Remember When?

In December of 2003 I started blogging. I was a substitute teacher for Portland Public Schools. It was quite a year. I found this quote from my early blogging days and I am going to repost it here. I get pretty sentimental when I think about leaving teaching to be a stay at home mom. It's a hard thing. I love my job.


epitaph for a newt

Kindergarten classrooms are often chaotic. On one such chaotic day in one such chaotic classroom a newt was killed, but not intentionally. I'm almost sure that if those PETA people knew what went on in kindergarten to classroom pets they would be picketing every elementary school in the country.

"Teacher! (frantically) The newt is stuck!!!" (visualize other children also screaming and jumping up and down in the background) Indeed, the newt was stuck. It's head was stuck in the lid of the aquarium almost as if in the act of putting the newt back into the aquarium someone had closed the lid too early. It's head was inside the aquarium and the rest of it's totally stiff and terrified body was outside."OK", I said, "I'll open the lid and you catch the newt." I assigned the roles this way because I don't like to touch dead newts. The catch was successful.
Me to the class - "Sometimes when a newt gets hurt he doesn't like to be touched or petted for a long time so we are going to leave the newt alone during choice time." I said this as if the newt was alive. This is the nice thing about being a substitute, the real teacher can break the bad news tomorrow. I just have to break the news to her...


I remember talking to the teacher later and her refering to the newt as "the newt with nine lives". Apparently they are very resilient. I'm not sure if the newt lived through the aforementioned episode. Was it a noble death? I think so. Goodbye newt.