Days off

I pride myself in almost never taking a day off. In six years of teaching, I've never used my emergency sub plans; even when I had major emergency eye surgery, I came in during the morning beforehand and got my shit together for the next week. This is why the next few weeks will be very unusual for me. At the beginning of this month, I took two days off to go to a conference that my school sent me to. On Friday, I'm taking a Personal Day to go to a wedding in Michigan. And the week after, I'll be gone for four days as I travel to Nashville to speak at the National Council of Teachers of English.

As for the wedding, I probably could have squeezed in a late-afternoon flight and a late-night arrival, but after realizing that it's the Friday of our Homecoming Week, and that the school has a major pep rally planned, as well as lots of other activities throughout the day, I decided that probably not much learning will occur that day anyway. It will be a day that the marching band will go down the halls randomly to drum up excitement. It will be a day of cheering and face painting. Now, I'm usually all about this stuff, and I'll especially miss all the alum who come to visit that day, but it's also a good day to miss if a teacher has to miss - a day of lots of stress, water balloons, food fights, and not much in the way of academics. I'm taking my first personal day in a few years to take a 12:29 flight and get to Detroit before dinner so I don't have to worry about driving around in my rental car in the dark.

Next week will be even crazier. I leave for Nashville on Thursday the 16th (oops, and still no dog sitter) and will be arriving back in Baltimore late on Monday the 20th. I think the only other time in my career when I've missed four days or more is when I had my surgery three years ago, but I'm not even sure if I missed that much then. My sophomores will be watching The Crucible and answering a bunch of questions that I hope will materialize out of thin air by then. As for my Juniors, I'm not sure. We're about to start reading a book about Viet Nam, and I had them - on a recent quiz - rate their personal knowledge about the Viet Nam War. Almost every kid rated themselves a "3" or below, so I should probably provide some background information on the war before we begin. Since they're going to be without me for four days, perhaps showing a film might be a good idea - but it has to be something school appropriate, and I just don't have much knowledge about Viet Nam films. It might be better to assemble a packet of information and some questions to answer. That's a lot of work.

At the same time, I'm taking a bunch of kids tomorrow on a field trip, and that's a ton of work and stress. Grades are due on Monday and we haven't yet been given bubble sheets. The kids are pretty crazy this week and I had to go next door today to a class with a sub and harangue kids for playing cards, talking on cell phones, and in general being dopes; the teacher is out on maternity leave and the substitutes we have been given are not competent. School is just, in general, a tough place to be right now. I don't mean to get down, and I try my best to stay optimistic, but... that is all I'll say about that...