03/25/09

This week, I didn't teach 6th grade math on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday because the regular 6th grade teacher, Mr. Thom, was not able to teach. A few years back, he had a Canon copier fall on his neck. I don't recall the story exactly, but because of this, he has a lot of pain from time to time. This week, his neck muscles were inflamed and he could barely get out of bed because it hurt so bad. It also causes a severe headache for him as well.

Whenever a teacher cannot make it to class, we have to send the students home as we do not have any substitute teachers who can step in. Therefore, if the students are sent home, I cannot teach math to them. So, this morning, I was downstairs just hanging around and talking to some of the students who arrived early. Ally and Freud (short for Freuddensky and pronounced like 'Fred') usually come into the school yard early to help Thom get ready for class. Whenever I go in, I see them sitting huddled around a garbage can. Next to them is a bucket of pencils and they are busy sharpening them all before class starts. Mr. Thom gives each student two pencils to start with, then when they are both either dull or broken, they can trade them in for the sharp ones that Freud and Ally prepared earlier that morning.

Well, this morning I noticed Ally hanging around waiting for Mr. Thom, but at a little after 7:00AM it was apparent that he wasn't coming today. I hadn't seen Cara, his wife, to confirm if he was coming or not, but if he isn't there before 7:00AM, then I usually suspect that he isn't coming since he usually shows up at about 6:30AM. Since Mr. Thom hasn't been teaching all week, I think the students were getting bored because Ally asked me if I could give him some extra homework. I was glad to hear him ask, so we went into the classroom so he could grab his workbook. I showed him all of the additional pages in the back of the book and told him that he could work on whatever extra assignments he wanted. He was happy to have something to do and went away with a big grin on his face. Below is a picture of a few 6th grade students. Freud and Ally are the two in front with Freud on the left and Ally on the right.