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Day 7 – High School Babysitter

01 Sep

Officially this job was PE.  Originally it would have been better.  But they were doing underclassmen pictures and that messed a lot of things up.

I haven’t even sent anyone out of the room all year.  That lasted until about 5 minutes after class started.  I told one boy to pull up his pants[1] and he got an attitude with me.  Mostly telling me that he didn’t have to do it and asking why I hadn’t talk to someone else yet.  He took his ID out of the case when he figured out I was going to write him up[2] and just left.  He magically came back later with a late pass and a story that an administrator told him he was fine as long as he had on a belt.  I don’t believe that, but his pants were at least high enough so that I couldn’t see his underwear anymore and I already had the referral written.

I also got to write up two kids who decided it would be a good idea to climb up the bleachers and throw things down to the floor.

Other than that, it was a relatively boring day.  Just sitting in the gym waiting for class to be over.  In the last class some people started playing soccer and basketball[3].  That was fun to watch, but was really the only thing of note the entire day.

I’m done with high school PE.  Maybe I’ll do it if I can see that it’s a health class, but after today and my adventure in Driver’s Ed I’m just not going to take the chance.

The best part of the day though was that since he didn’t have a classroom or an office where I could be out of everyone’s way I just went home after the teacher’s last class.  Nobody had a problem with that at all, although I don’t think they would have had a problem even if it was a regular class and I had a room to stay in.

  1. I get it, I’m an old man.  But if I can see the top of your pants below the bottom of your shirt we have a problem. [↩]
  2. I already knew his name.  It’s on the role, and I checked to see what it was before I started the whole thing so I wouldn’t have to ask. [↩]
  3. Not at the same time, that would be too much. [↩]
 
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Day 6 – International Studies

31 Aug

Officially the title for this one is FL Assistant.  I had no idea what that was when I grabbed it.  All I knew was the school it was and there was a chance I’d see a few kids I wanted to run into.

Turns out that FL Assistant, at least at this school, is a part time thing[1] that the school uses as a supplement to social studies.

4th and 5th graders had a packet about a country and the read that and took notes.  Maybe not all that exciting, but it is only the second time they’ve been in there.

2nd and 3rd graders started a book about the continents.  Today’s pages were the cover, the world as a whole specifying where they live[2], and South America.  Pretty easy stuff for them so far.

1st grade and Kindergarten made passports.  Hand drawn self portraits and done on white paper that’s way too big to be real, so no worry about falsifying documents.

Actually, they were the only real problem of the day.  I spent too long with the kindergarten class explaining what a passport is and what it’s used for.

And those kids I wanted to run into?  Didn’t have either one of them in class.  But they both had to go by my room and stopped to say hello.  I got a hug from one of them and another kid asked if I was her dad.

  1. I’m assuming this because she only has classes 3 days a week.  So maybe the other days she does other things around the school that I don’t know about. [↩]
  2. Did I really just find a way to dorkify colering? [↩]
 
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Day 5 – Academic Support

31 Aug

It’s really a form of Special Ed, but not really, sort of, I don’t know…  I’ll just tell you how the day went and let you decide for yourself.

7th graders came in and got work.  The homeroom type class got one set consisting of reading stuff[1] and the other classes[2] got one page of math and one page of reading comprehension.  Next 8th graders came in for their homeroom type thing and got the same pack that the 7th graders got in their version of the class.

Then, technically, my day was over.  Which wouldn’t have been a problem at all except it was only about 11:30.  I was afraid this would turn out like my day as a testing supervisor and my whole day would turn into a half day[3].  I figured I could eat lunch, get the room cleaned up, have that last until 12:15 or so and get the credit for the whole day.

Then someone came around and asked if I’d be able to stay for her last class of the day.  Good because it meant I wouldn’t have to finagle things to get the whole day I was expecting.  Bad because I had to find a way to waste time until 2:15.

I ended up going to the library and helping out in there.

The last 2 classes of the day were basically like the 7th grade ones above.  The only difference was that there were two math sheets instead of one math and one language.

I’m a bit torn about if I’d want to sub for the teacher I was there for originally again.  The classes were no problem at all.  I just don’t want to count on something else popping up to make it a whole day.  I can’t be lucky like this every time.

  1. I’m not entirely sure what it was since I didn’t look too closely at it. [↩]
  2. They lose an elective to come to this.  On one hand it sucks, but then again they’re not here unless they need it. [↩]
  3. I called the system to see if it was, in fact, a whole day assignment.  It was so I didn’t think I’d have a problem getting paid for the assignment that I actually signed up for but you can never be too careful. [↩]
 
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Day 4 – 8th Grade Social Studies

30 Aug

This one started off a bit weird.  The system said it would be social studies and science.  It was just social studies.  The teacher had also turned their desk into a fort.  I wish I could say that it set the tone for coolness.

It really wasn’t that bad though.  The kids watched a movie and took notes.  The movie pretty much filled in the class time.  No extra time means no downtime for the kids to get in trouble in.  Can’t complain about that.

The worst part of the day was that we watched it on a VCR so I had to rewind the tape.  I’d forgotten how long that can actually take.

The best part was that one of the teachers came over to make sure everything was set out right and said they weren’t worried about how I’d do because they heard I was awesome.

 
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Get Me Out Of Duty

26 Aug

For the second part of my series on things teacher can do to help the sub out we have something I wouldn’t have even thought of asking someone to do, except one day I had a teacher leave in the plans that she switched duty with someone else and I didn’t need to do it.  So I’ll apologize for the wording in the title right now.  Sorry, I couldn’t think of a way to word it that didn’t end up sounding like I’m asking the teacher to get me out of work.

Most duty really isn’t a big deal.  Recess duty is the easiest for me, but I like being outside and sometimes get to play with the kids.  Lunch duty in elementary schools isn’t really a big deal either, although sometimes I wonder why the school gives the kids things that you need the jaws of life to open[1].

Middle schools is where it really helps to not do the duty.  Depending on the schedule you could have only seen one class.  That’s not really much help since you can’t tell who the kids are unless you know who they are.  It is a deterrent, so it might work.

The other issue I’ve had with duty, and I know this is a personal problem, is that I don’t know what the schools allow and what they don’t.  It’s lunch, there’s going to be playing around.  But how much before I say something to them?  How loud do they get?

Most of the time I feel like I’m just walking around the cafeteria wasting time.

So teachers, if you can make it so the sub doesn’t have do to your duty that’s nice.  But if it would be an inconvenience to you or the person you’d be switching with don’t worry about it.  We’re there to do your job, and if that entails duty then we do duty.  And again, if someone hadn’t done this for me one day I wouldn’t have even thought to say anything about it here.

  1. I’m looking at you nasty nacho cheese. [↩]
 
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Day 3 – Middle School PE

25 Aug

This was a weird day from the start.  They have 2 PE classes going at once so there was another teacher there.  She pretty much did everything.

6th graders were getting their PE uniforms so my job was to make sure they fit well enough now that they’d stay on but were big enough for them to grow into[1], and hopefully keep them from needing to buy another one next year.  They all wanted to use the bathroom stalls to change in.  It makes sense, they haven’t really needed to change in front of people before.  But there were 3 stalls and a lot more boys than that.  It was kind of funny seeing them all wait around to change into the gym uniform for about 3 seconds, then wait around again to change back so they could take it out to the gym and have their name written on it.

7th and 8th grade would have been a lot better.  They’re doing something based on Survivor where they’re divided into tribes and compete with everyone else for points.  Yesterday they had to use PVC pipes cut in half longways as a path to roll a golf ball across the gym and back.  That was a great idea, forced them to use teamwork since the pipes were only a few feet long each.

The thing that kept those classes from being better though was that they also have PE assistants.  That worked out really well for the teacher, she had instant people to help demonstrate the game.  And it was great for me in the locker room, they took care of reminding people of their locker combination and stuff like that.  It also meant that there wasn’t much that I needed to do.

I’m sure that will be made up for later.

  1. Boys only since I’m a boy.  They had parent volunteers helping but I’m pretty sure the other teacher handled the girls. [↩]
 
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Day 2 – 8th Grade Social Studies

25 Aug

The best thing about these early in the year assignments so far has been that there’s no chance of the kids trying to tell me that the teacher always lets them do certain things like leave early or throw spitballs at people in the hall[1] or anything else really.  They’ve had 4 days of school, not enough time to know that sort of thing yet.

The next best thing, and not by much, is that the kids don’t know if what they’re doing is something that would have been done anyway or it it’s only being used because I’m there.

This was a pretty easy day.  There were 2 worksheets that I passed out with a total of 3 sides of work.  Basic stuff revolving around discovering information about our state.  Well, maybe more than basic since they really did need to look the stuff up, but you get the idea.

The amazing thing for me is that I haven’t had to send anyone out of the room yet.  One kid got close, he wouldn’t stop talking and the people in the desks around him continually asked him to stop.  It’s amazing how much quieter the room got when he was off by himself.

The only other real point of interest is that I think something in the school hates me.  This is the only school where the schedule has been played with and I wasn’t told about it at the front desk when I signed in.  Thankfully the teacher next door came and told me about the assembly that day and what the new schedule would be.

I think I just need to remember to ask one of the other teachers if there’s going to be anything weird going on when I get there.

Update: I almost forgot something.  The entire day I felt like I’d been in the room before.  Being in the same room isn’t a big deal.  I’ve repeated class before.  Since this is my second year subbing I haven’t really had a chance to repeate a room with a different teacher yet.

So it sort of bothered me a bit all day about why I felt like this room was important somehow.  Then it hit me.  Remember the day a kid threatened to shoot someone first thing in the morning?  This was the room that happened in.  Thankfully nothing like that happened again or I would never go back to that room again because it obviously would be haunted or cursed or something.

  1. Not that that one has every happened. [↩]
 
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Think About Your Lesson Plans

23 Aug

Right off the bat I’m going to hit on something that I’m pretty sure will get some people a little annoyed at me.  However, I feel like leaving good lesson plans for the sub is one of the most important things the teacher can do.

Let’s start off by stating that I have somewhere right above 0 experience writing lesson plans.  The few times I’ve had to do it, it sucked.  But I have read and had to follow a fair number of them.  This doesn’t make me an expert at all, but I’m not entirely new to them either.

Let it also be known that I understand teacher don’t always know they’re going to be out, and thus can’t always make sub friendly plans.

On that note though, one thing I’ve found really helpful is a set of general plans that outlines the procedure and schedule for every day of the week.

One thing I’ve noticed on a lot of plans is some teacher short hand.  Which would be great if I understood what it was supposed to say.  Again, I have no issue at all if it’s lesson plans that the teacher wrote for themselves and it’s just what I have to go by because it’s what’s there.  But I’ve also seen it on plans that look to be specifically written for me.

Largely the problems that I have with the plans just seem to stem from the teachers having certain habits when they write them, mostly in what they don’t write.  Where stuff can be found is the big thing.

I’m not totally full of complaints though.  One of my favorite things is when people have a template for the lesson plans.  The biggest reason for that is the special area classes.  Most plans just have that day on them.  Which is great, and really all the information I need.  But I also worked a day where the plans were sort of for the day before, a day in which we had a snow day.  I knew where to take the kids for the special class because everyday was on there.

Recess can be a pain too.  Which playground do they go to?  Do they go somewhere else if it’s rainy?  What can be used for inside recess if I have somehow angered the subbing gods and they want to punish me?  You’d be surprised how many times the plans just say recess.

To sum it all up, I just wish that every teacher remembered that they’re writing the plans for some unknown person who doesn’t necessarily have any classroom experience at all and that it would be pretty hard to give us too much information.

 
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Day 1 – High School English

21 Aug

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect from this job.  High school English tends to be a bit on the boring side.  Mostly it’s reading a story (or reading something else) and answering questions about it, or pulling out the grammar books that only seem to be used with a sub.  Well, that is if the kids can be believed about that one.

I had no idea what levels of English this would be.  Plus it was the first Friday of the school year.  I was all prepared for a day full of kids not doing the work.

But it went a lot more smoothly than I thought.  I was also ready to give kids a break on being late.  The only person late all day was so late he had a pass anyway.  Nobody got sent out of the room.  Only one person complained more than once about having work to do.

I also decided to try something new with the note to the teacher.  I thanked her for having everything so ready for me.  We’ll see if that gets me any return trips.

 
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New Feature Centered Around What Teachers Can Do To Help the Sub

19 Aug

This is an idea that comes from the end of last year.  I was going to do a series over the summer about this, but life got in the way.  Instead, I’m going to do it now.

The basic idea is that being a sub and being a teacher are not the same thing.  I don’t have any training in teaching at all.  My wife does, but she isn’t in the same class every day or even the same school so she doesn’t know the routine or the way the teacher wants things to work in the classroom.

That’s not really anyone’s fault, it just is and the only thing that can fix that is if every potential sub could magically be in the room with every teacher every day of the year.  That’s obviously not going to happen.

I’m not looking to get the teacher to do tons of extra work.  All I’m doing is throwing out some ideas to make my day there, and the teacher’s subsequent return, move a lot more smoothly.

I’ll admit that some of these will be flat out stupid ideas.  It comes with not knowing the inner workings of the school system.  Some of them will be good ideas that really can’t be easily implemented.  That’s fine too.

All I ask for is honest feedback of the ideas.  I’ll have no problem admitting I was wrong.

 
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