Booty Bumpin' and Fire Alarms

Ah, the homecoming dance. A tradition that I become increasingly glad was not a tradition at my high school...and a tradition that makes me dread ever having children.

First, the backstory. The ASB (Student Council) advisor was out of town at her best friend's wedding this weekend, so the ASB was in charge of putting the last-minute things together on their own. They haven't been doing a great job of this.

So....first of all. We got to the dance about half an hour early and I was able to claim the job of coat-check girl, meaning I don't have to watch the kids booty-bump. The kids looked nice (for the most part) in their dress clothes and things were going along pretty well for about an hour.

But.....the ASB officers had neglected to do one very important thing - getting police officers to work the dance. In addition, of the two security guards that work at school, only one showed up. And of the three principals, one had a sick kid, one didn't come for some reason, and that left only one to work the dance. So, if you are keeping track, that means one principal and one security officer to regulate 500 kids. There were about 10 teacher chaperones or so, but due to the number of doors, that wasn't quite enough.

So about an hour into the dance, three teachers come looking for the principal...it turns out that someone has managed to slip upstairs and prop open a door to the outside, and there are about 15 junior high kids running around on the third floor. Administration heads upstairs and chases the kids around for about an hour, but they can't catch them. On the other hand, the door is now shut and the kids can't get out either.

Meanwhile, back in the coatcheck department, the kids keep shedding layers as the inside temperature heats up, and it makes it quite annoying to go back and forth constantly. The girls also shed their shoes and the guys shed their jackets and shirts...oddly enough mostly retaining their ties.

As it gets closer to midnight, when the dance ends, the kids start picking up their stuff. From past dances, I know that when the dj stops playing, the kids attack the coatcheck room like a ravenous horde of whiny monkeys, so we started to attempt to corral them into some kind of line while they retrieved their stuff...which involves tickets and giant blue IKEA bags. As it gets closer to midnight, the lights come on, and more kids start swarming around - mostly ignoring the line instructions - and then it hits midnight and it has descended into almost total chaos, with kids demanding their stuff RIGHT NOW since their mom/dad/brother is waiting outside and oh wait, they lost their ticket, but they just had a black jacket (!!) and silver shoes and why can't someone just FIND IT.

And that is when the aforementioned junior high troublemakers pull the fire alarm.

The principal comes in and says to shut the door, get all the kids out of the building. Oh yeah, I forgot to say...it's about 40 degrees outside. Remember all those kids who took their shoes off? Shutting the door to the coat check room was not a popular move. The door was not locked, so the kids kept pulling it open while I tried to keep it shut. It was somewhat difficult, since on my side, there was only a crash bar, not a handle. The other chaperones finally force the kids outside while the principal gets on the phone to the alarm company and 911. 911 tells him to turn the alarm off, since they can tell that it was pulled, and there's not actually a fire in the building. And that's when the fire department arrives.

The fire department tells the principal he should not have turned the alarm off. Meanwhile, the parents arriving outside to pick up their kids from the dance are greeted by the site of 250 teenagers outside without coats, and the flashing lights of a firetruck. So let's go ahead and add freaked-out parents into the mix.

The firefighters quickly leave, and the principal decides that the kids don't get to come back in, that the chaperones will take the kids tickets and bring out their stuff to them. This takes about 20 minutes and isn't complete without the requisite irritated parents...

We finally get all the kids stuff returned, except for about 4 bags that went unclaimed for some reason after all the kids had dispersed and I left around 12:45

BEST HOMECOMING EVER.

A Meeting of Minds

So a couple of weeks ago, the freshmen elected officers for the coming year, and today the old officers and new officers got together to "pass the torch" and talk about ideas for the coming year, and what worked and didn't work last year. My president this year was a girl who is both a perfectionist and a control freak, and in addition has a naturally whiny voice. She is the one that on a previous post, completely ignored me with the ticket issue for the dance last week, and for the entire year constantly complained that the other girls didn't do anything while at the same time insisted on doing everything herself. So the meeting was going along well, considering we were dealing with 8 freshmen girls, =) and the new girls had some great ideas, and the other officers were telling the new officers all the things they need to know, but then she finishes the meeting with the following words; "Maybe we need to have another meeting, you guys seem kind of dysfunctional." I almost spit out my coke. Definitely the quote of the day.....

Finally the dancing

Ok, first of all, Blogger has arbitrarily changed my header, now it sucks, and I apologize. It offends my sense of aesthetics. Punks!!! Change it back!!!!

Secondly, on a school related note, the freshman Last Chance Dance was last night and it was actually pretty successful. They worked hard on it, but here is a list of positives and negatives.

First, the negativees:
1. if I hear the phrase, "well, but that's what the (sophomores/juniors/upperclassmen/others etc) did" again, I might have to scream.
2. My president (who uses the above phrase almost exclusively) stopped by the morning of the dance to ask if she could (since all the other classes did this) make copies of the tickets in order to sell more. I looked her in the eye and said "no, we are not making more copies." They sold out of tickets during lunch, but then I looked down after school and discovered they were selling more tickets. I ran down there, and got in her face about it and found out that she went above my head, to the vice-principal, and asked him the same question, and he made her 20 more copies. I totally blew up at her. We had bought glowsticks to give away at the door, and I pointed out to her that now we would not have enough glowsticks to cover everyone. I was so mad at her that I had to hang out in my room for an hour and a half before I cooled down enough to go downstairs and help decorate.
3. the principal was not happy that not all the kids got to buy tickets. We pointed out that we had been selling tickets for a week and that the fire marshal had placed the limit for that area of the school at 300 people and he was still mad that we didn't just pick up and move the dance to the gym - 20 minutes before the doors opened.
4. There are only about 15 people at my school that ever volunteer to chaperone anything, and some of them were busy last night, and the 9 that did volunteer didn't all show up, so there were only 6 chaperones for 285 kids. At a school with this amazing caliber of teachers, I get really tired of begging over and over for chaperones, and even more when they don't show up.
5. the photographer called at 2:30 to say that the background we had picked out was unavailable.
6. the dj did not receive the playlist that we sent, so of course the kids complained about it

Positives:
1. it was the last dance of the year, so the kids all knew how to behave and there weren't any problems
2. the 6 chaperones that were there were great and did an awesome job
3. the place was packed so it was a great fundraiser!
4. the officers did all the decorations beforehand and sold water throughout the dance without any prodding from me.
5. it's over and it will be February before we have to throw another dance


Funny sidenote - there was an annoucement and a real push to get the kids to stop freaky dancing, so for the first hour of the dance they didn't know what to do with themselves.

Prom

I attended my first prom last night. I went to junior-senior stuff in high school, but this was the first prom I had ever gone to. I wasn't sure what to expect, since I have been hearing about it from the advisors side for a month or so now. First of all, the senior class officers are 4 boys of dubious ability who spent 45 minutes yelling at each other in a meeting because they couldn't agree on a background for the pictures. Secondly, they wouldn't have even had a prom had it not been for an advisor who finally stepped in and made decisions for them. Third, the hotel they finally booked 2 months ago had double booked two proms that night and we would not have even known about it if the other school hadn't called to give us the heads up...the DAY BEFORE the prom. On top of all that, of course I had nothing to wear, and due to financial issues, there was no way I could just go buy something. So, I finally found something that would work, even though it was uncomfortable, and dug out some heels (also uncomfortable) and met all the other chaperones for dinner at a Thai place in downtown Seattle. I do not like driving in downtown Seattle - the roads are terrible, the drivers are idiots, parking is expensive, and none of the streets make any sense, so it is easy to get lost. Fortunately, I went with a friend, so I wasn't totally alone, but still. I did have Thai food for the first time....drunken noodles. It was good, but HOT. I would have it again though. That's the thing, I live in Seattle, I have to like Asian food or never eat out. And believe me, there is NO Mexican food here. I went through withdrawal after moving here. So after dinner, we headed over to the hotel and got the party started. It was definitely interesting to see the differences between our kids and the kids from Vashon Island (very rich school). I was in the bathroom before the prom started and heard about 6 of them come into the bathroom and here is the conversation I heard: "OMG that limo driver is such a d***!" "Totally, and the black one is so scary!" I wanted to leap out of the stall and show them what real scary is. I got to be in charge of the voting for king and queen, which was pretty cool and I saw all the girls dresses. Most of them looked really nice, although there were the obligatory few with dresses cut so low I could see their belly button rings. On the flip side, there were also quite a few girls that had borrowed dresses from friends or older sisters because of financial issues. In fact, I had to sew one dress on a girl because the zipper (down the side of her dress) was completely broken. She had tried to fix it with safety pins but it wasn't working, so I sewed her into her dress. There were a bunch of girls with dresses that were too big or too small (and not all of them were on purpose), but overall they were just cute. Until the dancing of course. It wasn't bad at first, and for a while there was a bunch of kids taking turns breakdancing...and they were really good, but then later came the freaky dancing and it is impossible to get them to stop. Anyway, I didn't get home until 1:30 and didn't get to bed until afte 2, so I am exhausted today. Hopefully this week goes fast. PS...only 33 days of school left!

Some days you're the windshield....

So my freshmen have been planning a dance pretty much the entire year, everything was ordered, and we were ready to go for this Friday...the day we get out for Spring Break. However, since we were having trouble getting chaperones and police officers, I finally asked the VP yesterday if we could just postpone it until June and we decided to do so. Here's the issue: There are 2 VPs at my school and an itinerant principal for the year. The vice principal that has been dealing with the dance issues has been out for a week and a half because his wife had their baby really premature on Easter and he's been spending a lot of time at the hospital. The other vice principal is the one who talked to me yesterday. So after I left his office yesterday, feeling as if a giant weight had lifted off my shoulders, I sent an email telling everyone that the dance had been cancelled. This morning when I got to school there was an email from the principal and the vice principal. The principal's email said "Who authorized this cancellation?" and the vice-principal's email basically said, we are having this dance, so start selling tickets. Are you kidding me? My officers had already been told to take down the signs and start spreading the word that there was no dance, they didn't have anyone to sell tickets anyway, and most of all, the aforementioned weight had already been lifted off my shoulders!! I was unbelievably pissed off and totally felt like I had been stabbed in the back. So I start freaking out, and go down to talk to the principal, but he's not at school yet, of course, and I had to get ready for class, so I went and talked to the ASB advisor (and cursed some), and we decided to go down during 1st period and talk to the principal, which meant, of course, that we had to get someone to cover our classes. When we got down there, he still wasn't at school, so we talked to the vice-principal, who said he had gotten his ass chewed because he had decided to cancel the dance without talking to the principal about it. He was totally on our side and we left, after making arrangements to talk to the principal during lunch. So lunch rolls around. Meanwhile, on email, we had gotten a message that the pep assembly scheduled for this week had been cancelled due to the high amount of discipline issues we had on Monday and Tuesday of this week. At lunch, we go down, the principal is in his office and we start talking. We laid out our reasons for not doing this dance: First of all, I had already cancelled the dj and the photographer, so unless the principal wanted to sing, there was going to be no music and therefore no dancing. Secondly, we need 14 chaperones to cover all the doors, and we had 8. Thirdly, we are starting to get a reputation with the dj company for the disgusting dancing that is going on (which is a reason that we cannot get enough chaperones) and it is pretty bad when the company that specializes in dancing and parties labels a particular school "the nastiest dancing" they've ever seen. We had a bunch of other reasons, but those were the main ones. So we talked about it for about 20 minutes, and it basically came down to the fact that he wanted to be the one making the decision. OK, fine, that was my bad, but still. Seriously? Whatever. At least there won't be a dance....and that right there is the BEST way to start Spring Break.

tantrums aren't any fun at 16

I have a girl in one of my classes who has some anger issues (I know, you're thinking, only one with issues?), and while we have a pretty decent relationship, every now and then we hit a bump. This week is spirit week, and today was pajama day (if you're guessing I wore pjs to school, you're right!! SO comfortable). I saw this girl walk into school (late) this morning and she was wearing sweats and a sweatshirt (which is what most of the kids wear on pajama day). However, by the time she got to third period, she was wearing a teal negligee and hooker heels with tiny shorts underneath. Of course, one of the boys made an inappropriate comment, and I was about to say something to her, but then the SRO came in and pulled her out into the hall, and must have said something, because when she came back in, she was MAD. She stomped back into class (I'm surprised she didn't trip over her stripper shoes) and crashed into her seat, muttering curses (mostly) under her breath the entire time, and huffed around for a while. I just ignored her, and eventually she cooled off. She must have been under orders to change her clothes, because by the end of class she was wearing the sweats under her "pajamas." I know her mom, and I know there is no way she knew how this girl was planning to dress at school. She would have been perfectly at home on a pole in front of a hot, dark room full of sweaty men. In other news...we cancelled the dance!! Yippee!! Now I can leave on Friday and not come back for over a week!!!

paint

After school today my officers made signs for the upcoming dance. They worked hard and did a good job, and then hauled all the signs up to the third floor to dry. Now my room is draped with signs. I also now have paint all over my pants. Ah well, I didn't really like them anyway. I am a little annoyed that the ASB officers left the ASB room a huge mess and left paint all over the place. I am going to have to yell at them tomorrow and they aren't even my kids. Argh. Oh well. In other news, my sister, who lives in Missouri, is not part of the flooding. It is flooding in the area she lives in, but one of the only good things about her house is that it is located on a slope and will not flood. But because many roads are closed, that means her husband can't work, and that means things get even harder for them....sigh. PS...I'm FREEZING right now.