Where is my turtle?

Chapter 3: What Just Happen.

I pull myself up from the grubby carpet I switch on the lights and ignore the slightly sticky feeling on the switch because in all honestly, I don't even want to know about it. I'm just going to pretend that it didn't happen and it's not there. That's what half this job is. Just pretending that things are not happening. Like when Lily is looking at her book and not reading it but she's not distracting anyone so I just pretend I don't know, or when a huntsman spider is hiding in the corner of the room but I don't want the whole class to freak out so I just pretend it's not there and I like to tell myself that just about everything else between 9:00 am-3:00 pm just didn't happen.

It makes us all feel a lot better about ourselves. Just forget and come back tomorrow, my students are good at doing that too. Whenever I ask who remember what we learnt yesterday there is a simulation ummmm sound. Then someone will just say something random like ''we got notes to go on an excision to the big park to learn about stuff''. Then I'll say "that's right and we're going to learn about stuff today again" then there's a simulation ohh sound and a "can we just deal with that learning stuff tomorrow" reply.

Even though I know my students are going to come into the class and do everything in their power to avoid learning I still have to prepare for the day. I get to my desk and see a note with a little flower –Something pretty for my favourite teacher, from Savish Mohan. I pop the flower in my hair and spend 10 minutes trying to re-plug all the plugs in the smartboard and turn on the Interactive whiteboard. Another 10 minutes waiting in line at the photocopy machine, 5 minutes printing and 30 minutes marking and 3 minutes of dreading hearing the bell ring. When it does, I wipe away a stray tear and go down to the pickup area and smile at all the parents.

The students are supposed to be waiting in two lines. But in all honesty, I don't think my kids can count, I see one and a half lines sometimes three occasionally one but never 14 beautiful pairs of two. It's just not happening. Then we try and walk through the hallways quietly. That is also, just not happening. We walk into the classroom and it's chaos like a scene from the planet of the apes running, screaming, monkey sounds you name it, it's happening. To be honest, most of the time I'm making the monkey sounds but I only do it to fit in with my students. I don't speak monkey.

It takes approximately 5-8 minutes it get everyone seated and settled. "Ms Daisy day, where's Jeremy" Lily asks in her sweet little sing-song voice and just like that in 30 seconders the class is in a craze again.

"where is Jeremy"

"Jeremy ran away from us"

"someone stole Jeremy, maybe he just didn't want to come, maybe his hiding"

"I think he went on an adventure, I'm pretty sure I saw him walking to the fruit shop".

Jeremy is the class pet his a turtle and in all honesty, I don't know where he went, so I choose not to say anything and let the kids look around the room for five minutes.

"He's not in the sink"

"he's not under the tables"

"his not stuck to all the chewing gum"

"his not in my pencil case"

"his not in the glue stick tub"

" it doesn't look like the cockroaches have eaten him".

Darn where could he be? I don't want everyone to get upset so I ring the bell and make up a lie about how Ms Happy next door has borrowed Jeremy for a few days because her little old grandma is sick and we thought that having a turtle around for bit would help her. The second the lie left my lips, I knew that was the wrong thing to say. Very wrong. Every student's face lit up!

"can we make a card"

"yh a get well card"

"for Ms Happy's grandma"

"it will make her feel good"

"maybe she won't be old after she reads it"

"what's she sick with?"

"Does she smell?"

"Is Jeremy going to come back smelling funny?"

"Can we, can we, can we please?"

I put my hands up in surrender "you can make a get well card –but ONLY after we finish out comprehension work, ONLY after".

Philip speedily handed out the books and he made sure to (eye roll) accident through some books on a few of his classmate's heads. The whole class got straight to work. The rest of the morning was a blur and I spent most of the time silently thinking – what happen to Jeremy.