"She's awful!" Clary hissed to me. "I absolutely hate her! I mean, how can she ever talk to us like that? 'I believe we are supposed to raise our hands in this class.'" She mimicked. "Who does she think she is?"

           I sighed. Mr. Rickman was one of the most easygoing teachers I had ever met. He was known for being chill. This transition would be far more difficult than any other, for me and the other students. The only thing I replied back to Clary was: "This is going to suck."

           And suck it did. Days passed and the workload became more and more, just in Biology. Every night, we would have a three page packet to complete. And, most of it was busy work. I mean, we had to do crossword puzzles for a grade!

            The students' opinions of Mrs. Bendich began deteriorating as well. Eventually, we'd had enough.

            "So how are you guys liking Mrs. Bendich?" Mr. Gandalf asked us one day. The whole class burst into a rant of complaints. Mr. Gandalf took a step back on the table he was standing on, careful not to touch any of the monitors. "Oh my," he exclaimed, overwhelmed. "How about we do this one at a time."

           Clary's hand shot up in the air, trembling with rage. Mr. Gandalf nodded at her to speak.

            "She's been so awful to us," Clary complained. "She gives us busywork, and doesn't even teach us! Yesterday, she got us started on a project to teach ourselves! And she pretty much just makes us take notes from the textbook."

           She was right. Yesterday, Mrs. Bendich had assigned us a project to teach the class about a specific body system. Jessica and I had chosen the Circulatory System. The whole class nodded as Clary spoke, agreeing with every word. I raised my hand next.

            Mr. Gandalf pointed to me. "Yes, Anasika."

           "And to add on to what Clary said, Mrs. Bendich doesn't exactly let us participate. She simply tells us to raise our hands and never picks on us. And she rants about the injuries that she's had."

           Mr. Gandalf nodded thoughtfully, his bright blue eyes gleaming. Suddenly, a student from the back of the room yelled, "And she's so mean!" The class nodded and murmured in agreement.

            "So what I'm getting from this," Mr. Gandalf confirmed. "Is that she's extremely strict and gives you more work?"

           The class nodded.

            "Well, I'm sure the transition has been hard," Mr. Gandalf sympathized. "Mr. Rickman was a very laid-back teacher, yet effective, and Mrs. Bendich is quite the contrary. But, you have to remember that this is an adjustment. I know it's been hard on you. It's been hard on all of us."

           The words hit me like a bullet and knocked all the air out of me. Guilt slowly spread through me, consuming me. I hadn't even considered how hard this had been on Mr. Gandalf and Mr. Marvin. Mr. Rickman was their best friend and he was at Death's door. And here we were, complaining about how a substitute gave us too much homework.

            I shivered slightly, putting myself in their position, and murmured an embarrassed apology. The rest of the class did the same.

           Mr. Gandalf held his hands out. "Oh no. I didn't mean to guilt you. The loss is affecting all of us, just in different ways. And we are the Water Buffalo. We stick together. I'll talk to Mrs. Bendich and ask her to be a bit more... light. Until then, we will all work through this together."

           I nodded and turned back to my computer, working on the Photoshop project I was doing.

            "Oh, by the way! We have a field trip next week!" Mr. Gandalf informed us. "It is to the nearby National Aerodynamics Museum. We will be looking at the planes and jets used in World War II, like you are learning in history. Dress warm; we will be walking around the city. Your groups are on Edline."

           I opened the digital classroom program and pulled up a document. "Hey Clary!" I called. "You and Lina are in my group!"

           Lina cheered. "Yay! We should totally buy a joint cake from the museum cafeteria. I heard they taste like heaven. The chocolate ones have fudge and rich crème in them..."

           Clary rubbed her stomach. "Mmmmm. Is Jessica in our group?"

           Jessica shook her head. "Sorry guys, I'm in Group A." She turned to me. "Wanna start working on our Circulatory project?"

           I took one last look at the picture I was editing and shrugged. "Sure. I was thinking we could use ActivInspire?" That was the program the teachers used on the Promethean board, and I thought it was a good starting point, since we were teaching the class.

            Jessica tilted her head to the side. "Are you sure you don't want to use PowerPoint?" she asked.

           I nodded. "I want to try something new," I explained. So, we got to work on the project, adding in pictures and animations to display all the information. After all the information was laid down on the page, I turned to Jessica. "Do you want to add a few interactive tests? They would be easy, matching and stuff. Just to get the class involved."

           Jessica nodded. "Sounds like a good idea. How about we do vocabulary matching and diagram labeling?"

           I got to work, creating an empty diagram on Photoshop and exporting it to ActivInspire. Then, I created a small definition matching page. Soon, the project was complete. I showed it to Jessica, who was working on our ending slide.

            "Nice!" she complimented. "Here's my ending slide. You think this is good?"

           I nodded. "It meets all the criteria!" With a final flourish, I added her ending slide and turned in the document. Only moments after, the bell rang and I ran to the bus. Mrs. Bendich had been a total flop, but hopefully things would get better. By now, that was all I felt like I had left. Hope.