lips parting like a flag unfurled

Michael unveiled his big secret in August during the first meeting when the school year started. The faculty, parents, and students were going to take a 10-day school trip to Greece during spring break.

Since he is Polish he's naturally an expert and was going to lead the whole thing. You could see how excited the little guy was. So much so that he didn't hear the groans coming from the staff.

Funny, nothing ever came of his little trip. The students were too smart to sign up or show any interest at all. The parents knew it was mainly b.s. As for the faculty, the cost was too high to justify spending your entire spring break working as a chaperone with Michael as leader of the longest meeting of your life.

But just like the kid that throws the birthday party that no one comes to, Michael decided it was time to get revenge on all the people who didn't want to come to his party. He planned a better party, one that was mandatory for the entire high school student body and staff. We were going to take a one-day trip down to Nagasaki.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'd love to go down there and check it out. It's been on my list for a while and I've been waiting for O to get here so we could take a train down and spend the night.

The problem is that the staff has a mountain of work on the very near horizon. The IB team left us with some pretty heavy tasks to accomplish before the end of April. One of the biggies is that we need to develop detailed two-year plans for each of the IB classes we plan on teaching. The responsibility of creating those plans falls on the head of the department for each subject area.

Most teachers will write one two-year plan. I have to write three.

The school has given us 4 "half-days" to write the plans. Basically, they got a sub to fill our last period classes for two days before break and two days after break. That's fine, we should be able to get it done in that time period but it will be tight.

I swear, I'm not trying to gripe about my workload here, bear with me.

While stressing out this weekend I stumbled upon the idea that if I didn't go on the Nagasaki trip I could spend the day knocking out all of my plans and be done with my task before spring break. It makes sense because I will work hard and then take a break.

This afternoon I presented the idea to the big guy and you could see his little heart breaking. I was telling him that I couldn't go to his party. It was almost too hard, I could imagine him wearing a party hat, with the pinata in the background, a big bowl of chips, a birthday cake and no one else around. I bet he even hired a clown.

He didn't let me back down from my position. He simply said that taking this trip and experiencing a field trip outside of class was more important that getting our job for IB done. "I hired you because I knew that you'd be able to connect with the students. I know you're doing it in the classroom," (he's never observed me), "but you need to go out and have a good time with the students outside of the classroom."

I really wanted to tell him that when I'm stressed out like this I'm a total dick to my students, my co-workers, the people at kadota, birds, elevator buttons, etc.

I'll send some postcards from Nagasaki, signed "Grrrrrr."