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There are many, many reasons I love being a teacher. Dealing with 13 year olds with crazy germs, not so much... but that aside...

I worked Monday of last week, then found out the big swine flu news, so I stayed home Tuesday through Thursday, and finally went back on Friday. Maybe not completely well, but it seemed like the right thing to do just the same.

When I got back, not only were the kids extremely glad to see me (which was so ridiculously nice, I was pretty sure that, since they are at that ripe old age of 13 now, they would be too cool to have "missed" the teacher!), but they also wanted nothing more than to tell me about the array of substitutes they had had while I was away. It was really cute, even kids that I wouldn't consider to be very "into" talking to the teacher were eager to tell me all about it.

The reason I am relaying this story is that one of my classes also called me out on the pregnancy issue. I know that teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but sometimes a class dynamic just really comes together much better than others. The students are cooperative, polite, hardworking, and it has that illusive something that's particularly illusive in middle school - maybe it's that they seem to genuinely like each other? I won't lie; when you have a class like that, it's difficult not to like them!

So I was lucky that it was this class that called me out. I hadn't been planning on telling them until at least October (when I can no longer hide it). But, one of my cute students timidly raised her hand on Friday afternoon somewhere between talking about one of her eccentric subs and my experience being swabbed up the nose to test for swine flu.

Student: "Mrs. S, please don't be offended if you're not, but... are you pregnant?"

I'm pretty sure my face shuffled through about 8 diffferent expressions - since I hadn't been planning on telling them! - and I finally decided it would be silly not to tell them the truth.

They took the news amazingly! They were all genuinely excited - which surprises me from 13 year olds!! They had a million questions, wanting to know whether we're having a boy or a girl and what we're going to name him or her. It was so fun!!

Evidently they are far more observant than I was at 13, because they decided that I was too "cute" and "small," so my belly must be a baby bump.

Yeah, no wonder I like them!