Fear of the Unknown

I am a planner. I always have been and I plan to always be one. In teaching, I have the next two weeks of lesson plans already outlined with ideas. I like to stay one step ahead in planning for school and life. Not only do I have a plan, but I have a Plan B and a Plan C. Suffice it to say, not knowing what my life contains after April, scares me. Will I teach? Where? What subject? Will I like it? What if I don't teach? Will I regret teaching or not teaching more? Scary, but "real life" starts soon for me. 401k, health insurance, retirement. None of that sounds appealing to me. I'd rather sit in class from 8-12 M-F.

And now, because junior high-ers are so entertaining, here is the story of the day:

There are two foods classes: 8th and 9th grade. Each class talks about the same topic, but in different ways. Because of this, the 8th graders cooked today and the 9th graders didn't, even though they expected to. The first one in the door today was a talkative yet surprisingly attentive student. The first thing he says to me is "Where's the sign that says we are going to cook today? It's missing."
"That's because we aren't cooking today."
"Yeah-huh. I saw kids today with cookies. We're cooking."
"That was the 8th grade class."
"Well, what do we have to do to cook today?"
"Nothing. We'll cook Wednesday."
---What I wanted to say was "Go back to 8th grade", but I refrained. I could have said it to this kid and he would have had something witty to say back and been okay with it. Some kids are more fragile, but he's not. He's the voice of the class and basically decided for everything that he would rather do classwork than play a game and have the classwork be homework.

It amazes me how much kids will do to get food. At the end of the day, I rewarded the class with a Starburst for working on their assignment. As the bell rang, one super talkative student asked if could trade in a wrapper for another Starburst. Being the softy that I am, I told him to put it in the trash can and get another one. As soon as he did, he told the rest of the class still in the room, and I had a mad rush! It was nice because they would pick up wrappers off the floor to cash in on some more candy. At least it cleaned up the room a bit.