The Student Teacher

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?!"

"He's not a girl," she was shaking her head. "So much not a girl. He's this... tall, handsome biologist with the hair I want to sink my hands into and the lips that I want to taste and those pecs and biceps that you totally can't ignore underneath his shirt."

"How did that happen?" Jenny set her laptop aside, sitting forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

"I'm a dumbass, that's how it happened. I had the name backwards. I was expecting a girl named Rose Gordon and he turned out to be a dude named Gordon Rose." Jenny nodded understandingly.

"Wait, but he is still like 21 or 22 or something, right? You have a thing for a guy eight or nine years your junior? Really?"

"32. The handsome bastard's older than me. This is his 'career change' degree," Kaitlyn announced, tipping her head back against the chair. Why couldn't she meet him someplace else? Out at a bar or at some friend's party. It would be entirely inappropriate to hook up with her student teacher whose grade she'd have a hand in determining at the end of the semester.

"Well, fuck. It seems that you're in a bit of a pickle, huh," Jenny commiserated.

****

"How was your first day back in high school?" Gordon's brother, Eric, asked him on the phone that night. He felt as if it were his duty to check up on his baby brother regularly and to keep track of what he was doing.

"It was a lot better than I expected," Gordon admitted. And it wasn't just because of the pretty, blond with the intense green eyes who turned out to be his cooperating teacher. "It felt like... a confirmation, like 'yes, this is actually what I wanted to do,'" he tried to put into words what today felt like. He shouldered his phone, returning to the stove to stir the soup from a can that he had been warming there.

"Wow, that's excellent. What did you do today? Watch the veteran teacher lecture and make some copies, something like that?"

"Bro, I actually got up in front of this class of like thirty 9th graders and taught a biology lesson! And they actually listened to me!" Frankly, he was pretty shocked that they didn't just start talking or passing notes while he was in front of the class, that he actually had their attention.

"Geez, how did that happen? I thought you sorta watch and work up to it or something." His brother had enough interest in what he did to look these things up and be informed.

"I watched and I took notes and stuff. She had like four sections of the class all in one day, basically doing the same lesson with different students, and after watching her a few times, I decided to give it a try myself. And she let me. And it felt like... God, I don't know, a rush, a revelation that 'yes, I want this, I want to do this,'" he told his brother.

"The teacher you're working with is a woman?" THAT's what Eric got from this statement?!

"Yes, she's a woman." An incredibly attractive one that he couldn't take his eyes off.

"I don't think I had a single female science teacher while I was in high school," Eric sounded thoughtful. Trying to remember his own high school experience, Gordon realized that he didn't either, but there were female science teachers in the school, he was sure of that.

"Yeah, she's kind of into the whole... women in science thing and running this STEAM club for girls that she started at the school, you know Science Technology Engineering Art and Math all combined into one. And making her students aware of the different science-related careers out there. She mentioned to me how, when she was looking for posters to decorate her room with, she was specifically interested in finding ones that depicted women, which she said wasn't the easiest thing to find," Gordon rattled off as his soup began to boil and he pulled it off the burner.

"That sounds... How old is she?" There seemed to be skepticism in Eric's voice.

"What does it matter how old she is?" He poured the soup into a bowl for himself, taking it to the small kitchen table in his apartment.

"She sounds very progressive and... young."

"She's thirty." They had discussed this over lunch, how old they were, where they went to college and grad school. It was so tempting to ask her more about her personal life, about whether she was married or had kids or whether she lived with a boyfriend, but he refrained, keeping things strictly professional. There were no rings on the fingers of her left hand, which Gordon made a point of noting.

"Oh, that's... I expected that it would be some older teacher with like thirty years of experience under her belt." Gordon could hear kids screaming in the background, on Eric's end, and then a door shutting. "Is she hot?"

"You know, it's really weird to hear that question from a forty-year-old father of four," Gordon informed his brother. "Yeah, she's attractive. She's fit and blond and has these crazy green eyes. But at the end of this, she's going to have input on what grade I get for this whole thing and... I don't know, it doesn't seem like it would be a good idea to hit on her."

"Right, no, you have to be professional. This is important, you can't fuck it up. But it will be over in three months, so then..." Eric trailed off suggestively.

"Yeah, yeah, three months. We'll see." Gordon spooned the thick clam chowder into this mouth.

It wasn't easy to keep things entirely professional though, not when she looked at him the way she did, as if she had some sort of dirty thoughts in her head when her eyes scanned him up and down. And not when she invited him out to happy hour with the other teachers on Friday nights. Or when the weather started to get warmer and she wore skirts that exposed her long, toned legs.

She was always so encouraging, telling him how great he was doing, finding the nicest possible way to point out what he still needed to work on. She decided she'd signal him when he was talking way too fast and losing the class and the first time that she did this to him while sitting at the bar at happy hour, he almost lost it. He laughed, of course, while she wrinkled her nose in this cute way, but he really wanted to kiss her right then. The urge was so strong that he actually leaned towards her and then jerked back again, remembering that he shouldn't. Waiting until the summer was fucking hard.

He was fairly certain that Kaitlyn felt it too, that he wasn't alone in this. They seemed to be becoming a perfect co-teaching team, supporting each other and joking with each other, and really honing their dynamic. The reviews from the observations of his supervising professor were phenomenal and it felt like he could really do no wrong.

But he did.

They didn't go out for Happy Hour every Friday night, but this one was kinda big. There were a lot of people - a couple of the teachers had birthdays, one had just gotten engaged, and there were a lot of shots being ordered and drunk. It had honestly been a while since Gordon drank like this or been this drunk. The company was great, the teachers at this school were a fun bunch, and his judgment was quickly becoming clouded.

There were three single-person bathrooms in the place, each marked unisex, and when he swung open the door of one of them Kaitlyn was right there, with her hand on the door handle. She stumbled back a step.

"I'm such a clutz, I just spilled half my drink right down my shirt," she gestured at her chest and the v-neck t-shirt that was wet from her spill. His eyes were drawn to her perfect cleavage as he looked right down her shirt from his height down to hers and all his self-control was gone.

He bent down and kissed her, his mouth hungrily moving over hers and she let him pull her in. First against his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck and then into the bathroom, as he shut and locked the door behind them. He wasn't thinking, his body seemed to act independent of his brain as he leaned her back against the door and kissed her down her neck and chest until he tasted the drink that she had spilled on his lips.

"Something really sweet," he said to her, sticking his tongue right down her cleavage. She made a sound that was somewhere between an exhale and a moan.

"Amaretto Sour." He could feel her breath on his hair when she said it. And then her fingers were in his hair too, tangling, as an affirmation that she didn't hate what he was doing.

He immediately lifted her shirt then, gaining better access to her breasts, pulling down the edges of the bra cups to lick her nipples. He wasn't thinking about how wrong it was then, while he sucked each pink nipple to a hard, pink peak. He wasn't thinking about the potential trouble this could cause them both while he came back up to kiss her again, with everything he had, while his hand pulled up at the hem of her skirt. He wasn't thinking about what the consequences would be while he pressed his fingers against the damp crotch of her panties. And he wasn't thinking about his diploma or his certification when he lifted Kaitlyn up with his hands just beneath her ass and brought her to sit on the edge of the sink.