There are the inevitable time interruptions – assemblies honoring students who did well the previous marking period; meetings with students prior to Carnival, talking about safety issues; classes where we work on something else because the power is out and we can’t see well enough to tile. 
My favorite “interruption” was the ketchup contest. A major manufacturer of ketchup holds a yearly design competition, where students draw designs for the ketchup packets. One winner for each grade is selected, and that winner wins $1,000 cash; the teacher gets $1,000 for art supplies; and the school cafeteria gets $1,000 worth of ketchup products (which just cracked me up).My students enjoyed this break, where we spent several weeks designing and coloring ketchup packets on the contest entry forms. We had Romeo offering Juliet a ketchup bottle. Scuba divers with ketchup bottle tanks. Ketchup bottles relaxing in hammocks on the beach. Ketchup slices sliding into ketchup bottles. On and on. The designs were amusing and clever and well rendered, and we had fun.
Alas, we didn’t win. Anything. Not even “Honorable Mention.” My students were very disappointed, but it was a good opportunity to talk about art for arts sake, not for winning; that I had never won an art contest, but I usually sold my artwork (for more than the winner’s prize); that being “bought” can be more rewarding than winning; and that our mural was going to make them famous as student artists.
And then we went back to working on the mural.
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