You want me to do WHAT?

Thank you so much for visiting my blog!

My name is Ingrid Malcolm and I have been teaching for a year and a half. I am a Southern belle that just loves to talk about everything that God has blessed me with! He has blessed me with amazing parents, an incredible husband, fantastic friends and a career that I adore.

I started my journey as a teacher many years ago when I entered college as an education major. Somewhere along the way during my first year I was distracted by the sudden urge to be a crime scene investigator.  I was thrilled to obtain my degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Forensics. I was totally excited about my career path and set forth on CSI adventure of sorts. I assisted our County Medical Examiner with six different autopsies. I needed to see if I really had the stomach for all of the blood and guts.   **Warning...The following story is a bit graphic, so if you do not have the stomach for hearing about a traumatic experience that I had in a morgue, please move on to the next paragraph**   During my last observation, I was standing there thinking about how well I was doing with all of the smells and body parts. I was pretty proud of myself that I had managed not to throw up once around the smell of death. It is pretty distinct I must admit. I was really good at taking notes...I mean, besides observing, that was all I had been doing...until that fateful day when the trusty doctor decided that it was time to take pictures of the deceased. Nothing out of the ordinary....pictures are needed for the autopsy files of course. He tosses his nasty gloves in the biohazard waste bin and grabs his very expensive camera. That is when he realized that he had forgotten to move an organ to the table that he had set up for the pictures. Logically, he did not want to waste another pair of gloves, and since I still had mine on, he asked me to do the honors. He wanted me to pick up the throat of a choking victim and carry it across the morgue and place it neatly on the stand to be photographed. I bet you can just imagine the conversation that followed. It began with my asking, "Are you serious? You want me to do WHAT? You want me to TOUCH that?" With a chesshire grin he said, "Yes, and please don't forget the weenie that he choked on." It took EVERYTHING that I could muster to pick up the tongue and throat of this poor man that just wanted a hot dog for lunch and carry it over to the table. That is when I discovered that dead bodies really, really creep me out. Too many body fluids. 

I decided that I should follow my original passion of working with children...so I took my handy dandy Criminal Justice degree and took a job as a case manager for children who had been removed from their parents' custody by the state. I was a social worker! Yay! I could help families in need! Yeah..not so much. I ended up collecting the urine of meth addicted parents (oh look...more body fluids) and regularly reporting to the court that the parents were not following their case plans. Not really what I had in mind for helping these children. Don't get me wrong...social workers are SAINTS. That life was just not what I had envisioned for myself. Two years burned me out FAST. I figured if I was going to work 70 hours a week and my ultimate goal was to make a difference in a child's life I should follow my original dream of becoming a teacher. So back to teaching I went!

I haven't looked back since! I have NEVER enjoyed working this hard! EVER. I suppose that is how you "know" that you are where you are supposed to be!

I am very excited to begin this journey and I hope that you will be intrigued enough to follow along.

Next up: Life as a Substitute!