DANCIN' BABY EEL

I caught this bass on a Dancin’ Baby Eel and after studying the picture, a revelation hit me: I’ve never truly written much about fishing technique. Where’s the hook, the line, the sinker? Where’s the discussion about bait?

We had our school audit this week (bare with me, there’s a common thread here, trust me, you should, you really really should). Let’s start with a recap:

While Auditor #1 pulled every 10th student file in our school office, Auditor #2 stood in my classroom grilling me: “Why weren’t you at mandatory training last week?”

“Zero-point-nine,” I answered, a reference to the dismal amount of CEUs (Continuing Education Credits) teachers could earn for the two-day conference.

“Maybe you misunderstood me, the training was MANDATORY,” she said, as if I were brain dead, as if 0.9 were my blood alcohol level. “Why weren’t you there?”

I politely told her to discuss this matter with my boss.

She moved on, “I’d like to see how you keep track of each student’s progress?”

I showed her absolutely nothing, instead, I vocalized my dissatisfaction with MDIT (Michigan Department of Information Technology). “My computer crapped out on June 10, 2008,” I explained—as if she’d understand my deficiency in tracking student progress—“DIT never replaced my hard drive.”

“You are submitting the appropriate reports to the school office, aren’t you?” She asked.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my new hard-drive storage system; I answered with a confident “YES.”

After the auditors left, our boss called a staff meeting. “We did excellent,” she said. “We only had two student evaluations missing from all the files that were pulled.”

I couldn’t help myself. Since I was the senior teacher, the undesignated “mentor,” I asked for clarification as to which students had missing paper work. She indicated the students of the less experienced teachers.

“That’s not too bad,” I added as consolation.

A veteran teacher shot me an incredulous look; He knew why the auditors never found the missing information on my students. Whatever work I couldn’t finish prior to the audit, I simply pulled the appropriate files and stuck them in my filing cabinet. Call it my new “hard-drive storage system.”

Now back to that Dancin’ Baby Eel …