It wasn't for the money, nor for the lots of free time most people seem to think it gives you, but I love being a teacher. Already as a teen I couldn't think of anything else I'd want to do with my life, and that's still very much the case. This lead to being a history teacher in a small town high school. After a few years of awkwardness and clumsy teaching, I got the drift of it and managed to ignore all feelings of self-consciousness when in front of a class room. It resulted in being one of the more popular teachers in school, despite the fact that I require my students to work very hard, and making them fail any time they feel they can cut some corners. From my own experience I knew that a willingness to work hard is the key ingredient to success in life, and I wanted to teach my students that lesson even more than I wanted to teach them actual history.
Even though college has a reputation of being the largest wedding agency of all, I finished my education still being single, and except for a few short slings, I have remained single up to today. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but as soon as I actually started working as a teacher I noticed a difficulty in teaching I never anticipated: when you have over a hundred students every year sitting in front of you, there's bound to be some attractive ones among them. Now I do consider myself to be a respectable teacher, so naturally I never tried hitting on one of them. Though of course the danger of jail and my life being over helped in this regard. As such my escapades with any student were limited to an occasional fantasy while jerking off.
After a few years, when I was 28, I was asked to join the traditional senior trip to Italy, where we'd visit the highlights of western history and art. I had some very fond memories of the time that I went to Italy as a senior myself, so I was very excited that I'd get an opportunity to go back. As it turned out, my excitement wouldn't remain limited to history and art.
With a total of four teachers and 64 students, we left at school on a Saturday afternoon in April for the overnight bus trip that would take us to our first stop, Florence. The atmosphere on this kind of senior trip is completely different from a class room, obviously, and even from a regular field trip. The relationship between students and teachers is less formal. Students are allowed to talk to us on a first name basis and alcohol is permitted as long as it remains within decent limits (most European countries have a lower age restriction for alcohol than 21). For everyone involved, it feels more like vacation than like a school trip, even though 18 year olds would rather prefer to go to a beach on a vacation than look at some art stuff, and teachers are not used to supervise a whole bunch of teenagers when on vacation. Still, the relaxed rhythm, the sun, having lunch on the terrace of a little restaurant makes up for a lot.
We arrived in Florence in the morning with a lot of tired kids, so we took it slow the first day. We visited the cathedral and went for a small climb to get a panoramic view of the city, after which we released our students for a free afternoon. The braver ones use the opportunity to explore the city on their own, but most students will find the nearest park and just get some rest while lying in the sun.
In the evening we reached our hotel and assigned everyone a room. While teachers are given double rooms, students have to share a room with three up to five persons, depending on the hotel. Everyone got installed, and, teens being teens, very hungry. A good thing for us, because this would be our students' first taste of cheap Italian food of mass production. The hunger would make up for the lack of taste, and decrease the amount of complaints. After their first diner, most of them will have learned that they shouldn't count on diner for the good Italian food, but instead go find it during their free lunch time.
After dinner everyone was happy just to chill in the hotel bar. No doubt starting tomorrow students would be asking to go out, but this first evening it was silently agreed that a more relaxing activity was in order. The teachers used this occasion to mingle with the students and get to know them a little. Around 10.30pm the first ones started to retire to their room and about an hour later we decided to call an end to the first day.
Being the newbie in the team, I got the first shift of evening patrol. This mostly means keeping horny boys away from the girls' rooms, and making sure they actually go to bed at a decent time that allows them (and other hotel guests) some sleep before getting up in the morning for a full day of visits. Usually the first shift is a very calm and boring one, as most students are still tired from the bus trip. Mischief can wait another day. The hard part for the supervisor on this night is to actually stay awake long enough to make sure all students are sleeping.
When my colleagues went to bed, I decided to take a book and install myself on a chair in the hallway where the boys' rooms were located. Every now and then I'd lay down my book and go check the girls' hallway to make sure everything over there was calm as well.
Of course some of the students who used their afternoon for resting, were more intent to get active when a normal person would go to sleep. At some point, I looked up when I heard someone trying to softly open a door about 15 feet from me. Tom's brown haired head carefully stuck through to check whether the coast was clear. I suppose he wanted to sneak up his girlfriend's room. As soon as he noticed me sitting there staring at him, he quickly retreated. "No luck this time," I thought, "but no doubt, this won't be his last attempt for the week."
