THEY KNOW

I apologize for my absence - it's been a busy week at work.

I realized this week that I could no longer hide the fact that I was pregnant from my students. Most high schoolers are oblivious, but there are always a few perceptive students in the class.

Once the perceptive students tip off the other students, it's all down hill from there. Gossip spreads quickly and before you know it, all of your classes are aware of what's going on.

It started on Tuesday. "You look very nice today! All glowy!" "Do you ever feel like you want to be in a bad mood, but you can't be?" "Do you need some pickles & ice cream?" "Please don't be offended, but are you pregnant?" That last question was one on one, but all the rest are actual comments declared loudly in the classroom. I would never accuse high schoolers of being subtle. At all. And I would never claim to be a good liar. At all. In fact, I'm pretty terrible at it. I can't keep a straight face. I always crack.

So, when the comments started in my World History II Honors class on Tuesday, I new it was only a matter of time before I would crack. I had good reasons for not telling them. First, it's my personal life - but you can keep only so much of your life from your students. Don't let them know you have Facebook!

Second, they are already masters at trying to get off subject and causing tangents. Why would I want to give them such a juicy tidbit to work with?

Third, I didn't really feel like dealing with kids telling me I was being hormonal when their behavior would cause any normal, stable, sane person to snap. "No! I am not yelling at you or kicking you out of my class because I'm hormonal! I'm kicking you out of my class because your behaving like a rude monkey on steroids! How old are you?!?!"

Some of the kids in my regular classes suspected, but almost all of my honors kids knew. They can be annoying that way sometimes. I've been pregnant since before school started and apparently some of them figured it out a while ago - but weren't sure. They didn't want to ask outright because then they might offend me. However, they did ask questions like - "How long have you and your husband been married? Are you going to have kids." And my response to the last questions was always, "Eventually." Hey. It was true!

So - I was left with a few choices. I could continue to try and be oblivious to their comments - which is probably a dead giveaway and as I said, I can't control my facial expressions. Besides, I am starting to show a little. I'm hiding it pretty well, but they are perceptive goobers. I could deny, deny, deny... Yeah. Right. Or I could just get it over with and tell them, since they already know anyways.

So I slipped the following slide into my powerpoint today:


Replace "Shoppe Keeper" with my last name for the actual slide title if you know me :).

My students are SO excited. Their reactions were very sweet. They ranged from "Nuh uh! I had no idea!" to "I KNEW IT! We were totally going to throw you a baby party if you didn't tell us soon and if we were wrong we had all of these crazy excuses for why we had baby shoes and a rattle on the cake!" And of course, they all think the baby should be named after them. Bunch of nut jobs, if you ask me.