Leaks and ditches

My classroom has been leaking since around Thanksgiving. Drip, drip, drip from the science classroom upstairs. I told the building manager and put a bucket underneath. About a month later, a ceiling tile caves in on a student during class. Oops! The leak is getting a bit stronger; my bucket fills up nearly every day. Kids begin to migrate away from that area, and everything else gets bunched up in the room. Still: drip, drip, drip.

The building manager tells me that he's told North Avenue several times to fix it, but because we're in the middle of this huge re-organization, he thinks they're trying to put it off. But, I still remind him every time I see him. Today, though, I decide to move my bookcase, which is near the leak. Underneath, there is a swarm of mushrooms growing. Upon closer inspection, I notice tiny parasites living on the mushrooms.

Gross!

I think there's a pretty good chance my room will be quarantined when I return. It will be the third quarantine in three years in our department. Ah, the joys of having an old building and a school system that likes to wait for gushing before it fixes anything. This is one reason that the re-allocation of monies should be a good thing: we could have handled this in-house and probably saved a lot of damage (you should see the floor and the titles...)

*****

The first baseball game(s) are Saturday, and we're in a tournament. If you missed The Baltimore Sun's Spring Sports Preview, you missed no mention of baseball in Baltimore City. I think there was a little blurb about Dunbar, but otherwise there is not one player to watch in Baltimore City, no pre-season ranking for the teams, nothing. It's the Baltimore Sun preview, yet there are no Baltimore schools mentioned for baseball - except for private schools that have Mike Bordick as their coach. There wasn't even a preview blurb like there usually is. I was a bit bummed out - we had a great season last year, and no one even contacted me about top players or anything like that, like they usually do.