It was as if a new achievement had been unlocked. There were a number of milestones in a teacher's career - completing mentorship, earning tenure, leveling up to a professional certificate, and then the opportunity to become a cooperating teacher to a fresh-faced college senior completing their student teaching experience. When she got the email from her principal asking her if she would consider working with a student teacher this semester, Kaitlyn was ecstatic. Of course, she accepted the offer immediately and took tons of notes on everything she thought her new protege would need to know.
"I'm so excited about this, I can't even tell you," Kaitlyn told her roommate, Jenny, that night. "It's some kind of a... I don't know, an accomplishment of sorts to be asked to do this. It means so much to me that my administration trusts me to have this sort of an influence over a young, new teacher."
"What are you going to have to do?" Jenny wasn't a teacher. They had been friends since college, for over ten years now, but they were in entirely different professional fields. Jenny did graphic design and worked for an advertising agency.
"Show her what the curriculum is like and how I plan lessons for the week and what the best way to delegate responsibility to students is," she gushed, finding it hard to keep still. She paced in front of the sofa where Jenny was sitting. "I started making a list of all the things that I want to tell her. I hope she's up for talking shop during lunch, because I feel like there is just so much that she needs to know and it's not exactly something that I can talk to her about during class, when the students are there, you know?"
"You know that it's gonna be a girl?"
"Yes! God, I'm super stoked about that too! Cause there aren't that many women teaching science at the high school level. I won't say that it's a rare thing, but the male to female ratio is definitely skewed towards the penis owners." Jenny cracked up laughing at that. "Her name is Rose and she goes to Greendale Valley University and she's going to start on Monday! I think I might make cookies or something Sunday, just you know," she shrugged, unable to contain her glee, "welcome her to the school."
"You're too much," Jenny informed her.
Kaitlyn couldn't really argue there. It was a phrase she had heard on more than one occasion to describe her. But she couldn't help it. It's as if she was driven by a little motor that didn't allow her brain to turn off and kept her moving.
There was so much she wanted to share with the new student teacher. She had started a STEAM club for girls at the school that had a small, but dedicated group of attendees. She always made an attempt to highlight female influences in science. She was almost giddy walking into the school building early on Monday, passing through the office to move her time card and check her mailbox.
"Ms. Anderson," the secretary got her attention from behind the counter. "Your student teacher just headed upstairs, I hope that's ok."
"Yeah, that's great," Kaitlyn nearly bounced out of the office, heading for her fourth floor classroom. The fact that Rose was early definitely felt good. They'd have a bit of time to talk about things before the students came in. She could fill her in on the day's lesson plans and show her where all the equipment was for the labs and ask her about what topics she was most comfortable with teaching and...
Kaitlyn rounded the corner and stopped in her tracks. There was a tall, handsome man standing at her door, looking over the schedule posted on it. He had dark, curly hair, cut short on the sides, black, rectangular framed glasses, a messenger bag hanging crossbody at his back, over his shirt and tie, and his jacket folded over one forearm. She stood there for a moment, wide-eyed and stunned, before he noticed her and turned his head, smiling. He had an incredible smile and he didn't look like a college senior. Kaitlyn forced her legs to move towards her room.
"Hi, Ms. Anderson?" He asked her as she approached. She nodded. "Gordon Rose, I'm going to be student teaching with you." He extended his hand out to her and she shook it, staring at him.
"I... thought it was the other way around," she started saying and he furrowed his brow. "I thought it was Rose Gordon. I thought you were... umm... not a man." But that's what he was. Not just that he wasn't the young girl Kaitlyn expected, but he wasn't really a 'guy' either. He was a full-grown man.
"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you," he chuckled good-naturedly, running a hand through his hair.
"I'm not disappointed, just a little surprised," she was quick to point out. If she had met him anywhere else, in any other situation, she would have been more than happy to have the excuse to get to know this man. She unlocked her door and stepped in, holding it open for Gordon. He followed her through and over to her desk and she unloaded her bag and hung up her coat. Kaitlyn extended her hand out to take his coat as well and he handed it over smiling. "Tell me about yourself," she prompted him.
"Well, I'm finishing up my Master's degree in secondary education right now. Last semester, student teaching," Gordon rubbed a hand against his clean-shaven chin. "Umm... I'm from Brooklyn, New York originally, left the city for college and ended up staying away." There was a pause. He looked at her in that certain way that made Kaitlyn feel on display, as if he was appraising her.
"Master's degree, huh?" She had one too - it was a requirement for the professional certification, but she was already teaching full time when she worked on it. Gordon was nodding. "What did you study in undergrad?"
"Biology. Then a Master's in Biomechanics."
"This is your second Master's degree?"
"Yeah," Gordon sighed. "I worked in the field for a few years and I guess there was a bit of disillusionment for me about what it really entailed." He stepped back, sitting on the edge of a student desk. Kaitlyn was quickly calculating in her head that two graduate degrees and 'a few years in the field' meant he was probably her age or older. She suddenly felt quite inadequate to mentor this man, who likely had a lot more in-depth knowledge on the subject than she did. "I decided to pivot in the direction of teaching and, against all the advice from colleagues and family about acquiring a Ph.D. and teaching at a college level, I decided on doing this." His hands came up to his sides as if to indicate the school. He had a half-smile on his face which Kaitlyn was finding incredibly sexy, but immediately tried to push it out of her head.
"That's really interesting." She was being honest. It was also rather intimidating. "I'm really not sure what you could learn from me." Gordon's eyebrows went up and he chuckled.
"The teaching part! God, don't underestimate yourself! I may have a few years on you, but you've actually been in the classroom, teaching, interacting with the kids." Kaitlyn found herself intently focused on his milk chocolate eyes. They were smiling warmly behind the lenses of his glasses. "Honestly, something I'm worried about is my frustration level and inevitably dropping an f-bomb or something else inappropriate in front of the class."
"I think I've gotten so used to diverting 'shit' into 'shoot' that it just comes naturally now," she confessed. Gordon's smile was killing her though, the way the corners of his mouth upturned, the way his eyes sparkled, those little lines that formed at the corners of his eyes. She felt her heart rate kicking up just talking to him. She shook her head out. "Anyway, I have four sections of freshman bio and a section of Health Ed, which is mostly freshmen. We're in the middle of learning about the classifications right now and then viruses and monerans are next."
"That sounds awesome," he nodded along. "What do you want me to do today?"
"We're going to do the button activity." Gordon gave her a questioning look. "You know, it's a common taxonomy game." He shook his head, cocking it to the side, looking at her with interest. "They are going to work in groups, each group gets a container of buttons. 'Buttons' is the domain. They will have to sort the buttons and say... kingdom will be all the four-hole buttons and phylum would be all the brown, four-hole buttons, and the class would be all the brown, four-hole buttons with a ridge around the edge." He was nodding now. "Well, you get it. But they just get the bin with buttons and have to work it out themselves, so it's fun to see what they come up with."
"Yeah, that sounds like fun," Gordon agreed.
Her students seemed pretty excited to meet Mr. Rose. She introduced them to each class and with each class, he seemed to feel a bit more comfortable with her students. He sat in the back during the first class and watched her in front of the room. He pulled out a notebook and took notes, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. In the second class, he walked around among the groups, just like she did, checking out what the kids were doing and engaging with some of them, asking them what their thinking process was. He crouched down next to their desk, getting down to their level, which sent some inexplicable flutter through Kaitlyn's stomach. In the third class of the day, the Health Ed section, one of the smart-ass boys asked Gordon why he was so old and just now student teaching.
"Shawn, that's super rude," Kaitlyn shook her head at the tall boy in the back of the room with hair in his eyes. "Mr. Rose, you don't have to answer that."
"No, it's fine," Gordon shook his head, smiling good-naturedly, and explained how he wasn't entirely happy with his initial career choice and was looking for a slight change.
"So you were an actual scientist? Like working in a lab and mixing potions and what not?" Tia, a small girl in the front with large glasses, asked him.
"Yes to working in the lab, no to mixing potions," he chuckled.
By the last class of the day, Godon asked if he could try it, if he could actually take over the class. It took Kaitlyn aback just a hair, that he was so comfortable on the very first day and so interested in diving right into it all. But he was great. The only times when he deferred to her was when students asked for the bathroom pass, the rest of the period he was in control. He answered the questions and gave the kids feedback on what they were doing, seeming like a complete natural at the whole thing. He was animated and engaging, if maybe a little overeager, rambling on at a manic speed at times while the class watched him wide-eyed. She'd mention to him later that he should slow down a bit.
"Oh my god, this is going to be a huge fucking problem," Kaitlyn announced, dropping her bags by the door and plopping down into the armchair in her living room where her roommate, Jenny, already sat on the sofa with her laptop. "I think I have a huge crush on my student teacher and I don't know how I'm going to make it through the next three months."
"I'm sorry, what?!" Jenny's eyes were like saucers staring back at her. "Since when are you interested in girls?!"
