The Sleepover

I kinda think the title "The Sleepover" would be very suitable for a Japanese horror movie. Indeed, for a teacher, class sleepovers are often akin to some sort of horror/thriller. I am happy to report, however, that this has not been the case thus far. It is currently 10:40 and the night has gone beautifully well. Eleven of my 17 students came--not bad at all. I also have two junior high chaperons and one younger sibling of one my students.

The night really began very early in the morning when one of my students woke me up at 7 in the morning on a Saturday (her mom had her sleep over at my house so she could come to the party). I let her sleep on my bed and I slept on the floor, which was painfully uncomfortable--even for a floor. Anyway, she slept well enough it seems since she was bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed at an appalling hour. It reminded me of when my mom used to wake me up to the tune of "Rise and shine and give God the Glory-Glory, rise and shine and give God the Glory-Glory." She had an incredible gift of making the word Rise sound like some sort of curse word as it was more like "Ri-i-ze."

So we got up early. I cleaned a bit (you know you need to when an eight-year-old clicks her tongue at your mess). Around ten S and began planning for the party. We worked all day. We had a lot of fun together and she was surprisingly helpful. I love all of my children, but there is something about this girl that I love so much. I was glad to spend the time with her.

Things started to heat up when I had to make pizza. I only had one cookie sheet and I needed to make five pizzas--fast. Against my mother's advice (first problem, I know), I tried to cook two pizzas at once. Since I didn't have two cookie sheets, I thought of the genius idea of sticking the other pizza on top of the muffin pan I had borrowed from a fellow teacher. Brilliant!...or not. As some of you may have predicted, the dough sagged into the cups and produced an amazing spotting effect where half of the dough was cooked to perfection while the other portion was still doughy, sagging and stuck in the muffin holes. The pizza looked like a dog threw it up after I finished with it. I served it anyway and got no complaints.

We watched Ruby Bridges and I think the kids really enjoyed it. We didn't get to discuss racism as much as I wanted as we started everything late. After the movie, I literally let the kids run crazy in the gym. I wanted them to burn off some of their sugar-high before bed. It seemed to have worked as most of them are sleeping right now. I'll let you know how the rest of the night goes.

B

P.S. I have included the first picture of one of my students--the girl who helped me prepare for the night.