I thought was going to get to see a young man’s head explode today. Luckily, more or less, it didn’t happen, but I was pretty sure it might.

One of our number at the school where I work was sick and the company I work for sent a substitute teacher for him.

The problem is, the company I work for knows nothing about the school where I work–in fact, they seem to have a willful blindness and deafness about the school, but that’s another post–and that can lead to complications.

First, although I was informed of the young man’s name, the head of the English department hadn’t. It was also no known when he would arrive. Also, when I was informed of the young man’s name, the person giving me the information used the wrong name to describe the person he was replacing, which did not instill confidence in me.

I was also informed that he’d never taught either junior high school or high school.

Second, the young man arrived but had been given no instructions on what to do upon his arrival. I only found him when one of our number (from a different company no less) pointed out there a was a lost looking young lad down on the ground floor.

Third, this left us with 10 minutes to get him ready (we all had class at the same time) and he was in full panic mode. His voice was shaky; he was trembling; and we could tell that he was hearing what we were saying but not actually comprehending it. I was pretty sure he was either going to catch fire or his head was going to explode.

I escorted him to his junior high class and picked him up after. He looked slightly more relaxed and still in possession of all his limbs but he did not look very happy. It turns out he didn’t know, and we didn’t know that he didn’t know (see my earlier comment about willful blindness and deafness) that he’d be teaching the class solo. He said he’d waited for someone to arrive and then realized he was on his own. As students can smell fear about as well as animals, they hadn’t given him an easy time.

Right after that he had his second junior high class. Once again I dropped him off and picked him up. That class went better, though, and he seemed relaxed and ready to do more.

A few hours later I escorted him to his first high school class. When I picked him up the unhappy look had returned. It hadn’t been a good group of students and he’d been nervous.

Now, we don’t know if our colleague will be back tomorrow, but we do know the young man won’t. This means we may get the chance to see someone catch fire or explode after all.