Welcome to Gingerbread Land!
Run! Run! As fast as you can!

Sarah and I made gingerbread men (and houses) this past weekend. Mine came alive, ran off, and found a new home in a magical forest. At least they're happy.


I loved Sarah's first two gingerbread men, as it looked like they were wearing swimming suits. :D We both got sick of decorating them, Sarah faster than me. Her cookies are on the left, and mine are on the right:


In other news, I subbed for my old co-teacher's 7th grade class yesterday. At this particular school, there are about 40 kids per class. However, there are 2 teachers and another special ed teacher (who teaches other subjects as well). Well, on this day one of the teachers was scheduled to be gone the whole day (whom I was subbing for) and another teacher was scheduled to leave in the afternoon, leaving only one "regular" teacher there. However, that teacher called in sick that morning, meaning that for half the day all the teachers were subs. Plus, they never found a sub for the teacher who called in sick, so it was really only 2 subs and some random people who popped in and out to help.

Oh. My. God. This had to be the worst behaved class I have ever subbed for. It was seriously out of control. I'm just glad that I wasn't the only one there! I can't describe in writing how horrible it was. They completely ignored everything we said. Half the class time was spent trying to get them to sit down and be relatively quiet. Which never worked. They were running around, screaming, throwing things...you name it. And there were so many of them doing it that you couldn't pull out the "worst" of the pack. It'd've been half the class.

The school secretary was really excited to see me when I came to check in. I was kind of surprised, because I doubt she remembered me from when I student taught there--it was 3 years ago and I never made a point to hang out in the office much. But she said that now she knows I'm subbing, she'll try to request me to come to the school more often. Which is nice, but do I want to go back to that school??? Then again, I think I subbed for the most difficult class in the school. I hope. Dear God.

Anyway, I'm driving home and thinking about how pointless that day was. Seriously, I have no idea if they learned ANYTHING. It was complete and utter chaos 3/4 of the time. So then I'm watching the news that evening and the most ironic news story comes up--Forbes apparently just published a list of the best schools in the nation. Coming in at #2: Dane county (Madison and surrounding communities). Hahahahahaha!!!!!! Obviously they never visited the school I was just at! Seriously, if they're #2 then our educational system is seriously in trouble. Fyi, the #1 schools were Washington DC schools. Which also surprised me (not that I really know anything about their schools, but I wouldn't have guessed that).