Waffles Radio

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.