Practical wisdom

8 students – 1 who’s home sick =
7 students – 1 with a doctor’s appointment =
6 students – 4 in science =
2 students – 2 in music = 0 students for me to teach! = 2 hours of uninterrupted free time!

Something happened today that has never happened to me before: because of random schedule changes (with special pullouts like music, speech, etc), I had a two hour period of time without kids at the end of the day. Two precious, uninterrupted hours all to myself.... As I started to realize what was happening, I quickly ran through a list of all the things I could do in two hours:
I could organize the piles of junk on my desk, or file student work that's been piling up, or I could go make copies and get homework packets ready for next week, or I could make learning materials for next week's centers, or I could surf the net, or, or, or... My mind was racing so fast; I was so panicked with excitement that it took me a while to realize that my most pressing concern was to get to the bathroom before I wet myself.

It's like what my college professor always said. "If you want to be a teacher, you must have two things: a big basement [to store all that teacher stuff] and a big bladder". Now that is wisdom to live by!