Poor guy...lucky me...

I told you awhile back that I was going to be working with a student teacher this semester. I was both excited and apprehensive as I have never done this before. I am so attached to my kids this year, though, that I wasn't willing to give them all up. I did manage to talk my good friend and department chair into splitting the day with me. Then neither of us has to give up all our kids, and he has the benefit of working with two different teachers.

For the most part, things are going pretty well. We've had some ups and downs, but things are turning around and getting better. I see some potential in him, and I'm hoping that he just continues to get better.

While he's been doing okay, I've been...well, bored. I go to school for a whole day, but I only teach two classes. Last semester I was teaching six classes a day and didn't have a prep. Now I have a prep and the student teacher is teaching my freshmen in the afternoon. I go to school, teach seniors first hour, have an hour off for my prep period, teach third hour, and then sit back and let the student teacher take over with my freshmen for the rest of the afternoon.

Life is boring.

I miss my kids.

My seniors don't know what to make of me. When they take a quiz or do an assignment, it's graded and in the computer by the end of the day, and no later than the next day. Typically, it would take me at least four or five days on average to do that. Now, it's like instantaneous feedback.

I have so much energy, and I just want to talk to them. Normally, I have an entire day to work out all that energy and 150 kids who "share the wealth" of my enthusiasm. Now I've got 55 seniors. At 7:30 in the morning, I think I'm too much for them to handle!

On the upside, I am bonding really well with my seniors. On the downside, I get bored in the afternoon. So bored, in fact, that I have been hanging out in the library shelving books and looking up book titles for the library secretary.

I've even talked the librarian into teaching me how to check out books to kids! I get to be a pretend librarian and it's a lot of fun! Honestly, it's the only thing preventing me from repeatedly banging my head against the brick walls of the school...

Yeah, that's how bored I am.

Anyway, back to my story.

On Monday, at the beginning of fourth hour, I was sitting at my computer (entering grades for the quiz my third hour seniors had just taken) and waiting for class to start. The student teacher is on his own for most of the day, but I pop in periodically to check out what's going on, and make sure nobody's killed anyone else. Plus, I love my kids and I just plain miss 'em, okay?

Fourth hour started, and the student teacher was not as organized as I would have liked to see. As a result, my normally well behaved freshmen were a little squirrely. I thought I would hang out for awhile to make sure things got turned around, and I'm really glad I did.

About 15 minutes after class started, a kid was reading out loud from Romeo and Juliet when the student teacher just stood up and walked out of the room. He muttered something about being back in a minute, and then took off.

I thought it was odd, but went to the front of the room, picked up a copy of the play, and asked a kid what page we were on. I took over, and things were going okay. He came back a few minutes later and tried to take over again. He was looking sweaty and flushed and pale...I figured he had just been sick, so I told him to have a seat, I would take handle it.

I'm glad I did that because he left twice more before class got over.

Poor guy. He was barely hanging on. I told him to just go home and get some rest. He was so grateful, I felt almost bad. He thinks I was doing him a huge favor, but selfishly I was thrilled for the chance to hang out with my freshmen again!

The rest of the afternoon flew by! I had a BLAST!! And it didn't hurt that my kids told me they missed me, and were glad to have the chance to hang out with me again. Plus, they were awesome! I haven't lost my classroom management skills in my period of sloth!

I texted the student teacher Monday night at about 7 to see how he was doing. He said he felt like death warmed over, apologized, and said he would send me sub plans for Tuesday as he didn't think he'd be well enough to be in school.

Poor guy...lucky me...