Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Pretty Much the Funniest Thing I've Heard All Year
"We Brits like to laugh at ourselves. By 'laugh' I mean 'conquer.' And by 'ourselves' I mean 'everyone else.'"
Saturday, May 03, 2008
When Teachers Get Sick...
So Tuesday I started getting sniffly and sneezy during school, and when I got home things progressed from bad to worse. Nonetheless, I persevered and worked on cleaning my room and doing laundry until I headed for bed. In the night, there was no more persevering. I was sick, sick, sick.
I hate it when I have to call in sick.
The biggest pain is that I have to think up creative things for my students to do while I'm not there - things that can be overseen by our longsuffering headmaster or his longsuffering wife. (We do not have a substitute teacher system for these occasions, you see...) And when one is sick, one is not inclined to much creativity. I was unusually sick, what's more, and could hardly bear the thought of getting out of bed to access my school materials across the room. And that's only 4 steps or so. Oy vay. But time was ticking, there were only about 10 minutes left before school would start, and I neeeeeded to get those lesson plans in. So up I got, and retrieved the materials. I sent in instructions for silent reading, picture drawing (oy vay), and such, and collapsed back onto my pillow. OY VAY I was sick! (Why do I love talking about how sick I was when nobody really wants to know? Typical human self-centeredness, I suppose. But hey, I was reallllly sick.)
That first day I could function about zero. I just slept and listened to the radio. At one point I flipped the radio on and heard this: "When teachers are sick, their students suffer. They sit in school getting dumber by the minute while their teachers are home doing nothing. It's totally evil when teachers get sick. How dare they." Okay, that wasn't it exactly, but it DID talk about how it hurts the students when teachers get sick. I was WRACKED with GUILT. I tried to stand and hobble to my car, but fell down in a dead faint by the door. When I came to, I went back to bed. Oh my word, what is my problem? That wasn't true either. The only true part was a tad bit of guilt. Anyway, it was some health care commercial or something... As if I could have avoided the flu if I'd had a blue cross blue shield card in my wallet...
By day 2 I could actually check email and such, and what I found warmed the cockles of my heart. An email from one of my girls was full of well-wishing and advice ("Drink lots of fluids and get lots of rest. I don't know why, but that's what my Dad tells me when I'm sick"). Awwww! And then there was a priceless text from one of my boys, "This school is dysfunctional without you." In the evening I got a book report turned in via email, and the boy's admonishment was "If you don't watch The Office tonight, don't even bother coming in tomorrow." Haha! I giggled, and refused to leave my bed even for him...
And I DID bother coming in the next day. I was so relieved and happy to be driving to school again! No more commanding my students to engage in semi-pointless activities while they awaited my return... I had at my side a trusty glass of ginger ale as I drove. I couldn't find a closed lid container, so it was a wide glass. But all was well, it was a smooth ride. Until the last stretch, that is. I hit the brakes, and my cell phone, which was resting on the console (I just learned that word in recent years, by the way), went "sliiiiide, sploop!" RIGHT INTO THE GLASS! Oh my word. I fetched it out with great rapidity, and then just kept giggling as I dried it off with Dunkin Donuts napkins (of which I have about 4000 - why do they all look at me in the drive-though and determine that I look like a girl who needs at least 4 napkins with my every single order?!) and tried to avoid hitting other cars. The phone seemed to work alright after that, but now it's having issues recharging, so it will only work when actually plugged in. Sigh. Hopefully that will right itself when it gets sufficiently dried off.
Then I got to school, where my students cheered at my return (except for a couple of 7th grade boys who boooed affectionately) in assembly. I found get well and welcome back cards as well as small gifts (three black jelly beans wrapped in a napkin) on my desk. I was practically giddy in Algebra, it was so good to be back amongst them. It took us a little while to get started, since they wanted to fill me in on things that had happened in my absence, and I had to tell them (because they definitely wanted to know) how very, very sick I had been.
I hate it when I have to call in sick.
The biggest pain is that I have to think up creative things for my students to do while I'm not there - things that can be overseen by our longsuffering headmaster or his longsuffering wife. (We do not have a substitute teacher system for these occasions, you see...) And when one is sick, one is not inclined to much creativity. I was unusually sick, what's more, and could hardly bear the thought of getting out of bed to access my school materials across the room. And that's only 4 steps or so. Oy vay. But time was ticking, there were only about 10 minutes left before school would start, and I neeeeeded to get those lesson plans in. So up I got, and retrieved the materials. I sent in instructions for silent reading, picture drawing (oy vay), and such, and collapsed back onto my pillow. OY VAY I was sick! (Why do I love talking about how sick I was when nobody really wants to know? Typical human self-centeredness, I suppose. But hey, I was reallllly sick.)
That first day I could function about zero. I just slept and listened to the radio. At one point I flipped the radio on and heard this: "When teachers are sick, their students suffer. They sit in school getting dumber by the minute while their teachers are home doing nothing. It's totally evil when teachers get sick. How dare they." Okay, that wasn't it exactly, but it DID talk about how it hurts the students when teachers get sick. I was WRACKED with GUILT. I tried to stand and hobble to my car, but fell down in a dead faint by the door. When I came to, I went back to bed. Oh my word, what is my problem? That wasn't true either. The only true part was a tad bit of guilt. Anyway, it was some health care commercial or something... As if I could have avoided the flu if I'd had a blue cross blue shield card in my wallet...
By day 2 I could actually check email and such, and what I found warmed the cockles of my heart. An email from one of my girls was full of well-wishing and advice ("Drink lots of fluids and get lots of rest. I don't know why, but that's what my Dad tells me when I'm sick"). Awwww! And then there was a priceless text from one of my boys, "This school is dysfunctional without you." In the evening I got a book report turned in via email, and the boy's admonishment was "If you don't watch The Office tonight, don't even bother coming in tomorrow." Haha! I giggled, and refused to leave my bed even for him...
And I DID bother coming in the next day. I was so relieved and happy to be driving to school again! No more commanding my students to engage in semi-pointless activities while they awaited my return... I had at my side a trusty glass of ginger ale as I drove. I couldn't find a closed lid container, so it was a wide glass. But all was well, it was a smooth ride. Until the last stretch, that is. I hit the brakes, and my cell phone, which was resting on the console (I just learned that word in recent years, by the way), went "sliiiiide, sploop!" RIGHT INTO THE GLASS! Oh my word. I fetched it out with great rapidity, and then just kept giggling as I dried it off with Dunkin Donuts napkins (of which I have about 4000 - why do they all look at me in the drive-though and determine that I look like a girl who needs at least 4 napkins with my every single order?!) and tried to avoid hitting other cars. The phone seemed to work alright after that, but now it's having issues recharging, so it will only work when actually plugged in. Sigh. Hopefully that will right itself when it gets sufficiently dried off.
Then I got to school, where my students cheered at my return (except for a couple of 7th grade boys who boooed affectionately) in assembly. I found get well and welcome back cards as well as small gifts (three black jelly beans wrapped in a napkin) on my desk. I was practically giddy in Algebra, it was so good to be back amongst them. It took us a little while to get started, since they wanted to fill me in on things that had happened in my absence, and I had to tell them (because they definitely wanted to know) how very, very sick I had been.
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