Print copies

You got in early for this. The fractions worksheet is open on the desktop, the copier down the hall is warm, and there are twenty minutes before the first bus. This is the part of the morning that goes to plan.

Then a colleague puts her head round the door to ask whether you can take her lunch duty. You say yes. While you are saying yes, a student arrives early, upset about something that happened on the bus, and you sit with him until he is ready to talk about it. You are still listening when the bell goes.

The morning does what mornings do. Attendance, lunch count, a reading block that runs long because it is going well. At 10:15 you turn to the class, say the words "so let's take a look at your worksheet", and feel the floor go out from under the sentence.

Twenty-four children are waiting. The copier is a two-minute walk away and you cannot leave the room. So you improvise — you always can — and the lesson you built at 7:20 becomes a lesson you are inventing at 10:16, while someone at the back asks if you forgot.

Here is the part worth saying plainly: you did not forget because you are careless. You forgot because at the exact second the copying mattered, a ten-year-old needed you more, and a brain that can hold a few things at once quietly set one of them down to make room.