Update

Tom takes Katie to school every morning and every morning, she has a ton of questions for him. She is such a thinker and wants to know everything about everything. Recently Tom taught her about trees giving off oxygen for us to breathe. She deduced from that that if we cut all the trees down, we won't have oxygen to breathe anymore. She has been very concerned about this ever since she figured that out. Well a couple of weeks ago, the highway department cut down the trees at the split of 321/21/176 and Tom goes through there every morning to take her to school. She thinks the state is trying to kill us now by cutting down the trees. Well this morning, when they passed that spot again, she asked Tom why we can't take all of the oxygen, while we have it, and put it in containers. (She's always thinking.) Tom asked her where would we get the containers to put all the oxygen in. She said "Well we could put it in pickle jars." Tom thought she must get that reasoning from my mom....never throw ANYTHING away cuz you can use it later....even pickle jars to hold oxygen. lol

The latest on Brittanie is that she is now officially less than 2 months away from graduation and I can't wait!!!! Her choir teacher is like a choir nazi and I have had enough. Since she started taking choir this year, he has called me periodically to gripe about Brittanie being out sick. It was never out of concern. He started and finished EVERY call with telling me that his class was very important and that she needs to be there. Brittanie (and most of the Sightler family) is cursed with a bad stomach and at one point during this year it was thought that she had a broken disk in her back. So she has missed alot of school and 99% of them are excused with doctor's excuses. But that doesn't seem to matter to Mr. Johnson. He called me on Valentine's Day to gripe about Brittanie missing his class the day before for the BIG JROTC inspection (after he had griped to another student about her being in JROTC instead of his class that day) and because she was absent on Valentine's Day. Well I promptly told him that I had to take Brittanie to the doctor first thing Valentine's morning because she was throwing up blood from the stress and most of her stress is from Mr. Johnson. Good Friday was the last straw. She took her final in Econ, went to English class, then went to the Army presentation at lunch that her JROTC program sponsored. She is the battalion commander so of course she had to make an appearance out there. They couldn't start the careers movie until 20 people got there, which was 15 minutes into her lunch. The movie was 30 minutes long and there was a lecture afterwards. Brittanie is going career Army so she definitely wanted to see all they had to show her. When the lecture was done, she went and talked to the ROTC guy. When she was done with that, she went on to Biology, which meant that she missed her choir class with Mr. Johnson. ALL of the teachers at her school were told that if a student misses a class or is late to class because they went down there, it is excused. Well he evidently was griping to the choir class about Brittanie missing his class because when she walked into Biology, Mrs. Skinner said "We were just talking about you being in trouble with Mr. Johnson." Some of the people who are in her choir class are also in her Biology class and they were talking about how mad he was at Brittanie for missing his class. Then Mr. Johnson calls Mrs. Skinner's class and asks her to send Brittanie to his class so he can talk to her. So now she is missing a required class to talk to the teacher of an elective class about one missed class! He chewed her out. She said he raised his voice and was glaring at her and just let her have it. He asked her why she didn't miss any of her other classes to go down there to which she responded with "Because those are required classes and this class is just an elective." He didn't like that answer at all. She was getting angrier by the minute and was literally biting her tongue to not respond to him and he asked her if she was grinding her teeth at him. He's lucky she did bite her tongue or it would have gotten really ugly. She doesn't need this stress!!! This is just a choir class. It should have been a simple thing to go in, sing, and forget about it. But instead he has made her and me miserable everytime she misses a class. I told her not to take that class but she loves singing and wanted to do it, so I agreed. I wish I had stuck to my guns and never let her take any classes with him.

Bottom line is, I am done. I talked to her guidance counselor on Good Friday and she told me that Brittanie can't drop the class because it would give her an F because it is too late for an incomplete. She wanted to try to stick it out. But after Good Friday, she doesn't want to stick it out any longer. I bet NO other teacher in the school called a child out of their next class to chew them out for going to the Army thing and missing their class. He is the most unprofessional pain in the butt I have ever encountered in all of the years Brittanie has been in school. Mr. Johnson is also known for grading on emotion. What I mean by that is that if he is mad at you, you don't get an A. Well after what happened, I'm sure she won't get an A. She needs to keep her GPA as high as possible to keep her class rank for the Life Scholarship and her Army ROTC scholarship. I don't want him giving her a bad grade out of spite because she missed his class. I contacted her principal, Dr. Maddox, about this and he asked the assistant principal to talk to me and read to me their stupid rule, which her guidance counselor had already told me about. But I told him that I won't accept that. My child should NOT have to stay in a class with such an unprofessional jerk for a teacher because of a rule. This should be considered a special circumstance because she doesn't want out because it is too hard or any other stupid reason. This is the teacher's fault. He gripes at his students because his choir is dropping in numbers each year and he says they aren't recruiting. Why would you want to get your friends to join that misery? I'm prepared to take this as high as I need to in order to get her out of his class. Well after me telling the assistant principal that his answer was unacceptable and I'm prepared to follow the chain of command all the way till I get her out of that class, he brought Brittanie into his office and talked to her. He told her that she was very articulate and wanted Dr. Maddox to hear her story. Dr. Maddox listened and took LOTS of notes and told her that he is going to do his best to get her out of there. He has to follow the proper procedures.

I have always liked Dr. Maddox and I feel confident that he will do his best to get her out of that class. He didn't make her go to choir today and for that I'm grateful. She has a field trip in Biology and her Biology teacher told them all to get permission not only from their parents but from their other teachers to miss the entire school day to go on this field trip. Well I KNOW choir nazi would never sign to let her go. So I'm going to ask Dr. Maddox to sign the paper for him.

We have never encountered such a thing before. Brittanie took choir from 3rd grade to 8th grade at Grace and her choir teacher was THE BEST!!! (PCC alum....actually got her Master's from PCC) She made choir a joy for everyone who took it and Brittanie LOVED it. Mr. Johnson definitely does not do that for his choir members. Brittanie said her fellow choir members all gripe about him but none of them actually tell someone that can do something about him. But that man messed with the wrong child this time. If you know anything about me, you know that I will never allow anyone to mess with my girls.

So that's the major deal right now. In other news, Brittanie's friend, Jeremy, has asked her to prom. He is a senior at her school too. Each senior is allowed to take one person and that person doesn't have to go to Swansea. So she is still going to take Courtney to prom with her so that she can enjoy prom but this way Brittanie will have a male date. She is thrilled about that. She was worried that rumors were going to start about her and Courtney being a gay couple and that is completely NOT the case. Courtney is so fun and sociable, she doesn't need Brittanie by her side at all. So as far as tickets go, Courtney is her date. But officially, Jeremy is her date. But she will be taking pictures with just Jeremy and then another one with Jeremy, Courtney, William, and Erica. Sounds like they are going to have alot of fun!