It was Friday, day two of a two-day assignment. The teacher had been out all week. (Another sub got Monday through Wednesday. I only covered Thursday and Friday.)
There were three periods of AP geography, one period of AP psychology, and one period of AP government. (If you aren't familiar with the terminology, here's a link to what an AP class is.)
The fact that the whole schedule is AP is significant. See, the AP tests were from May 7-18. The students work hard to prepare for that test. Once they've taken the test, they're done for the year.
Yup, a whole day of students who were done for the year.
But I wasn't stressing. The teacher had left movies for them to watch.
Second period was the government class. Seniors.
Passing period. One student walked in.
"I'll be the only student here today. It's senior ditch day."
I laughed. I told the boy that there would be other students, but now my expectations for attendance went way down.
In case you're not familiar, senior ditch day is an unofficial tradition where the senior class decides to not attend school one day. It's usually in the spring, near to the end of the year. And it's usually a surprise as they don't inform administration. (The administration tries to discourage it.)
I rarely hit senior ditch day. The one day I did (years ago now) where I had senior classes, about half the students attended. If the teachers know about it, they're not going to miss that day. It's like a mini vacation for them.
In the end, I was right. Shortly after the boy, three other students arrived. That's four total students in a class that has 37 enrolled.
Alas, that was my only senior class of the day. The psychology class had only four seniors total (the rest were juniors), and the geography classes were all freshmen.
