Teacher in Charge

I'm sure many have heard me say I have no desire to be a principal.  I have never had a desire to be a principal.  I sometimes question the wisdom of getting my master's degree in admin when I don't want to be a principal.  So, who did my principal decide to leave in charge while he was living it up in Arizona?  This girl.  Not only did I not get to go to the super education conference in a beautiful resort, I got to be the go-to person for all of the problems in the building.  A week being in charge has had no effect on my feelings about being a principal, except to reinforce them.

To begin with, we were already short staffed.  On a normal day, we have five regular classroom teachers, one native language teacher, and me as the sped teacher and three approved substitutes.  Our custodian resigned the week before so I started the week with no custodial staff.  Two of our five teachers went on the trip to Arizona thus taking up two of the three substitute teachers.  The third substitute came back from a trip to the doctor with instructions to do nothing for 45 days.  After covering the two teachers out for the trip, we had no substitutes.  On Wednesday, one of the three remaining teachers had to attend a training, but we had no subs to call so we were scrambling throughout the day to keep her class covered.  At the end of the day, though, we could all take a deep breath and go home feeling satisfied because we had made it all work.  Job well done.  Then Thursday happened.  Two of my three remaining teachers called in sick.  We had no substitutes to call.  Then, one of the scheduled substitutes did not show up.  Summary of all of those numbers: I had four teachers out of the building with only one substitute in the building.  We were really scrambling to make that day work, but we did and all was well with the world.

Until the weekend.  Then we had a water issue that put the school and half the village with no water.  So I'm stuck texting Mike and sending pictures trying to figure out if we can have school on Monday with no water in the building.  When Mike's plane landed Monday morning, I greeted him with a hug and said, "I'm glad you're back, and it has nothing to do with liking you."