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Archive for December, 2009

Still Waiting

15 Dec

It’s the last week before Christmas Vacation[1]  Teachers shouldn’t be taking time off, the administration usually doesn’t like that kind of thing.  They should be giving tests and taking up projects and other various end of the semester (or at least before a giant break) activities.

The jobs are a lot less plentiful right now.  I have the website reloading every 5 seconds so I can grab something quick.  I’m not really paying too much attention to what the job is, which is why I’ve picked up a 2 day assignment in Kindergarten for after the break. 

I did have a PE job tomorrow.  That got taken away from me for whatever reason.  I’m going to tell myself that they wanted to assign it to a specific sub and put it into the system wrong.  It makes me fell better.

I did have a job yesterday in middle school.  I could have picked up a 3 day assignment for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  But I need to be somewhere ready to take pictures at 4:30 on Froday afternoon.  The middle schools here get out at 3:45.  I took too long trying to figure out if I’d have time to get over there, find parking, and get myself set up.

Waiting sucks.  I can’t start doing laundry because there’s a chance I could get called or pick up something where they want me there 10 minutes ago.  I can’t really go anywhere either.  I mean, I guess I could and just have my phone with me.  But I’ve picked up jobs online a lot more often lately then getting calls.  Granted, I’ve also picked up most of my jobs the night before or earlier.

And those half days aren’t helping either.  I’d be ecstatic to pick up a half day for today.  But all of the ones that are showing up are for the rest of the week and I don’t like grabing half days in the future because it means there’s no chance in Hell that I can pick up a full day.

  1. I don’t care what the name of it technically is.  I was at a school recently where a girl was reading the Bible during recess.  That means I can call it Christmas Break if I want to. [↩]
 
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Days 14 and 15 – 5th Grade

14 Dec

Alright, I told you that there were some happy times coming up and this is definitely one of them.

This was a two day assignment that I picked up one day at a time.  I would have rather known that I’d be there for the second day.  Mostly because the kids kept asking if I would be.

I think the best way to describe this class is that I could have put a baby monitor in the room and wandered around the halls and they still would have behaved and done their work.  Not that I would actually even seriously consider doing that[1]. 

I got into the room and they took a few seconds to see that they had a sub, then they started doing their morning work.  That was the theme throughout the day, they did what they were supposed to do. 

The only problem came in the first day.  Most of the class was supposed to be pulled out for some kind of gifted program thing and the teacher was late for whatever reason.  The kids I had still did their work, but they were constantly checking to see what time it was and looking at the door as if they had the power to make her magically appear to take them away.

If I could have a class like this every day I’d be a very happy sub.  I also wouldn’t have anything to write about because I think reading about how a class behaved the entire time over and over would be rather boring.

  1. much less do it, no class behaves that well [↩]
 
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Day 13 – 3rd Grade

06 Dec

I know I said I was going to make things happier for you to read.  I really should have saved that, because this was about the worst class I’ve ever had.  I’ll even go ahead and give you a glimpse into the future and let you know that I have not had a class as bad as this since either.[1]

There were kids who just wouldn’t stop talking and were distracting others.  That was the problem with most of the class.

No, I take that back.  The problem with most of the class stemmed from one kid who was walking around like he’d already joined a gang and didn’t have any reason to be at school because his drug money would support him for the rest of his life.  The real problem was that everyone else in the class was watching what he was doing and would either laugh about it or come up to tell me what this kid was doing.

This kid was sent to the office pretty early in the morning.  I’d like to think that I have enough patience to deal with kids who have attitude problems.  But with the sheer amount of his actions, I couldn’t get the other kids to pay attention.  So I sent his work up to the office with him.  I know that some sort of legal guardian had to come to the school and talk with (I’m assuming) someone in the office.

It got to the point with this class that I had to stop teaching so I could get them to calm down.  I’d also been told that the class had been behaving badly for subs, so I told the class that if they behaved for a sub that they liked then the teacher would ask that sub to come back and the sub would actually do it.

You’ll never guess what happened.  The class started to behave.  It was amazing.

The day wasn’t all bad though, even before that conversation.  Throughout the day there were kids trying to get everyone else to pay attention, or at least be quiet so other people could pay attention.  There were kids who called me over to their desk so they could get more instruction on something they didn’t understand.

And remember the wannabe gangster?  At some point during the day the office sent him back.  I’d sent all of his work up with him, so there wasn’t anything left that he hadn’t already seen.  Well, he didn’t cause any more problems for the rest of the day.  He didn’t even freak out when I went over some of his work with him and showed him which problems he needed to do again.

I think this was the most interesting note I ever left for the teacher.  There’s no way I wouldn’t tell her about the problems we had that day.  But then at the end I told her that I’d love to come back and she had a great group of kids.

Weird, I know.  With the way the day started I never would have thought it had a positive outcome.

  1. I promise, the next entry will be a happy one.  I looked on my calendar to make sure. [↩]
 
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A Note to the Readers

03 Dec

First off, thanks for reading.  I really appreciate the fact that you’re taking the time to do this.  Also thanks for the comments.  It’s great to see the reaction to what I’ve written.

One thing I didn’t want this to turn into is a giant bitch fest.  I love subbing, and for the most part I’ve got good kids in the classes I visit.  But it seems that one of my worst fears for this blog is coming true.

Part of the problem is that I’m still in the process of catching up with where I am today.  It’s just so much easier to remember the bad kids/experiences for me, mostly because the goods ones consist mainly of people doing things that they were asked to do or otherwise should have been doing anyway.

That kind of thing would be memorable to me if I was there everyday to see it.  But it’s not that memorable when I’m only there for one day.  Especially when I have the other end of the spectrum in the same day.

I’m going to make an effort to not make this look like I hate the kids I teach.  It helps that I’m pretty close to being caught up too, so I can remember more of what went on that day.

With that in mind, please know that there will be some good posts in the near future.  But also understand that some days are just bad, and I’m not going to hide those.  I know there are going to be times when there are 2 or 3 or maybe 4 posts in a row that make it seem like I hate doing this.  The truth is that I don’t, and if I do decide that I really don’t like a certain school or class then I just won’t go back to that environment.  There are over 200 teachers that I can sub for in the middle school in just 1 district that I work with.  It’s not like I’m going to have to go somewhere that I truly don’t like.

 
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