Welcome to October! We still have no word on whether guided reading for the lower levels is supposed to last two days or three days. We have no word on how to grade our latest TC assessments (which are piling up like hotcakes in my office). What we do have, however, is roaches. Big roaches! Baby roaches! And all the roach sizes in between!
Apparently they are living in our chart paper, and when our custodian visited our office (mostly to laugh at us silly, roach-averse women), he offered to throw it away. I practically lunged at him and pried it from his hands, since we've already been told that because of budget cuts, we won't be seeing any more chart paper for a while. "It's a school!" I screeched. "We need paper! We can't just throw all the paper away!"
Then a monster roach scuttled out of one of the pads. Ick.
So now I have a new title around the office: Miss Brave, roach exterminator extraordinaire. Like most normal people, I do not enjoy roaches, but I don't have a problem killing them, either -- so when one of my colleagues spies a roach lurking in the vicinity, she need only squeak out, "Miss Brave!" and I go running for a paper towel in order to facilitate the big squash. We have already spied a cluster of dead roaches underneath our (broken) computer and printer, so we know that someone sprayed at some point, but it's really the live ones I'm more concerned about; there's nothing like starting your morning with someone telling you, "Um, Miss Brave, you have tentacles waving at you from underneath your desk." I come to school a full hour before first period starts -- when the only ones in the office are me and the roaches -- and I used to be able to use that hour to get some work done, but now I use it to kill roaches.
Apparently if we want to get some roach motels or something, we have to do it on the sly. Because there's nothing like using your own money to pay for bug poison for your place of work.
5 comments:
Good luck with that. Ask the janitors if they can put out boric acid. I'm not sure if they are allowed to, but it is cheap, safe, and gets the job done. It is supposed to be much less toxic than traditional pesticides.
I don't know if New York roaches are anything like Georgia roaches, but if they are, my condolences...today when I got to school there were three giant ones in the hallway. I'm pretty sure these things could run off with one of my kindergartners if I'm not vigilant. I spray down the doorway to my room (when there aren't any kids around, of course) as well as the perimeter where the floor meets the rubber wall boarder and the cabinets, too...I still see them regularly, but maybe not quite as often. Or so I like to think.
Yes, do use boric acid powder. You can buy a big jar at most drug stores, for just a couple of bucks. No noxious odors and unless your 2nd graders get down on their hands and knees and lick it up, it won't poison them like a spray might. You can mix it with a little sugar for bait, dump it in a bunch of small envelopes, and seal them. Place them around the perimeter of your room, and any other places the little buggers like to roam. The roaches crawl in, eat it and die. Toss the envelopes when they get dirty.
put the paper in a plastic bag, take it home, and put it in the freezer for a couple of days. dave.s.
DON"T bring home anything from school or you will bring home the roaches or their eggs or larva or whatever! GROSS
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