Miss Salt, did you ever have a crush on your teacher?

I finished my last day of teaching until January 8th. I must say, this Tuesday was a bit of a hectic day of teaching, but I finished the day just absolutely loving my job. Here's a little of what happened:

The morning started off a little crazy. I was scheduled to teach a microscope lab for the first two blocks of the day to one of my grade 8 classes. This was the microscope lab that I had prepared to teach last week, but had to delay because the kids knew absolutely nothing about microscopes and it would have been too much of a gong show. I had arranged it with my sponsor teacher last week that he would collect all of the materials for the lab, including microscopes, slides, eye droppers and other materials, and I would set everything up before class began. When I arrived at school in the morning, 40 minutes early like he had suggested, the classroom was locked and my teacher was no where to be found. I tried not to start getting flustered, but I was definitely a little choked. To pass some time, I waited in line for the photocopier and made some copies of the lab handout I had created. When my teacher finally arrived (a good ten minutes before class was supposed to start) he had not yet picked up any of the microscopes, so I had to run around the school to quickly try and find enough for our class. While I ran around getting more and more frustrated cause I just couldn't find the materials, my teacher started off the first block by marking math homework with the students. Because of this, I was able to spend some time actually setting up the lab.

After taking a few minutes to let go of my frustration and actually get excited about teaching, I was set up and ready to go. After this, the lab went incredibly well. I had the kids looking at letters, hairs and plant cells under the microscope. We stained things with methylene blue. Clearly it was nothing too advanced, though you might not have guessed that had you actually seen some of these kids attempt to work a micrscope. It was pretty funny.

I taught this same lab for a different group of grade 8's in the third and fourth blocks of the day (between recess and lunch) and that went equally as well. I must say, it's quite exciting to teach for hours - I love it!

In the fifth block of the day I had the first group of grade 8's again and they had time to finish their lab and work on their math questions. Near the end of the block my sponsor teacher left to set up a project for a meeting he had after school. I love getting the chance to run the class on my own, and this was definitely no exception. For the most part, my students were incredibly well-behaved and actually did their work. There was one table group of six guys that kept calling me over to ask science questions. Once they got all of the science out of their system, they moved on to asking me other questions. Definitely the highlight of my day was when they called me over and one of the guys leaned over his desk to nudge another guy. He kept saying, "Dude, just ask her, just ask her. C'mon ask her. Just ask..." My curiosity overcame me and instead of walking away, I waited to see what the question would actually be. They'd been fairly on-topic all day, so I didn't figure it would be too bad. That's when I heard it:

"Miss Salt, did you ever have a crush on your teacher?"

I tried so hard not to burst out laughing. I think I giggled a bit to myself and tried to just slough it off, but it was probably the funniest thing I'd heard all semester. Heck, if my grade 8 boys have a crush on me, maybe they'll actually pay attention in class and I won't have to discipline them as much. This can be a good thing, right? If anything, I find it incredibly funny. I don't know how I didn't end up snorting for 5 mins, but apparently I can keep my composure when it's absolutely necessary.

I can't wait to go back to my school in January. Clearly I have some of the most ridiculous kids in the world and I love it!