At the school where I work we are fond of saying “that’s 50 minutes of my life I’ll never get back” to describe a particularly bad class. In an odd spin on that, I made enough silly mistakes today that I should give the entire back.

Despite a couple silly accidents this morning I thought it would be a good day. I should have taken those accidents as the omens they were.

My mistake in my first period class was handing out the wrong lesson for the next phase of the class. I was supposed to give out a lesson on superpowers as a way to start the “Superhero Adventures” curriculum we are trying out this term, but instead I jumped straight to Superheroes. I kicked myself a few times then decided to roll with it. The changed order is now officially classified as a “pedagogical experiment”.

After kicking myself I went to my worst class. My mistakes in this class were 1) not asking the homeroom teacher to remind the students to be ready for their speeches and 2) actually showing up to class. They are always bad but were in rare form today, leaving me with two lunch dates who both stood me up but who I will find.

Then, after lunch, I went to a high school first year class and started teaching a lesson when they were prepared to give presentations. I made a joke about it being a joke and then watched them do their presentations.

In my last class, I started calling names and realized I had the wrong roll sheet. I did a quick warm up and then went to get the correct roll sheet and folder. Once the folder was in hand I realized I was once again starting the wrong unit.

All this, I suspect, started because I didn’t bother to double check the folders I make for each class. If I had I wouldn’t have made a mistake in that class which led me to mope rather than double check which created a cascading series of mistakes

All that could have been avoided and I wouldn’t have been left wondering if it was possible to give the day back to the world. (No pay, for the record, just the day gets given back.)

My worst class still would have sucked, but at least the others would have been good.