Bite me.

This is my last week as an actuarial analyst. Friday will be my last day working on pension valuation and administration. I will leave behind the world of the PBGC Form 5500, service cost roll forwards, and Qualified Domestic Relations Order calculations. I will instead enter a world of lesson plans, prom committees, and children who bite their teachers.

Today I skipped work (at the job who still provides my medical benefits) so that I could go to training for Crisis Prevention for Milwaukee Public Schools. It's a two day course, so I'll be skipping work tomorrow too (at the job that actually pays me). Part of the training feels silly. For example, we have to memorize these four stages of crisis, verbatim. Don't say that stage one is "stress" because the correct answer is "anxiety".

Anyway, the bookwork is pretty dumb, however I think that the practical part of the lesson will be useful. We do a good deal of role playing. We pretend that we're students refusing to do homework, or who punch teachers, or who threaten the teachers' cats. It's good to be able to practice responses to things that we had never considered possible. The student-teacher verbal interactions took place during the morning. But the real fun was the afternoon.

After lunch we practiced techniques to escape various holds that students may try on us. We'll do more tomorrow, but today we covered Wrist Grabs, Hair Pulling, Choking, and Biting. That's right - biting! Are students really going to bite me? I didn't sign up for biting students. I just want to teach them to solve systems of equations. With two variables. I want their teeth nowhere near my skin. Not just because teeth hurt, but because some of them have awful dental hygiene. And some of them don't have all of their teeth. They have a "grill". That's has to cause more damage than normal incisors. And if it's gold, couldn't I end up with gold poisoning in my blood? I hope my medical coverage will handle gold . This medical coverage doesn't begin until November. I have two months during which I can't let any students bite me.