1. If a student goes to your desk and picks up tape or a stapler without asking you like it’s his desk and not your personal space,
2. If an administrator cancels a professional development the day before and it was scheduled on a day before a holiday,
3. If a co-teacher busts into your lunch and attempts to plan an entire unit in the last nine minutes of your 20 minute lunch break,
4. If a student emails you over the weekend about why she received a D on an essay that she didn’t in fact finish and the quarter has ended,
5. If a student tries to share a super long story right when lunch has begun and you’re on your way to beat the line at the microwave,
6. If a substitute teacher takes pens, your grading pens with her,
7. If you have to teach multiple days with no paper in the copy room and thus, have to ration the color paper you have and feel guilty when another teacher comes into the copy room envying your ability to make copies,
8. If someone has left a multiple step paper jam in the copier for you to fix,
9. If a parent demands that her child should receive full credit on an assignment that was never turned in, but she believes was turned in,
10. If each new school year, you get handed a new innovative, better way to write your mandated lesson plans,
Then:
stop,
breathe,
and walk
because someone is trying to pull you into the abyss that can sometimes open up in public schools.
