The Worth of a Child

Do you remember my posts about the student that stole things from our classroom, pooped in a urinal, talked out of turn and pretty much had behavior issues all school year? Well, one morning last week he said, "Mrs. Lancaster. Don't look." (Words every adult wants to hear from a child, right?) He then preceded to ask me, "How do you spell you?", so I had him search for the sight word 'you' on our Word Wall. Then he asked how to spell 'are'. Trying to encourage him, I said, "If you can't find it on the Word Wall, sound it out. You can do it." He then continued to work hard on his 'secret project'. After a time, he got out of his chair and walked over to the table where I was testing students. Handing me a piece of scratch paper, he said, "Mrs. Lancaster, will you write your name?" I quickly jotted down my name and handed it back to him. A few minutes later, he got up from his desk, came back over and handed this to me...

THIS is why I do what I do. EVERY child is worth it!

My Mean Girl Moment

I wasn't a mean girl in high school, but I did have one bad moment. To this day, I regret my actions and wish I had behaved differently. Here's the scoop...

I went to Mexico with my high school Spanish class my sophomore year. Jill, my best friend, and I shared a hotel room with two other girls. Girl #1 was fun and we didn't mind sharing a room with her. Girl #2, not so much. If you saw #2 from behind, she looked nice enough (Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, trendy clothes and shapely figure), but when she turned around, let's just say she wasn't exactly easy on the eyes.

A couple of things bugged all three of us about #2. For one thing, she had more money to spend than anyone else in the class. While the majority of the students went to one of Puerto Vallarta's markets to purchase snacks that wouldn't give us diarrhea (saltines and bottled orange soda come to mind), #2 thought nothing about paying quadruple the money for Cheetos at our hotel gift shop.

Girl #2 also loved to curl her hair...over and over and over. Seriously?! It was so muggy in Puerto Vallarta that, depending on your hair type, you either had tight curls stuck to your head or hippy straight hair. While the rest of the females adjusted and dealt with the humidity, #2 stayed in the room all day, partying with her curling iron.

The only time I remember girl #2 coming out of the hotel room to be social, was the 'mean girl moment' I am going to tell you about.

I'm sorry the photo is bad, but it was taken by
a teenager (moi) with a 1970's Kodak.

The four of us were swimming near a large island in the pool (above). Girl #1, Jill and I came up with a plan to ditch #2. We told #2 we wanted to play a fun game and clock each other to see who could swim around the island the fastest. AND, just so #2 would think it was a legitimate competition, girl #1 went first. We timed #1 while she swam around the entire island. When it was #2's turn, we did the whole "Get ready. Get set. Go!" thing, watched her until she was out of sight, and then made a mad dash out of the pool.

I know. I know! Horrible, horrible, horrible. I can NOT believe I did something so heartless to a classmate and on foreign soil no less. The poor girl was thousands of mile away from home. Sad.

Now, before you write hateful comments toward me, keep in mind that this occurred over thirty years ago. I obviously had a snotty, sixteen year old, beeotch moment.