All of my slots were reserved, so noticing any changes would be unnoticeable. HBOETs in our online school are given with a link to see their schedules. We call it the reservation engine or the RE. But the RE changes from time to time. Students can cancel their lessons via informing the office staffs or by deleting their reserved slots. Students are given a link in which they can access their reserved slots. In my case, I check it every fifteen minutes to see if there are any changes. But in the case of my last lesson, I oversaw the changes.
That was also because my evening lessons were all spent waiting for the students to go online. I only had two lessons, which were at the start of my evening lessons. The next lessons that came next the students did not go online. So, I had a lot of free time waiting for them.
I thought that would be the case also for my last lesson of the day. Just as usual, I checked my RE for any changes and didn't notice anything. I also checked the general chat room for all HBOETs since the schedule is always also posted there. I was really excited getting the failed call attempts to my student for the last lesson. As a general rule, I also reported the matter in the HBOETs' general chat room. Apparently, the staff in-charge did not even gave confirmation on my report. I thought, the staff has repeatedly typed another teacher's student. I just continued calling the student. But five minutes have passed and after repetitively calling my student, another student sent me a message in the chat box asking if I was available and open for the lesson. That gave me the cold sweat....
I browsed through my RE again and voila! The name on my last slot has been changed! I checked the HBOETs' general chat room change and voila! Has the name changed? I hurriedly called the student who sent me a message. The first order of the lesson was an apology.
Good thing, the student was not angry and did not scolded me about being late. I explained my side and he understood even though I was already speaking fast. I think he was barely catching up and getting what I said but still he understood. And good thing also, the student that I repeatedly called was offline. So, there was no further confusion in my side.
I just found out during the course of my apology, the student whom I called first deleted his reservations for me and for another teacher. And the real student got lucky on making an on-the-day reservation. Recently, making an on-the-day reservation is virtually impossible in our online school since there are already a demand of less teachers for more students. I also explained it to the student. It was my last lesson for the day, so I wasn't be troubled extending the lesson. I apologized again before ending the lesson and he laughed at me apologetically.
After that lesson, I hurriedly sent all my evaluations for the day. I told my co-HBOET about it and she said that it was okay. I sighed with relieve from the friendly consideration but I still hurriedly said good-bye for fear of getting reprimanded by the office staff. Good thing, the office staff didn't remember doing so.
In my case, I will never ever get so confident in times like that. Teaching online is breeze but there is always a big responsibility to look about. And I hope something like that will never happen again!
Another good thing was that the staff did not reprimand
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