Ahh, November 1st

When our absentee rate also includes "sick at home from too much candy" and "got sick at school from too much candy."
My district is currently implementing a newly adopted Social Studies program. This adoption, supposedly, came with a projector and laptop for each teacher--"given" to us. The program, in fact, is built around the use of such technology. Of course, life is never that simple in public education, and our projectors and computers are being withheld because they, in the opinion of the Sacramento legislature, constitute a bribe and are unfair to the smaller textbook companies. This may be (okay, it is) true, but the adoption offers were checked out by Sacramento already, and the books have been bought and paid for-- leaving us with some very expensive books made to work with software that we cannot access.
So, being public school teachers, we have commandeered what we need from other places, cobbled it together with things brought from our own homes, and made-it-work. The best bit of this is that it forces my entire team to share and communicate--because we are all using the same system, we tend to explain why we want it each day. And then, of course, borrow from each other with complete aplomb.
That's public school for you. Take what you get, invest your own time (and money...), and voila! magic!