WEEK 13 - Snot

This week's topic is snot. That's right, snot. It's surprising how many boogers get blown throughout the day, especially during allergy season. One box of tissues rarely lasts a week, and tissues aren't something that teachers are just given. There's no closet somewhere where we can just go and get more tissues (maybe other schools have that, but we don't). I know that our department had to actually put in an order to get a big box full of small boxes of tissues (putting orders in = paperwork = more time doing something other than actually teaching). We got those at the beginning of the year, and they're completely out now. I generally ask for donations, but many times students will bring rolls of toilet paper in from the school bathroom, which hold us over until we can get more tissues.

Teachers (and students) come into contact with many people and germs throughout the day. High school teachers generally see between 130-150 students per day. If we teach 5 classes, that means that every desk gets contaminated 5 times a day. And students touch EVERYTHING. Door handle. Pencil sharpener. Stapler. Light switch. Tape. Markers. Each other. Everything. On top of that, they hand in ONE assignment, and I get to touch 140 pieces of paper that have been contaminated by God knows what was on their hands.  Hand in 2, and I get 280 pieces of paper. Hand in 3...you get the picture.

Because of this, students and teachers get sick a lot. In our language department there are 6 teachers, and in the last 2 weeks, 4 of us have now gotten the same boogery, runny sinus infection. We've all had to take off between 1-3 days (although I could have stayed in bed for a week with how awful I was feeling).

As icky as it might be with all these goopy teenagers touching everything, I must say that it is way worse for elementary teachers who deal with kids who don't yet know how to sneeze properly and probably play with their boogers. Yuck.

My hours for week 13.

Sun	11/11/2012	7:30 PM	10:00 PM	2.5
M	11/12/2012	7:30 AM	4:00 PM	8.5
T	11/13/2012	7:45 AM	5:15 PM	9.5
		8:00 PM	10:00 PM	2
W	11/14/2012	7:30 AM	5:15 PM	9.75
		8:30 PM	10:00 PM	1.5
Th	11/15/2012	8:00 AM	4:15 PM	8.25
		7:30 PM	8:15 PM	0.75
F	11/16/2012	7:15 AM	3:30 PM	8.25
		9:30 PM	10:30 PM	1
Sat	11/17/2012	8:30 AM	9:00 AM	0.5
		11:00 PM	11:30 PM	0.5
	Total			53