The pros and cons of getting a student teacher.

My journey into teaching has finally come full circle.  In January, I will be getting my first student teacher.  I could not be more thrilled.  If I am lucky enough to get a good student teacher, by the fifth week, my life becomes a heavenly euphoria.  I am relegated to do literally nothing - sitting in the teacher's lounge and reading the newspaper.  (I know this for a fact because another teacher at my school currently has a student teacher and every time I go in the faculty room, he is reading the paper.)  The beautiful part of this gig is that after a while I am SUPPOSED to be out of the room - the student teacher people don't want me there.  

Now, I love to teach and I would not want to do anything else, but there might be something I love slightly more: laziness.  For example, I once had a job working for Microsoft, taking orders for something called a "Direct Access Action Pack".  It was a bundle of software for developers to... hold on, hold on, this may be the most boring thing I have ever written on the Blog O' Cheese; but I digress. 

The point of the story is that this "Action Pack" was not exactly highly marketed by the marketing geniuses at MS.  (Why is it that it always takes me 5 attempts to spell the word "genius" correctly?  It's just embarrassing.)  Anyway, I sat with a headset on my head for 3 full years, waiting for people to call and order this thing.  There were times when I sat, staring at a computer screen for a full four hours without taking a single call. I believe the busiest day I ever had was when I took seven calls in four hours. It was a great job for a college student, but an even better job for a natural lazyman like myself.  The task of sitting and doing absolutely nothing for hours at a time was a task I could complete with a smile on my face.  Golly, how I loved that job!

Now, if this student teacher turns out to be a total flake, it is definitely going to be more work than it's worth.  My dreams of napping on the faculty room couch while drool rolls down the the side of my face, will be replaced with nightmares of dealing with an incompetent imbusal attempting to teach children.  (Is that how you spell "imbusal"?  It would be even more embarrassing if I misspelled that word.)

I received a picture of my student teacher and her bio and she seems very, very nice.  She seems young and ambitious, ready to tackle the world, just the way I was when I was student teaching.  Her bio was very interesting as she listed activities and interests such as the FFA club (Future Farmers of America), 4-H and... (I am not making this up) raising lambs.  She looks bright and energetic, but it will be interesting to see if she has the gusto to deal with 20 six year olds for a full 8 hours.  I am sure she will be full of some of that Idaho small town spunk we have all grown to love.

In the meantime, if I weren't so lazy, I'd  get back to tending my lambs and polishing my belt buckle.  Nah, I think I will stay here and stare at this TV.