New Athenian Academy

“Next year this will not happen.  Next year if I hear so much as a sniffle, I’m not letting any of them into the classroom without a note from the surgeon general.  Next year I will teach in a mask.  Next year we will sterilize all scissors, pencils, and rulers.  And if they raise their hands for help, they’d better be wearing gloves.”

I feel your pain Mr. Done.  I too abhor fall and winter in the classroom, because I know we will all get sick.  It doesn’t matter how many precautions you take.  How many times you sterilize the desks and doorhandles.  How many boxes of Kleenexes you buy.  How many times you wash your hands during the day.  You will get sick.  At some point, a majority of the class will be hacking or staring off into space because their head hurts too much.

I am not immune to the sickness.  Whoever told me that teachers never get sick because their immune system builds up being around children, never told me long that would take.  I think it’s a myth.  I get sick every year, just like all my students.  Usually taking extra precautions, I can hold off the germs during the first wave.  But by the second wave, I feel that tickle in the back of my throat.  I feel the build up of mucus in my sinuses.  I feel the fuzziness of the brain begin.  I am getting sick.

Hopefully it will be a mild head cold.  I can take those.   I can still teach, although I am sure my lectures get a little more spirally than usual.

But goodness gracious, if it’s strep throat, we’re all in trouble.  I have been getting strep throat almost every year since my junior year in high school.  I have had it so often, that one day into it, I just know.  If it weren’t for the need for prescription drugs, I won’t even have to go to the doctor.  By alas, I must go and endure the poking and prodding until the doctor finally agrees with me that I have strep throat.

Then I can suffer through two more days before I completely lose the ability talk, swallow, or breathe without grimacing in pain.  But at that point, I have to be absent for a few days.  And that leads to the issue of sub plans.

Finally I get better and return to school just in time to experience more coughing and hacking disrupting my lectures.  Oh how I love the fall and winter in Indiana.

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