Today was actually another not-so-bad day. We had Junior Achievement visit us today, so I didn't really do much most of the day. Miss Alyssa, our JA teacher, was in charge from 9:00-12:45. It was fabulous. Naturally, I stayed in the room, and handled any discipline problems (luckily there really weren't many) but Miss Alyssa was in charge. Our students were not allowed to leave the room at all during JA time, so our preps had to be held in our rooms. Another bonus! Dori and I were able to go to Subway for lunch today!!! It was so nice to just get out of that building for a while. Plus, Tuesday is my favorite day at Subway - Meatball Marinara Day!

After Miss Alyssa left, we took a bathroom break, and then had rest time. My babies were begging for it! Too funny! It was about an hour late today, and they were feeling it. Basically, all we got done after that was snack time, then a couple of Halloween books, some Halloween songs, and it was time to go. Great day today!!!

This morning, one of my moms told me that she was going to be moving in the next couple of weeks, so I'll be losing another student. There's a very small part of me that's thrilled, because I'll be back down to 24 students (I'll actually have enough seats now!) but a bigger part of me is sad because I love P.C., and I hate to see her go. She's one of my sweetie pies. I had her brother a couple of years ago, but he drove me absolutely nuts!!! Sweet boy, too, but just a constant whirlwind of activity. He was exhausting. He never stopped talking, singing, making noises, wiggling around, falling out of his seat, and so on. And NONE of it was any kind of medical hyperactivity issue. You'd have to know the family to fully understand, but it was all related to Mom and her non-existent discipline. Don't get me wrong, I love Mom, so I'm going to say no more on the subject. The point of the story, I'm sad to see little Miss P.C. leave me.

Mom told me they were moving because of the neighborhood. She said, "They keep finding dead people." I don't know if those of you outside of Chicago have heard about the latest murders this past week of two more CPS students. A 14 year old boy was killed yesterday, and a 10 year old boy last week. The little boy yesterday was (I think) the 8th child killed just this school year alone. We've only been in school for 33 freakin' days!!! And I think I heard the number killed in the past year is now in the 30s. It's so tragic. The boy killed last week was shot just a few blocks from my school. He was trying to walk to the corner store to buy some damn candy, just like any other 10 year old boy, and he got caught in gang cross-fire. The little boy that died yesterday was trying to help a friend. An older boy was trying to steal his friend's bike, and he stood up for him. The older boy came back and shot him three times in the head. What the hell is going on in the world? That incident happened about 3 blocks away from the 8th District Police Station. These little bastards are getting bolder everyday!

OK, I've got to stop, because I went from writing about the great day I had, to being sucked into the sadness and despair that surrounds my job, and I can't go there today. I realize that the true reason I started this blog was to write about precisely this kind of stuff, and I promise to get back to that, but not today, please.

Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow. ---Marie Mitchell

I hope the two little boys we just lost followed this advice.