I had my peer teaching evaluation today and I know I fucked it up! All because of one student, Typhoid Troy, who came to class as sick as you can be without dying. I’m standing there trying to get through my lesson plan, trying to show what a brilliant teacher I am, and Troy is sitting in the back (right next to my evaluator, I may add) judiciously coughing up a lung. This keeps going on and on, his bowel-shaking wracking cough providing a counterpoint to my most amazing ethical analysis. On and on and on.Now, instead of worrying about content I’m thinking “Should I kick him out?”
C’mon Troy, do you really need me to be your mommy? Just get up and leave – go die somewhere else. I should kick him out, but I’m worried. What if my evaluator feels that this poor, precious snowflake so loves this subject that he strives to attend class even when at death’s door? What if I’d be seen as completely crushing his little, snowflakey ego?
The coughing continues. I continue. I don’t do anything. Then, when I’m packing up after class, the evaluator approaches me and says:
“I’d have kicked him out.”