Teacher of the Year Award, Right Here!

May 5
I've been sick; have I mentioned that?  Missed school for two days, staggered in for two days, took Friday off again, and am still miserable.

When I'm sick, my filter drops a little.  My decision making is somewhat impaired.  My judgement is off.

Which is why, in ONE CLASS PERIOD on Thursday the following three things happened.  I'm telling them not chronologically, but in acending order of failure on my part. Descending?  Whatever.  From bad to worse. 

•  I really really wanted a warm drink.  I decided to send a girl who was done early to make me a pot of coffee in the department office.  I gave her my key, described where the coffee is kept (in the little fridge with everyone's lunches; I'm sure they all wanted a kid pawing through that), tried to describe the proper coffee-to-water ratio, and really, I'm not sure where she got the water.  In the girl's bathroom, I presume. Yick.  On the plus side, she was really thrilled to be given such a big responsibility, and while the coffee was weak, it still qualified as a warm drink, so I was able to tell her how wonderful it was.
• A boy who was also done early (because I was doing a GREAT job at managing the lesson) was sort of following me around aimlessly, being mildly annoying.  I finally said, "You seem really bored.  I guess I should have sent you to make the coffee."  He looked at me blankly and said, "Um, I don't really like coffee."  Which was a pretty polite way for him to remind me that HE'S MORMON.  Yes, I asked the Mormon kid to make me coffee.  Nice.
• And finally...two kids were working on their poster outlining a persuasive paper.  Their thesis was "Child abuse is bad."  I told them, "Okay, I'm going to let you finish this poster, because you started it with the sub and he didn't know, but remember, a persuasive thesis needs to be arguable.  Only an asshole would argue with this."  My only comfort in all this is that a) in no way was I calling my students assholes, and b) nobody else heard.  They were DELIGHTED and kept asking if they could make that the title of their poster, could they say that during their presentation, etc.  I apologized profusely, told them I was really embarrassed, asked them to please not make a big deal about it.  But they really handled it reasonably well, and did not make any huge announcements about my slip in class.  I'm waiting to see how many kids I hear about it from next week though.  And I'm REALLY waiting to see if I hear about it from any parents. 

So I think it was probably all for the best I felt too crummy to go into work the next day.  Who knows WHAT I would have done.  Loaned my car to someone who just got their permit and sent them to buy me a latte?  Led the class in a sing-along of the latest gangsta rap hit?