the human petri dish

I love my job. I love teaching children about music. Leading them to new experiences with singing, playing instruments, and epiphany's while listening to great works...it is thrilling and soul feeding.

However, when a teacher is sick, particularly this teacher 5 days away from the big holiday concert, there is no respite. For teachers, taking the time to obtain a substitute and having to write lessons plans when ill makes the illness all that much worse.

Today just happened to be one of those days. I was really lucky that my kids were dreams and focused really hard while I struggled with a negative reaction to my cold/cough remedy and still had the cold....gosh, I'm lucky.

It's funny. In the 28 months I worked away from a school environment, I was sick one time. Literally, three weeks before I left San Diego, I was sick for three days, one time. Alas, working in the human petri dish that is any school and you are bound to contract all kinds of lovely things. Our current school epidemic has run its course through 3rd and 5th grade, both of which I teach! We wash, we sanitize, we drink water, and we use kleenex and lysol, but what are we to do, it is part of the joy of our jobs. No, really, the red noses and bleery eyes of children with colds just make them all that more endearing. And, being the teacher of elementary children, they are incredibly empathetic to their sick teachers.

So yes, it is frustrating going to school sick and fighting through to be engaging, inspiring, and caring when all you want to do is go under the covers, but seeing the smiling faces and hearing them sing their hearts out made it worth it.