Today is Katie's birthday (more to follow), and I got to make the cake for the celebration tonight. She gave me free reign, so I decided to make a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cake. I combined two recipes from smittenkitchen.com. The cake recipe is here, and the icing recipe is here. I also chopped up peanut butter cups and put them in the middle as well as on the top.
Seeing all these Reese's reminded me of one day at little ol' Delaware Valley. Delaware Valley Charter was the first school where I taught in Philadelphia. Now this school had a million problems from the fact that I had to buy my own paper after two reams a month (try copying 130 five page tests on two reams a month) to firing people by putting notes in their mailboxes (including the vice principal).
Just one of these problems was the janitorial staff. The school hired some cheap company to come in at night and sweep the floors, empty the trash and so on. About two thirds of the way through the year, I was noticing that my trash was rarely emptied in the mornings and my floor wasn't anywhere near clean (including the strip in the middle that was just concrete because my classroom was actually two nursing home rooms combined and they never bothered to replace the floor where the middle wall was torn down). I think at that point I had noticed that a few little things had gone missing as well.
So I decided to do an experiment. One of the big fundraisers for almost every club at DVC was selling candy bars. I had purchased a few Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from someone, so I decided to leave the package out on my desk after school. I left around 6:00 and locked my door. When I came back the next morning, the Reese's gone, and there were crumbs on the desk. The janitor who had stolen them had not only stolen them but had sat down at my desk to eat them...and then didn't clean up the mess. Classy. So as I am wont to do, I loudly made my rounds to the other teachers and found out that other people had had various things stolen including money, and no one had spoken up about it. I raised a huge fuss, an investigation ensued, and the janitorial company was fired.
The best part of the whole deal was that the vice principal (this was before she got a note in her mailbox telling her that she was fired and her nephew jumped the principal's nephew, and we had to pull them off of each other) came to my door and gave me a dollar to pay me back for my missing Reese's. Sweet Victory.
Seeing all these Reese's reminded me of one day at little ol' Delaware Valley. Delaware Valley Charter was the first school where I taught in Philadelphia. Now this school had a million problems from the fact that I had to buy my own paper after two reams a month (try copying 130 five page tests on two reams a month) to firing people by putting notes in their mailboxes (including the vice principal).
Just one of these problems was the janitorial staff. The school hired some cheap company to come in at night and sweep the floors, empty the trash and so on. About two thirds of the way through the year, I was noticing that my trash was rarely emptied in the mornings and my floor wasn't anywhere near clean (including the strip in the middle that was just concrete because my classroom was actually two nursing home rooms combined and they never bothered to replace the floor where the middle wall was torn down). I think at that point I had noticed that a few little things had gone missing as well.
So I decided to do an experiment. One of the big fundraisers for almost every club at DVC was selling candy bars. I had purchased a few Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from someone, so I decided to leave the package out on my desk after school. I left around 6:00 and locked my door. When I came back the next morning, the Reese's gone, and there were crumbs on the desk. The janitor who had stolen them had not only stolen them but had sat down at my desk to eat them...and then didn't clean up the mess. Classy. So as I am wont to do, I loudly made my rounds to the other teachers and found out that other people had had various things stolen including money, and no one had spoken up about it. I raised a huge fuss, an investigation ensued, and the janitorial company was fired.
The best part of the whole deal was that the vice principal (this was before she got a note in her mailbox telling her that she was fired and her nephew jumped the principal's nephew, and we had to pull them off of each other) came to my door and gave me a dollar to pay me back for my missing Reese's. Sweet Victory.
**One caveat. I don't publicly share the majority of my stories about my ridiculous experiences at DVC out of respect for the students. A lot of my students worked really hard and succeeded, no thanks to the Philadelphia school system and the people in charge.
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