Typical Day
Mr. Fussy McFusster is a ninth-grade math teacher. He wakes at 5:44AM, eats 132 Cheerios in 1-¼ cups of milk, takes a 6-½ minute shower, gets dressed, puts on his size eleven shoes, and is out the door. He drives 2.38 miles to the school, then goes to his desk in the teacher's lounge and responds to thirteen emails.
He gets to his classroom at 7:27AM, a few minutes early for his first class. His twenty-eight students file in and he has them all turn to page 226 in their textbooks, then goes over Geometry Lesson 3:17. (That isn't citing a passage from the Bible—it's just the chapter and section number.)
This looks like it's going to be a really long marriage proposal.
After forty-seven minutes he has his second class (statistics and probability), then his third class (algebra), then his fourth class (a combination of the first three, for the really smart kids), and then lunch (he orders in from Panda 88).
He has three more classes in the afternoon—mainly the same as the morning subjects, but for different sets of kids. He does what he can to make the lessons seem unique and interesting, while still not getting too too creative with the material. Then he heads back to his desk in the teacher's lounge, where he responds to fourteen more emails, grades fifty-nine tests, and devises ten questions for tomorrow's pop quiz.
He meets for seventeen7 minutes with the school principal, who likes to check in with each teacher every two to three weeks to see how things are going in their classroom. She asks him eleven questions, such as, "What are the four most difficult challenges you have faced in the past week and how did you handle them?" and, "How many students in your class scored 90% or higher on their most recent quiz?" Fussy provides her with eleven corresponding answers, being sure to squeeze in numbers wherever possible.
After their meeting is over, Fussy gets into his Volvo S40, takes Highway 317, and is home by 5:52PM, which is early enough to catch forty winks before watching 60 Minutes and 20/20.
All tuckered out.