Ugly Sweater Season is Here : or the Curse of the Teacher Sweater

With every cell in my body I abhor "teacher-holiday" sweaters. It's
cute when you teach kindergarten or 1st grade but if you teach anyone
older, they have got to go. A cute $10 Target or Old Navy T-shirt is
better but celebrating the holidays with clothing is something that I
cringe about. These sweaters are usually cardigans, too big, and poorly
knitted. It is just unflattering and does nothing for the spirit of the
particular holiday.

Something is only barely worse, are those teachers that have held on to
the bad 80's sweaters. If it has shoulder pads it has got to go. If it
has way too much beading it has got to go. If it pastel pink, green,
and white, it is not shabby chic, it is shabby crap. Give it to
Goodwill. It is has got to go. And somehow I have always noticed that
they always seam to be paired with narrow ankled pleated khaki pants.
What the hell? Are you trying to look like an ice cream cone?

HOLY MILITARY WEAR! Michael Jackson!

OH MY GOD I never thought I would write this entry. My favoritefashion-disaster Sammy was wearing what I could only describe as Michael
Jacksonish.

I believe it was a women's dress shirt. Striped, and had gold epaulettes (A shoulder ornament, especially a fringed strap worn onmilitary uniforms.) on the shoulder. I was in the copy room and was so stunned at thesight I was momentarily catatonic.

This top wasn't a cute subtle nod to the military trend. It was very
heinous and bad 80's wear.

When did our school become a naval institution? It's called editing
your wardrobe.

Velcro Shoes?: Are you two?

As I mentioned in my previous post one of our male teachers wears velcro gym shoes. First of all he is not arthritic. Second of all he is not two years old or mentally challenged. So to wrap my brain around why he is wearing velcro gym shoes is almost impossible. I am sorry he is not so busy that the act of tying his shoes is too time consuming.

The bad thing about this is that noone else in the school notices this and thinks it is odd. Hello! Since our staff is 90% women I know that they notice shoes! When I brought up this fact when I was talking about him last year they're like "Really?" Come on! Who doesn't notice a grown, non-hospitalized, middle aged man wearing velcro shoes.

Curses SHUUSHED AGAIN!

As a librarian I do my fair share of Shusshing students in order to keep
them relatively quiet. For it is the library. It is never absolutely
quiet because students work in small groups or there is instruction
going on. But if it gets above normal conversational tones I will
usually ask them to quiet down, or in cases of mass desperation I must
resort to the SHUSH.

As an adult I don't appreciate getting shusshed. For god sakes ask meto stop talking or say excuse me. For whatever reason this school yearI have been shushed twice. Once I was walking through my library andtalking to another teacher before school had even started. For somereason a student and an aide were working in the library on a test. And
the woman had the nerve to shush me. Ok crazy your in MY room. A quiet
office conference room wasn't available?

Yesterday the crazy velcro shoe wearing (don't even get me started onthis one. It's a whole other horrifying topic) teacher asked to meet asa team to discuss serious student problems. Well I show up in case itwas any of my kids in my morning homeroom group. When he shows up. Wellanother teacher and I were talking about something as he is organizinghimself. Then a teacher pokes her head in to ask something and I try andfinish the point I was making. and he has the nerve to shush us. I was
fuming! So then when we were talking about this child we somehow veered
off to talking about snacks the kids were eating so i Blurt out "Any
other kids we need to talk about" which was none and I bolted out of
there before I wrapped the velcro around his head.