One student couldn’t stop laughing. Another pretended he was dead for half the class. Otherwise it wasn’t that bad of a day, all things considered.

My voice this morning was two parts Yoda, one part Chewbacca and three parts the sound your expensive new sneakers make when you drag them on concrete to stop your bicycle. (There were also traces of the shriek your mother makes soon after witnessing the latter.)

I, of course, opened with my worst class. They snickered at my voice. One student stared at me in stunned amusement as if he was waiting for a punchline. They were pretty good, though, as most of them did the work, with a little prodding. My worst student, though, thought it would be fun to feign death by lying down on the floor. Since that actually quieted him down, I let him stay there. Also, since the floors in the school get dirty rather quickly because the janitors clean at odd hours, he was lying in several hours worth of dust and crud, which might, in fact, hasten his death.

My next class went well, as did my third class. However, one student in that class burst out laughing every time I spoke as if I was delivering the punchline the student in my first class had been waiting for. Although I’ve been at this job for over a millennium (I started teaching in the second millennium AD and it is now the third millennium AD–do the math) it is still disconcerting to have someone laugh at me when I’m trying to give instruction.

My evening class went well as my voice has begun to recover. Also, I gave them lots of reading and writing to do, which helped quiet them down a lot.