
We are still running only one bus to and from school each day, this means that the bus needs to make three trips to get all the students to and from school. Because of poor weather (and poor road maintenance) it takes about 15-20 minutes to drive the 3 miles from school to town. Because of this crazy bus schedule all first periods have been very low in numbers. Our principal has informed us that if this bus brakes down, we are going to start hiring 15 passenger vans and trucks from the community to bring kids to the school.
Day 27. Wednesday we had our 27th day of school affected by snow. This one was a little strange, here’s why…usually when it snows out it takes a while for the city to clear the roads, either because the wind is still blowing or they wake up late. Wednesday we were told that the roads were going to take a while to plow and that the bus was behind the plow. Our principal initiated a “1-hour delay” to allow the plow to do his thing and then start the bus transfers. Our school secretary got on the VHF and announced to the community that we were on the 1-hour delay schedule and not to come until 10:00. Unfortunately, the bus driver didn’t hear the announcement and followed the plow all the way to the school with students in it anyway. At 9:00 (or a little after) we started to see students walk into our rooms. We teachers were a bit confused and a little disappointed. Since we knew there was going to be a 1-hour delay, we wanted to hold our high school staff meeting before school instead of after. The delayed started gave us that opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, when students started showing up we had to resume our previous schedule and teach. You might be thinking, “what about the delay?” Well, we eventually had to get back on the VHF and announce that we were no longer on the 1-hour delay schedule and to come to school.
Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday were special days. The community holds a wellness conference at the school this time each year. We were supposed to let the students out after lunch those three days so that they could attend the conference in the commons. However, put yourself in their shoes. How many of you would want to stay and listen to a bunch of people speak? Exactly…hardly any of the students stayed. I’m not really quite sure why we let them out in the first place. Why should we alter school if there’s no real need to do so? Anyway, Friday morning we had some more snow fall (about 3-5 inches) and the Wellness Conference Committee decided to move the conference down town instead of holding it at the school. The down side is that we had already altered our schedules and planned on not teaching certain classes. Once the conference was moved down town we were put back on a normal schedule. This made things interesting, as none of the teachers really had anything prepared. We all had to “shoot from the hip”, so to speak. It made the day interesting, to say the least.
Friday night Kaitlyn and I had some friends over to play games. We played “Bohnanza”, or as our friends like to call it, “Beans”. We introduced two of our friends to this game for the first time. It was a really fun game. We had a lot of “bartering” going on. I think someone walked away with a promise to make cornbread (I’d take that bribe). However, the night was turned upside down when one of the new guys said he’d trade his turn for one of my Wax Beans (22 in deck, very low ranking card). After discussing with him that it wasn’t a really fair trade, he decided to still up hold the deal and I (Tim) traded in a heart beat. The fun thing about it was that no one noticed our deal as everyone else was talking amongst themselves. When it came to his turn he turned it over to me, and everyone’s mouth dropped. It was totally a game changer, especially since I was previously able to acquire a Garden Bean (very high ranking card) and then flip over two more of them in the deck. This equated to “instant points”…lots of them. You could imagine, everyone else was not pleased. What’s interesting to note, is that is the first time anyone has ever offered to trade his or her turn for a card while we’ve played this game. He introduced a “game changer”.