On IEPs (individualized education programs) and the so-called 'trouble-kids'...
Its really easy to say that we should just throw out all the students who refuse to do anything in class, and yet the moment you know they are gone I can't help but feel like a great big emptiness... Today in school I was working with the special ed. teachers while they did IEPs. One was for a student who they were going to throw out - it was ugly: parents screaming, kid upset but trying to play cool, and half the teachers just wishing he would leave now. It was disgusting... I don't know how we, as teachers, can fail a student and not think that we've failed as well...

Mercy is laying in my bed, she's been sleeping on the couch since I got here... then the other morning I woke up and there she was, lying at the foot of my bed. I felt so happy just to wake her up with a big hug... I think I love that dog more than anything else in this world.
Really.
I was thinking about it today and if offered a Lions superbowl victory to never see Mercy again I wouldn't take it... hell, I would never talk to my brother again to see the lions win a superbowl (I got two!) but not Mercy...