well if I have to

I teach one of the nicest boys on the planet, I'm sure of it. Everyday he comes in and tries to speak French to me, he's taking core-french this semester and obviously must be loving it. He's so happy to be able to use new words when he can, it's fantastic. I'm not sure I've ever seen a student put such an earnest effort into learning. Last semester he was in a co-taught classroom - indicating he has difficulties in Math. Yet he outperforms most of the class. Probably feeling a little nervous about our first unit test that's coming up on Monday, he made an appointment to come see me for extra help (on Tuesday, almost a full week before the exam!).

However, today was one of those weird sick days. I woke up, felt kinda sick, but not so sick that I thought to stay home. A decision I immediately regretted once arriving at school. The world was a haze. Nausea kept sneaking up on me. Any little bit of heat felt like impeding death. I kept losing white board markers. You get the picture. Anyway, I like to warn my classes when I'm feeling under the weather - it's a little head's up for them that should they choose to misbehave I'm not fully feeling responsible for the reaction I'd have.

By period 3 I was feeling slightly better, but I wasn't looking forward to my lunchtime commitments. Not only did I have the help session, but a detention to supervise. My detainee skipped class, and his detention (looks like we'll be spending more lunch hours together...) so that got rid of that problem. I couldn't cancel my help session though, this young boy is so wonderful that I'd hate to discourage him in any way - though I'm sure he'd have understood.

Understand he did. About halfway through the class he came up to me, "Ms Parker, I'm not going to come today at noon."
"Pardon?"
"You're not feeling well and I really think you should go home and get some sleep" (my students know I don't teach in the afternoons)
"Oh no, that's alright, I was planning on being here during lunch anyway."
"Nope, I can just come tomorrow, you really should go home and rest."
"Really T, 30 minutes won't hurt me any."
"Well Ms Parker, you can stay at lunch today, but I sure won't be here."

Done deal. We're meeting tomorrow. I slept all afternoon. I still feel like there's a flu monster hiding in my shoulders and neck just waiting to devour the rest of my body, but hopefully another 8 hours of sleep will drive him off.