Rick had the most unbelievable and unexpected belated birthday surprise today and I wanted to share the email he sent to our good friend, Stan, to tell him about it.
Here it is:
OK, it's Wednesday night, and as usual, my next few hours will be filled with marking and lesson planning. Team teaching demands that you have full lesson plans for almost every lesson, and "coursework" (taking the place of tests AND exams) means that you also have endless marking. The students are allowed to hand in an assignment as many times as necessary before it passes. Each unit has about 15-20 pieces of coursework, there are two units in a year, there are 60 students in a class, and they hand in every assignment an average of 3 times... well, you do the math.
As a bonus, our science team was "observed" the other day. Observations are very stressful, and you're marked from one to four, one being the highest. You only need to do a few things wrong to get a four, and after that, it doesn't matter if your students are setting each other on fire, or they've decided to string you up... you still get a four. As our team teaching is quite tight, we got a two, which is almost unheard of in our school. Getting a good observation rating has been very difficult since the new principal, Jane, came to our college. She's very structured, lives by OFSTED (the government school rating body) rules, and has little time for teachers who she considers to be inadequate. Between her expectations and my workload, I ended up spending the week off in February simply working on catching up and developing new lesson plans. Not that we could have gone anywhere... Bev has been out of work for 3 months and things tend to be pretty tight around here. Given that it was my birthday in the middle of the week off, however, didn't add to the enjoyment. In fact, it really only added to the stress.
To help forget the endless cycle, I thought that I'd really treat myself. There's an island off the west coast of Scotland that has one road, one pub and one distillery. They make four different kinds of scotch, and the 3 that I've tasted have all been excellent. However, as a fan of the smoky peat flavour which is a characteristic of that area's scotches, I really wanted to pick up a bottle of their top of the line. The island (and distillery, and scotch) is Jura, and the scotch is called "Prophecy". It clearly announces on the box that it is "profoundly peated". It was to be my birthday treat.
There was only one place that I knew I could get it. Go through the Dartford tunnel, battle the traffic to get to "Lakeside" shopping center and find the specialty scotch shop. Did they have it? Absolutely. Did I buy it? The fifty plus pounds for a bottle of scotch, no matter how wonderful, was impossible to justify when that would buy groceries for a week and a half. Maybe another day, I thought, when Bev was working...And so, it was left to my imagination.
Today, I went down to the main lobby to wait for the students. We were going on a field trip to the seaside to do population studies of organisms in the littoral zone. As I waited, the ladies at the front desk told me, "Mr Teather - there's a package here that was delivered for you". I occasionally order necessities like science ties or hard to find lightbulbs online, but had not ordered anything lately. Needless to say, my interest was piqued. The box was a good size and a hefty weight. I had no idea what was inside. As I opened it, a large box wrapped in bubble wrap fell into my hands. Unwrapping it, I almost dropped the entire thing on the floor. In my hands was a factory sealed, original packaging bottle of Jura Prophecy. I was (and you can imagine how hard this would be for me) speechless. Underneath the box was a card with my name on it. Opening it, I found this: Dear Rick. Wishing you a very happy birthday (sorry it is a bit late). We hope you enjoy. A little gift to give you a little smile :)
It was signed "Jane and Megan", my principal and vice principal. I had mentioned my birthday story in passing to Megan last week, but never thought she really took notice. Clearly, it had more impact than I had envisioned, and now, I'm sitting here typing this with a small glass of one of the most wonderful scotches I've ever had. What an unbelievable surprise. I should probably be happier about the 2 in our lesson observation, but this memory will far outlast that one.
