Waffles Radio

So far, this is the worst day I’ve had.  And it had nothing to do with the kids.

I got lost trying to get to the school.  Which isn’t really that big of a deal, it’s a new school that isn’ in the GPS or Google Maps.  I called my wife and got directions, she was leading me to the wrong place.  I called the subbing people twice before I got there.  Thankfully they were really understanding about that.

I got to the school late and hurried up into the office and down to the classroom so I could let the person covering my class get back to where they were supposed to be.  But guess who was there. A student teacher.  In all reality, they didn’t need me there at all.  So it was like kindergarten, except with second graders.  I got to sit around and do nothing.

At some point the teacher said something about me being the sub until the regular teacher got back.  Um, what!?  That’s the first I’d heard of that.  When I called the system that morning I’d been told by the computer that it was a full day assignment.  Oh well, maybe there was a misunderstanding and the student teacher didn’t know about it?

Turns out she was right.  The regular teacher got back at 11.  If I’d been on time and she’d been 15 minutes later I would have been there long enough to get a full day’s pay.

When I fill out my timesheet information online I can leave a message for the person approving it at the schools.  I left them a message saying that the computer told me it was a 1 day assignment and that someone needed to look into what went wrong there.  It turns out that the computer had the right times in there, I just didn’t listen to the times since it was a full day assignment.  The only problem is that 7:15-11 is in no way over 4 hours.

I don’t know if it was someone in the office or the teacher messing that up, but I do know that I don’t think I want to go back to a school where they can’t tell time or put job information into the system correctly.

Didn’t I already mention that I don’t like kindergarten?  For some reason, I did it again.

This time was better though, I got to do things.  It also helped that the teacher still in there knows my wife.  Or at least can recognize her as my wife, either way is fine with me.  The point is, I wasn’t just a warm body sitting there for ratio purposes.

I still don’t want to do kindergarten all that often though.  It’s fun playing with the kids, that age group is fun, they’re not the problem at all.  It’s having that other adult in the room that knows more than you do about the class.  I never really get a chance to get to know the kids or anything because the other teacher just takes over.

I wish there was a school that didn’t have assistants in the kindergarten classes.  I don’t think that’ll happen around here though.  Until then, I guess I just won’t jump on kindergarten jobs early like I do with other grades.

Remember the teacher that you hated in school because everything had to be just perfect?  Lose points because your name is a centimeter away from where it’s supposed to be on the paper.  Lose recess because you put a marker in the bucket upside down.  That’s who I had for this one.

I have never gotten the idea that the teacher would somehow hunt me down if she found out I didn’t do something right.  Until this day.  I mean, how crazy does a teacher have to be for me to get that idea just from the lesson plans?  As crazy as her obviously.

The kicker was that she wanted me to grade the math papers.  Math is at the end of the day.  I’m not supposed to stay late for any reason, so I don’t know where I was supposed to get the time to grade these papers.  On top of the fact that if I was a teacher I wouldn’t want a sub grading my student’s papers anyway.

I always leave a note at the end of the day letting them know how the day went.  Up to this point I’d also said that I’d love to come back (and that was true every time) and left my number.  This teacher got nothing because if I have my way I won’t be back in that classroom ever.

Third graders are not universally smart.  It’s not like I had a bad day here, but it wasn’t anything like the 3rd grade I had before.

Honestly, this is one of the days where I wish I’d been keeping notes earlier or something.  I really don’t remember what happened at all except that I found the country school around here.  On one hand it means that nobody stood out in a bad way.  On the other, I feel bad because if I saw these kids at the store I’d know I recognize them but wouldn’t be able to place them.  I don’t like that.

Let’s get one thing straight before this one really starts.  I like 5 year old kids.  They’re smart, you can have real conversations with them, and they’re cute enough to not really ever get mad at.  But all of that being said, I don’t like subbing in kindergarten.

The problem isn’t how the day goes, or the way the kids act, or anything.  It’s that around here there’s an assistant in each kindergarten room.  Which means that when I sub I don’t necessarily get to do anything.

Part of that is my choice.  If there’s someone in the room who’s always there, then who am I to tell them not to do something so that I can do it?  Kids at this age need consistency.  Part of it is that there’s not a really good distinction about who’s in charge when I sub for the lead teacher.  Technically it’s me, because I’m subbing for the lead teacher.  But again, the assistant is there every day.

There wasn’t really anything remarkable about this job.  I went in, the kids behaved, there was a lot of learning disguised as playing.  It was a fun day for me, but rather boring at the same time because of the lack of something to do.

This one was almost cheating.  I knew the teacher, I knew the class would behave.  Hell, I knew where a lot of the stuff in the room was already.  I’d helped put the thing together.  How much better does it get?

Well, they could have brought me cookies.  That didn’t happen.  But they did do their work without complaining.  They behaved.  Except for one kid, and I learned later that there were good reasons for that.  If I had known I would probably say that he behaved too.

I mean, these kids were excited about learning grammar.  The only thing weirder than that is that I was excited about teaching it.  Raise your hand if you saw that one coming.

Low points of the day: she originally wanted Kayleigh to sub^[1], and I might have broken a girl’s heart when I think she asked me out.  Well, asked me to write my name in her agenda which is the same thing at that age if you ask me.  If every job could be this easy I wouldn’t have a thing to worry about at all.

1. I’m really stretching for that.  I’d pick the certified teacher of the non-certified sub guy too [↩]