Confessions of a Tenured Teacher

This is my first official year as a "tenure" teacher.  Which - believe it or not - has very little to do with actually teaching "ten years."  Who knew? 

This is a pretty big milestone in my profession.    I've been hearing for years now that the fourth year is when teachers really "get in their groove."  I mean, it kind-of makes sense if you think about it: high school is four years, college is four years... I should be the Top Cat by year four of my career, right?  Um... not so much.  As I type this my classroom looks like a tornado has run through it --- There are seriously enough ungraded papers on my desk to build a small house.

Anyways, I digress.

One major advantage of tenure that I can identify is protection against the dreaded "pink slip" come May --- at least unless I do something crazy... Which bring me to my next point...

As you might remember, last week was homecoming at my school.  My friend Kristin and I are the junior class sponsors.  We really signed up to plan fun parties at fancy hotels every year (i.e. prom); but, somehow, the homecoming festivities always pop up unexpectedly in the fall. 

This year, our theme was "Jolly Roger Juniors" (pirates) and, after a slight catastrophe last year at the powderpuff game involving provocatively dressed male cheerleaders who switched up their routine at the last minute to include an indecent amount of pelvic thrusting, we were sure to be on our Ps and Qs this year.  

All was going as planned - good, clean fun - until Monday morning when the buzz in the halls was that the juniors were in big trouble  for throwing pizza at the crowd during the parade on Friday.  Hmm...

Kristin and I stayed quiet.  (Maybe we had no idea about this horrible "assausage," maybe we had already punished the young criminals, or maybe we knew about it and were just too immature ourselves to think there was anything wrong with it...)  Our lips were sealed.  No one would ever know the truth.

At least not until this morning when THIS picture came out in our community newspaper.

Awesome!  Thank goodness for tenure!

P.S. Don't forget about my 30 Before 30 check-in on Sunday!!  What have YOU crossed off?  Come back to link-up and enter to win a fun giveaway!!