And I have an ANVIL. It was in the trash pile. Can you believe it? The Electrical trades teacher came to me today to tell me about it and got his boys to carry it over to me. It's a BIG anvil mounted on a pedestal. It's got a square hole in the end for stakes. (I saw some stakes under a table in the plumbing room, I'm going to go grab them)

I didn't have a chance to really look it over well (I had another teacher [actually the Electrical Trades teacher who was pissed at his kids for boogering up copper wire saying they were making bracelets, and brought them over to jewelry] bring his whole class in to watch me demo something [not planned but I was happy to do it] and I had a decathlon coach from another school come over to get curricular materials not to mention that some of my supplies that had gone missing from May had turned up and I was trying to show kids how to use the polisher and show them the new jiffy jump ringer and I had to monitor the kids that were enameling and take grades from the kids that had done their texture samples and give the new assignment for the textured cuff bracelet. (all in an hour and a half)

Whew. My daughter who is the new French teacher at Garland High School said she wished that she taught something easy like I did.

Expletive deleted.

I have 25 kids in my 4th period class. That's HUGE for jewelry. No two of them are in the same place at the same time. My daughter should wish that she could juggle 25 kids in different stages of development. I'm just grateful that they are really good kids and that they understand that "safety rule #4" is that if they don't clean up after themselves that they will be hurt when Miz Em goes ghetto on their ass.

Okay, I've got this new anvil. I think it is at least a 220 lb'er. The top face has some rust. It's got some beating but isn't terrible. It probably dates from about 1970 when the shop first got put in across the way. It's green painted below. I danced around it as I taught the ongoing class and negotiated with the teacher I share the room with about where we were going to put this monolith. I ended up with about five of the Electrical Trades kids left over who were all about getting into to all of our stuff and asking a lot of questions above and beyond me teaching my the class and I had to keep them from getting into stuff that could hurt them. OY.

Education in America. Woohoo!

Oh yeah it is great...The Electrical guy was trying to shame his kids (for wasting copper wire) except they all got real excited about what they saw in jewelry since we were taking copper and texturing it and turning it into jewelry. I took some of the ugly crap that they did with the electrical wire that they abused and showed them how it could be turned to art. Actually one piece was really nice. At least TEN of them asked if they could get in my class.

Whatever am I going to do with all these angels?

Today was a good day. It was an exciting day. It was a breathtaking day.

How was your day?