Halloween

Having sorted all of our Halloween candy into "chocolate" and "fruity/mockolate"(Tootsie Rolls, I'm looking at you) sacks, I am rewarding myself with a sampling.  I passed out my address to at least sixty kids, so I'm hoping to unload quite a bit of this stuff.

I don't do a Halloween party with my class, because I am a mean and terrible person.  We did manage to have our school walk-a-thon.  This is a fundraiser for a local community organization; they use the money to fund outreach programs and field trips.  So the money does come back to us (my class has already been there and will go again next month).  But as a school, we think it is important to stress community interrelationships and to work together for causes other than our own budget.  (That's important, too.  We're selling hoodies and tee-shirts for that right now, and I will try to pull off a much larger art sale this Spring.)

After the walkathon, we had a snack, did some work and baked intensely healthy seasonal treats: pumpkin muffins.  I didn't feel like dealing with flax seed, so they did have eggs but I halved the sugar and replaced the oil with greek yogurt.  After lunch and a little more work, their buddy class came over and we all made little tp-roll mummies and ate muffins.  In the end, it feels like a party day but is very low-sugar.  I am a big believer in teaching choices rather than noes (so that we have "sometimes snacks" and I allow cupcakes on birthdays but not cupcakes every day), but Friday Halloween at school followed by Sunday Halloween and Monday candy-eating is pushing "sometimes" a little too far for me.

Monday is a furlough.  I like the day off if not the pay cut; what with the vet bills and the Jeremy's sale I am not enthusiastic about my somewhat smaller paychecks.  I went in yesterday to put the library loft together, and I will be going in tomorrow to hang wall mazes and clean up for the next week.  I will be joined by many teachers on Monday, and it's all these extra hours that teachers work that make the arguments about why Board employee perks (food) ring a little hollow.  We make less.  We work plenty of twelve and fourteen hour days.  There will be no Arguello catering meal awaiting us at the end of the day.  Just a salary cut of at least $1200.  WHINE WHINE WHINE.