How sick?

I'm finally on Spring Break. It officially started on Friday at 3:01pm, but it feels like it started today. Why? I was sick almost all week. I would wake up feeling ok, slight cough and little runny nose, and head into work. I'd make it through until 3:30 before packing up to head home. On the ride home I'd feel achy, before laying down for 11-12 hours. The next day I'd repeat the process. I was far better Thursday evening and Friday was 1,000x better but still congested. All of that got me thinking. I went it for a few reasons. First, it is a pain to write sub plans. By the time I would have had them written I would have lost some of that much needed sleep time. While I have the skeleton for my sub plans set, it still takes time to adjust. That is particularly so when you utilize technology heavily like I do (plus we were doing a tech project). Second, I feel like I will provide better instruction than a sub regardless of my level of health. 10% of me is better than 100% of a sub, which is not to knock subs (they have a tough job, but I know my kids and know our instructional goals). If I were in another profession would I make the same decision? If I were in marketing or advertising or some other area of business, would I make the same choice? I doubt I do. While I have a tremendous amount of loyalty I doubt I'd decide to buck up and head in.

Weirdest, Bar None

Today was the oddest day of my short teaching career, including student teaching. The rain in the morning started to throw us off, as did having a sub for one of my teammates. But those shouldn't be that big of a deal. Perhaps it was the absence of some kids, while others had returned from near week long sickness. Whatever it was, I hope it is gone on Monday. I fear that it won't be because of Halloween, and our fall celebration on Friday. But we talked about it before leaving: we aren't taking kids to the party who haven't been focused all week. We'll have our fun, but we need to do the work to earn it.

Next week we've got an assessment on explorers, and a new unit on the colonies. Additionally I am starting a writing unit delving into essays. Reading the Units of Study book on essays has me excited to get started. I think it will be fun, meaningful and relevant to the kids.

As an aside, the presentations/projects I received today were great. Really good stuff.