It's not about teaching. It's about Learning.

Without getting into the deeply personal details, I want to type this up just so I can remember the events of yesterday, just because they were amusing and worth remembering.

The actual story starts a few days earlier. I coordinated with the teacher in the classroom next door to cover my classroom for a few minutes at the beginning of school. She had agreed. I knew I wouldn't be too late to school
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The morning of the blood work came and as I am pulling to the doctor's office parking lot, my cell phone makes a funny little noise and I look and it's the morning announcements email that is sent out by the secretary at my school. She is also the person that coordinates substitutes and I never told her that I had an arrangement or that I would only be a few minutes late. I hit the Reply button and typed up and email that went like this:

Julie,

I'm getting blood work done . Karen Frye is going to cover my class until I get there.

Bill Davidson

I went into the doctor's office, got my blood drawn, went back out to my car and drove to school. I was only about 3 minutes late.

Then I looked at my email and my friend, Mike Pickett sent and email in response to mine that said,

"You covered your bases."

That was the moment I realized, I had made that dreaded mistake of accidentally hitting Reply All on my phone. Before I would respond to him another email pops up that was simply,

" ????? "

In an attempt to let everyone know that I made a mistake and let them know I was actually OK, I typed up and email that I thought would be completely obvious. The follow up email stated:

"Sorry.... Didn't mean to send that to every one.... It just went longer than I thought. It's just the precursory evaluation before my double bypass brain transplant."

I figured that the people who really know me would know it was a complete joke and then the people that didn't know should at least be able to figure out that I have a sense of humor.

Here are some of the email response that I received:

"Ha ha ha. You just made me laugh out loud in front of class. They are looking at me as if I am nuts. Can I sign up for that transplant too? My brain in fried from this week.Hope that brain transplant goes well! Snicker snicker snicker"

"Good luck with that! LOL"

"Join me in wishing Bill and Abby Normal a speedy recovery!"

"Better than a lobotomy"

"Praying for a speedy recovery for Bill"

"Too funny. Are you ok?"

"Nice Reply All."

Not to change subjects but I there was another rather funny thing that happened because of my earlier mistake. One of my colleagues usually walks a bunch of the other teacher's kids down to the school bus that they take to get to their elementary school. He stepped into my classroom and we laughed a little about my mistake. All of the kids, including his own are wearing beach clothes and Dr. Seuss gear. Most, if not all, were carrying posters.

Kid #1: Mr. Davidson, do you like my poster?
Me: I sure do. Why did you have to make that poster?
Kid #1: Because its beach day at my school.
Kid #2: Do you like my poster?
Me: Yes. Is yours a beach poster too?
Kid #2: Yes.
Kid #1 Mr. Davidson, We are gonna have a cake walk at my school today?
Me: Is that where you get to walk around smashing cakes with your feet? I hope you take off your shoes!
All the kids: nooooooooo.
Kid #1: You walk around and step on a number and when they call your number you get to pick a cake!
My Colleague (very seriously, directed toward me): It's like musical chairs except you walk around and stand on numbers. When they call your number you win a cake.
Me: .......................................................Yeah.... Yeah, man. I get it.
Kid #3: Mr. Davidson, Did you see my poster?
Me: Not yet, Do you want to show it to me? (shows me the poster) That's very nice!"
Kid #4 ( holds a mask over her face): I'm the Lorax.

I just about lost it. "I'm the Lorax." Funniest moment of the day so far.

Through the rest of the day other teachers made comments directly too me. I think my favorite one was:

Teacher: Mr. Davidson, How did that brain transplant work out for you?
Me: I think it's going to work out pretty good this time.
Teacher: Oh yeah? What did they put in this time?
Me: They are going with Silver Back this time.
Teacher: So, I guess the mouse one didn't work out for you last time.

I collaborate directly with two other teachers to teach a class called iSTEM. One of them, Paul said, "It's funny that it happened to you because we were just talking about that the other day. I remembered that we were. No more than 4 days previous, we were talking about programming and the Reply All feature came up. We decided it was a pretty much useless feature and should be eliminated because it only leads to the accidental sharing of information with a bunch of people instead of just the one person you meant to send it to. I'm not saying some people don't use it. I know there is some applications where it is useful, but it needs to be moved to a place where you have to actually think about replying to everyone and not be in a spot where it can accidentally happen.

As the school day was drawing to a close, I got the last email that stated:

"Many thoughts, prayers, and positive energy for a speedy recovery!"

I tried figuring out who that person was and found out that this person is an administrator at another school, so, my mistake was even more far reaching than I had previously thought. At that moment, another on of my colleagues steps into my room. The conversation went like this:

Colleague: Can I talk with you for a second?
Me: Sure. Come on in.
Colleague: The email this morning has a lot of people confused. Was it a joke?
Me: Of course, it was. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a Double Bypass Brain Transplant.
Colleague: Oh! Okay. Good.

Then she proceeded to talk about what she really came in to talk about.

At the end of the school day, I ran into another friend of mine that is in a different department. This person walked into the department break room at lunch time and stumbled into a conversation that went something like this:

Person 1: Should we take up a collection?
Person 2: Should we be making meals for his family?
Person 3: It's just him and his wife now, since his girls have gone off to college.
Person 1: But the summer is coming and I'm sure they are coming home.
Friend: What are we talking about here?
Person 2: Didn't you see Davidson's email this morning? He's having some kind of surgery on his brain.
Friend: What? You do realize that the second email was a joke he was making to cover up the faux pa he made by hitting Reply All in the first email, right?
Collectively: Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh!
Friend: How many degrees do we have in this room right now?

That one makes me laugh. It nice to know that so many people care and are trying to figure out how to help me and my family when we need it. In that little story, I called one of them my friend, but in reality, they all are. Working at a school is kind of like having a family.

There was a talent show at my church last night. I have a talent that I performed. My wife performed with another young lady in our church. But on the way to the talent show I get an email from my close friend, John Fotenos. It's sent to a group text I share with a couple other guys. It states:

Guys, I am just now leaving Leesburg and I still have fight Friday traffic in a blizzard and go home. I know I won't make the start of the talent show, if at all. If they get to my name tell them to announce: The invisible man performing "Mime in a box." Wait a couple of second, laugh out loud a few times and after about 30 seconds stand and applaud wildly while saying "Great job, John." I might get there by then."

The idea was funny. It didn't really work out that way. But in the middle of the talent show, messenger on my phone buzzes:

Julie: Hey just fyi some people think you are really having brain surgery? Are you??? I am getting texts
Me: I'm still looking for donors (This was my wife's suggestion :) )
Julie: For a brain? Not sure if you can find one better than yours?

So that's how nice the people I work with are. I work with good people. I trust these people with educating the future leaders of our towns, counties, states, and county. They are good people. Even the ones that don't know me well enough to know when I'm joking, they are willing to help out because they thought I needed help.

By the way, a Double Bypass Brain Transplant is a movie reference. Do you know what movie it's from?

To top it all off , one of my daughters's is coming home for Spring Break.... and she's singing at Carnagy Hall next week.