Happy Winds-day, Pooh

What a day.

I went to bed last night thinking "Okay. Wednesday. Take the kids to Wabasha for Mock Trial, get the day off from my other kids." Not bad.

I got up today and headed over to school. I walked across the freezing parking lot, boarded the bus and marveled at the fact that we were leaving on time! 6:30 almost on the dot! Amazing!

Now, the courthouse in Wabasha, where our trials were being held, is a two-hour drive from Owatonna. At about the hour and a half mark, my cell phone rang. It was a call from the secretary at the ALC passing along the message from the teacher who was the Mock Trial coach FOUR YEARS AGO that our morning trial against Pine Island was cancelled. Why? They had a two-hour late start this morning. Why? Not sure--no sign of a blizzard. So WHY did they feel the need to cancel on us? Well, we about five hours in the middle of the frozen tundra that is Wabasha, Minnesota to contemplate that.

We arrived on-time, at about 8:30 and walked into the courthouse to inquire what we might do with 17 high school students before our 1:00 trial against Northfield. They looked at us. They asked us where we were from. They looked at us again. "We have nothing for kids to do here" they said. Then they showed us a room where we could be and told us that the actual towns (Winona and Red Wing) were 30 miles in either direction. We called a movie theatre in Red Wing. Closed. We called the Mock Trial director to complain. She started the process of rescheduling the trial (because we should definitely pull everybody out of school another day).

So, we parked the kids in the jury room and we colored, played Apples to Apples, did homework, watched a couple of hearings in the courthouse and ate the donuts the court administrator bought for us (bless her!). We went out to eat at the only restaurant in town open for lunch (really, Wabasha? Really?) The B team competed in their afternoon trial and lost by two points. Then we made the two-hour drive home. By this time I am exhausted and slightly giddy, and our attorney coach is worse. Being "the adults" all day was quite exhausting.

So, here we are, the week Round 3 is supposed to be over, and our A team still has two trials to do! They're scheduled for their Round 2 (which was already rescheduled) on Friday, and we will reschedule Round 3 to sometime next week. Is it fair to wish the season would just end already? I suspect at least one of our teams will go on to Round 4 and possibly 5, but odds are we'll be out by February 23rd. So, three more weeks of madness.

In other news, I hate getting substitutes. It's always worse at the ALC, where any shift from the normal routine is Armageddon. At least six of my students got dragged out of class today for acting naughty. I haven't checked my sub notes from the high school yet. I hope they were at least polite. So...one more day of teaching and one more day of Mock Trial this week. It would be cool if they could go by quickly.