outside!

And thanks to painter's wipes a semi clean floor.