Hey Mister!

I hate getting a cold. It's bad enough when you have a regular job, but it really sucks when you're a teacher. You can't go through the motions or just call in sick. That means a wasted instructional day and they're precious enough as it is. So this week has been a bit of a challenge to say the least. Fortunately most of my students got the hint about me not putting up with any crap due to my sickness.

And even more fortunately for me, I had the audio version of the story we were reading. "The Cask of Amontillado" so I could simply play the mp3 file and then stop it to have quick discussions. Today I was planning on just finishing the last few minutes and then doing a catch up day. That changed when my AP showed up unannounced to observe me for most of the period. I instantly switched gears (good thing I had not announced my plan) and actually taught the rest of the story along with the audio file. The class did really well today and we had a good discussion.

Near the end of class while the AP was writing furiously in her notes with her head on her arm a student on the other side of the classroom raised his hand to ask a question and when I walked over to him to see what the problem was, he looked over at the AP (Assistant Principal) and said quite seriously, "Hey Mister, why is that lady sleeping?". With a concealed smile I told him that she was awake and was writing some notes. That seemed to satisfy him and he went back to work. When I saw my AP later in the day I relayed the conversation to her and she got a big grin out of it as she headed off to lunch duty.

It was not until later that I realized that the unspoken question was really "Hey Mister, why are you letting her sleep?" I'm infamous for kicking desks to wake up students who are sleeping. Although I have occasionally let sick students alone. I'm firm not a monster after all and the students are pretty good about knowing the difference between the two.

So far that has been the funniest thing that's happened this year!