Sick Day

Alas I have lasted a good amount of winter without getting sick.  I make my kids go out into the hallway to blow their noses and I pass the hand sanitizer around constantly.  Somehow (and I'm guessing picking up snotty Kleenexes off the floor had something to do with it) I got "the bug".  The one that all my students have that I have been shielding myself against since October.  Next year I think I'll wear a surgical mask and teach.

At 5am I got out of bed and prepared my sub plans.  Let me start off by saying God bless the substitute teacher.  What a job.  Seriously I've never subbed and I don't know if I could do it.  I remember how we treated our subs when I was in high school.  I feel so guilty about taking a day for sickness because I know what my little monsters are capable of and I don't wish it upon everyone.  I mean, they already think I'm the devil (see picture to the right) so I have instilled some fear in them.  But with a sub?  Yikes.  I made it specifically clear in my plans to write up anyone who (s)he felt was out of line and asked that another teacher would come in during a specific hour to make sure that this class (snotty tissue class) wasn't eating her alive and the kids weren't swinging from the heating pipes on the ceiling (this would be the same class that melted chocolate all over my radiators...they're such treats).

I have had some off the wall subs in my day.  I get back to school and I don't know WHAT to expect.  I remember my first year teaching I returned from a personal day to a note in my mailbox signed by all 150 of my students asking me to not have the woman who subbed for me the previous day ever again take over my classroom.  She (an elderly woman) was talking with them about drugs and sex and the kids found it oh so uncomfortable.  I've had subs leave me a "rating sheet" of how good they thought my lesson plans were.  I've had subs leave me Jehovah's Wittiness tracks all through my desk and even hand them out to my kids.  I once left a film for the kids to watch about Day of the Dead.  Yea it was a cartoon, and yea it was a little campy but I had Dave Matthews Tickets that day and I wasn't going to go to school.  She left me a note telling me how SHE felt that the movie had nothing to do with my subject area and told me if I ever wanted suggestions to ask her.  Yea. Whatever.

So please pray that my classroom is in one piece when I return from my fog of cold medicine and cough drops.  Hopefully no one was hurt because I took a sick day.