I scare the principal. I know fear. I can see it in his eyes. He sees me and wonders what classroom of the school have I destroyed today? Halloween last year was the last time I was pretty sure I was going to be banned from entering classrooms anymore. Until today.

It all started in Spain. Seeing a whole bunch of work by Antonio Gaudi, I was inspired. I thought Gaudi was more artist than architect. I decided to take on a huge mosiac project with the kids. I bought real tile at Home Depot, smashed it up with a hammer and brought it in. The kids were fascinated and thrilled to be doing real mosiac (not those crappy paper mosiacs or plastic jewel mosiac.) I tell you, they were just as passionate about it as I was because they willingly gave up their recess the day we laid the tile. One child gave an oral report on Gaudi the next day.

We were supposed to grout it today and the kids have eagerly waited an entire week to grout. However, you know the craft mosiac grout you buy at Michael’s? NO WHERE TO BE FOUND. I tried 5 craft and hobby stores. An hour before I was supposed to teach I realized I had run out of time to find it. So I went to Home Depot and bought the real grout. The kind that’s in your bathroom. I was scared. Grout is already hard enough to work with. But the real stuff in the hands of 24 ten year olds? It strikes fear in my heart just typing that.

As it turns out, my fear was more than warranted. An hour into the project, the desks were flooded and the entire room was grouted except the celing. Although I suspect if I checked, someone probably got grout there too. Did I mention this was REAL grout? So the desks, chairs, floors, door handles, sinks, countertops and the children were grouted. They had grout in their hair, on their clothes and in their shoes. The teacher had to call the janitor in because the grout stopped up the sink. But did that slow the kids down? Oh no it did not.

And in the middle of 24 grouted kids, desks, chairs, floors, door handles, sinks, and countertops, in walks the principal. It’s like the dude has some sort of destruction radar. He opens the door, takes two steps in, sees the mess and sees me, raises his arms in the air, like something might get on him and says “Uhhhh, I think I’ll come back later.”