This could be really interesting to read in a couple of days when the fever has disappeared, but I wanted to talk about the feelings and questions I have in the midst of this, so hear goes.  I am a teacher.  I stayed at school the entire day Friday, feeling achy and cold, but took some Tylenol a couple of times and it was manageable.  It was a particularly busy day which started with choir before school and then 5 classes in a row, interrupted only by lunch duty and a quickly thrown down lunch (not thrown UP, thank goodness),  much of which didn’t taste good.  I left right at the end of the day, went home and slept until dinner, then back to sleep until 9:00 this morning.  And the only thought I have?  I have to get better by Monday.

See, the silly thing in teaching is that you’re given a generous number of sick days for the year, but I’ll be honest, and I’m sure my fellow teachers will agree, it’s more trouble to have to do lesson plans for a sub than it is to come in sick.  Do other professions do this?  Are other professionals expected to prepare their days work for someone else to do in their place while they’re gone?  Or do they just take a day off and do it when they get back?  Right there is the difference between business and education.  This is not college where the prof cancels the class and the students go party.  While I CAN hand off 125 kids per day to another person, I can’t just do it and hope for the best.  There are details.  Where do I keep this and that?  There are those kids to keep an eye on.  How do kids walk in my room? How do they get to their personal space?  So, not only do I have to write lesson plans, but all of the procedures that go with said lesson plans.

You know, I would love to say my kids behave beautifully when I’m gone, but let’s be real.  Did you behave for a sub?  I did, but I was a nerd.  I know my kids will take advantage of any weak minded soul who steps in my room.  At least they stand a chance if I have procedures in place, in writing that they can refer to that my kids are familiar with.  And then there’s the day after.  I always check out what the substitute writes to me and also ask the kids what they thought.  Invariably it’s a young teacher and they say something like, “Great lesson plans.  I had a great day!  Thanks for asking for me!”  Then my kids tell me, “They let so-and-so get away with this.  We were awful.  Everybody talked while he/she was teaching.  So-and-so was crawling around the room and they didn’t do anything about it, they had no control”.  They know.  So why doesn’t the adult know?

Back to those sick days.  I do use them when I absolutely have no choice, like when I’ve taken up residence in the bathroom or I’m so feverish I can’t remember what I did an hour ago.  That kind of sick makes it even more fun to get plans together.  I have actually gone to school to gather materials, I have labeled instruments in case my sub isn’t a music person and put pictures in my plans.  In the old days, I just pulled out a bunch of music DVD’s that were grade level appropriate and relaxed.  I can’t do that nowadays.  First, there is no such thing as a DVD player in my room, everything is connected by computer to a short throw projector. I would have to leave them my CD/DVD player that attaches to my computer and find a computer somewhere for them to use because they can’t use mine.  Then I would have to give them instructions as to how to turn everything on to connect them.  Not worth it. And then we wonder why teachers all get sick right after school is out.  Hmmmm….

Some believe that teachers eventually build up an immunity to all of the germs in their classroom. I’m starting not to believe that.  I think the additional stress and workload that most teachers have is sabotaging this so-called immunity and not all the vitamin C and echinacea in the world can override that.  I’ve seen many veteran teachers taken down by a lot of stuff in the last few years, and we’re not talking about the common cold.  Shoot, a cold is sometimes the norm.  If I took a day off every time I had a cold….

So, at this moment, I have built up @44 sick days.  In teacher speak, that’s about two months.  And while someone in another profession wouldn’t think twice about taking one on Monday, so far, my plan is to sleep as much as I can this weekend and load up on Tylenol on Monday as I need to.  If it gets really bad, I’ll zip into an Urgent Care, even though it’s more expensive only because my doctor’s business hours are the same as mine. And while they may be able to hand off patients to someone else or change an appointment if they’re sick, I can’t do that.  And I don’t want to do lesson plans.  So, pray for healing by Monday because I’m goin’ in!