Poisson d'Avril!

With a $2.95 binder from Staples, paper from the Archbishop Alter Library's printers, and two hundred ninety-six hours of hard labor, I have laid my research paper to rest. (I'm exaggerating a bit. Two hundred ninety-six is the number of hours I worried about the research paper, not the hours I actually toiled.) Thus my academic activities are drawing to a close--not done with 'em yet! There's still a capstone presentation to go!--and so it seemed a good time to pick up my cap and gown for graduation.
I'm looking at them now, all bundled in their happy cellophane wrapper with a label proclaiming the contents in clipped cadence. The package includes, for example, "1 TASSEL: REGULAR. BANDED. BLACK." Graduation accoutrements don't mess around.
I just got back from Spring Break, aka Research Paper Last Chance Gulch (if I didn't do it then, there'd be no way to concentrate on it before its due date, Thursday of this week). Our school--and here I'm talking about where I'm student teaching--had its last pre-Spring Break day April 1st. In other classrooms and out on the playground there were parties and Easter egg hunts; in Miss Pancella's class there was a math test. "How the Teacher Stole Easter" is what they'll title my life story. I did, however, seek to expand the second graders' cultural horizons with trivia I'd learned in high school French class. "Do you know what they do on April Fools Day in France?" I asked them. "People go around sticking paper cut-outs of fish on other people's backs, and then they run away shouting 'Poisson d'Avril!' 'April Fish!'" Oh, my kids were mighty intrigued by this. They worked hard on the pronunciation of "poisson"; they asked me to write the words on the board so they could spell them correctly; they wrote them on Post-Its and slapped them on my back. In retaliation, I stuck construction-paper April Fish in every one of their backpacks for them to discover discover on their arrival home.
In other news--yes, the reason I have not been writing about school for a while (besides the fact that I've been writing for school; see the topic "research paper" above) is that I have spent forty days listening to, and writing about, forty versions of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. And yes, in case you were wondering--the most common reaction, when I tell people this, is "I can't believe you spent forty days listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. Yeah--I can't either, but the blog posts are testimony, and I'm the only one with access to the jeremiahsaunt.blogspot.com account, so I must have done it.
Back to teaching. And graduation. And this year of apprenticeship approaching its end. I figure it doesn't hurt to ask--do you know of schools that are hiring? There are about twenty-five of us entering the labor pool at once, and I'll vouch for one and all.