My kitchen table is currently buried under a mountain of orange cardstock, three half-eaten granola bars, and a suspiciously sticky tub of yellow slime that my four-year-old, Mia, insists is “liquid gold for the diggers.” We are knee-deep in planning my oldest son Leo’s 12th birthday, and if there is one thing I have learned…
Twenty-two sticky hands. That is my daily reality in room 204. I throw at least six classroom parties every single school year here in Houston, and by May, my patience is thinner than single-ply school toilet paper. The Texas humidity is already making the kids absolutely feral. Last spring, I had to organize a builder-themed…
March 14th, 2022. Houston humidity was already hitting 85%. I had seventeen 10-year-olds staring at me, practically vibrating with the chaotic energy that only blue vanilla frosting can create. As a 4th and 5th-grade teacher who throws at least six classroom parties a year, I thought I had everything under control. I was wrong. I…
Thirty-four years of teaching in the Houston Independent School District has taught me two things: children are unpredictable, and a good balloon can hide a multitude of classroom sins. Last March, specifically on Friday the 14th right before Spring Break, I found myself staring at a pack of farm balloons for adults that I had…
I was scraping black food coloring off my white quartz countertops at 2 AM on a Thursday. My golden retriever, Barnaby, sat judging me from his dog bed in the corner. This was the chaotic reality of helping my best friend Becca plan her son Leo’s 4th birthday. The current Austin inflation rate meant booking…
My living room looked like a Snorlax had used it as a wrestling ring. Wrapping paper shreds were stuck to the ceiling fan, and I found a half-eaten piece of cake inside my favorite sneaker. It was March 14, 2024, and Leo had just turned 12. The party was a hit, but the “Dad, are…
My living room looked like a pixelated crime scene on March 15, 2025. Twenty-one boys, all aged 11, were currently “mining” for coal in my backyard, which actually meant they were hacking away at some spray-painted charcoal briquettes I had hidden in a sandbox. My son, Leo, was the ringleader. I stood there with my…
Monica called me on a Tuesday in a panic: “What do you even do for an 11-year-old boy? A clown is insulting, but an escape room for 14 kids is four hundred dollars.” She wasn’t wrong. Eleven is that weird age where they want to act like teenagers, but they still want to sprint across…
The final bell rang at 2:45 PM. My classroom floor was a sea of blue, green, and red rubber. Room 204 smelled faintly of floor wax, dry erase markers, and stale apple juice. Fourteen first-graders stared at me with absolute feral intensity. We were celebrating three birthdays and an entire month of green-light behavior, and…
Thirty parents stood in my backyard last November, clutching “mocktails” in blue plastic cups while sweating through their shirts in the 90-degree Houston humidity. We were there for my nephew Leo’s fourth birthday, but if you looked at the faces of the grown-ups, you’d think they were at a high-stakes sporting event. They weren’t watching…
