Guess Who's Back?

Dear Students: When your lazy little tails amble through the entrance of Memorial High School tomorrow morning, Slim Shady will not be there to greet you and demand to see your I.D. I, Ashli C. Hepler, will however. In fairness to all of you, I have composed a list of changes that may/may not affect you personally:

~Steroids make you very hungry. If I ask for food or a beverage, someone should sprint to the snack machine immediately. The other downside to steroids is rage. I hope you do not ever have to witness this side effect first-hand. As long as you follow the food policy, we'll probably be okay.

~My pain medication makes me incredibly tired; however, my best time is in the morning (unless I've stayed up too late typing these crazy blogs), but I sure am glad we have a couch in our room. Perhaps we could work together to come up with a story about what we're working on should I be napping on the couch when an administrator walks into the room? Visualizing the town of Maycomb and the Finch neighborhood might do.

~Plan to talk about some science. I have recently gained a new appreciation for it. In fact, should you find yourself sitting next to someone in our classroom who is quite gifted in math or science and you elect to tease him/her or call him/her a "nerd" simply because they are passionate about school or equations or particles instead of the things you are into, you will most definitely experience my wrath. I'm guessing somewhere along the line Dr. Thornton or Dr. Wheeler got made fun of. These are the guys I'm relying on to save my life.

~I will have a positive attitude. You will have a positive attitude. Research proves that optimism is one of my best defenses.

~Okay, I'll be realistic. We're probably all still going to have our bad days. I can accept that. The thing I will not accept is you dragging me or someone else down should you find yourself in a funk. I have come to the conclusion that the number one problem affecting our school and test scores is that those of you who cannot figure out how to get back on track are bound and determined to drag your friends and classmates down simply because you don't want to be the only one who can't get it together. I will still try to help you find the strength to fight for yourself. If you cannot find the strength to pull yourself up, please just promise me that you won't steal someone else's chance.

~I no longer have the time to worry about insignificant things such as whether the DOL crates are color-coded and organized. I don't really give two craps about the symmetry of the pillows on our couch. I'm letting go of stupid stuff like that. Alright, I haven't changed that much...I might be willing to offer extra credit to someone who wants to be the classroom housekeeper.

~I am currently working on the best ISTEP prompt in the world. Let's begin brainstorming a letter in which we all breakup with my tumor. I guess we've been together going on a decade now, but this dude is dragging me down. I think if hate mail were an actual genre of writing on the ISTEP, we'd probably pull out some serious 6s and our entire school would pass the writing portion of the test. It's still going to be an exercise in formal writing, so you should all begin working on creative adjectives and adverbs you can use in place of the cuss words.

~I am still alive. And as long as I'm still alive, we're going to do some serious learning. Get your pencils and papers ready!