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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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The Anatomy of a Half Day

19 Aug

Half days are just crazy.  The schedule says one thing, but you never know what you’re going to get.

Morning half days really should be treated just like full days.  There’s always the chance the teacher won’t come back on time or at all.  I always bring a lunch with me anyway just in case I’m still there.

Even though your day is done halfway through school, that doesn’t mean you get to leave.  If the teacher isn’t back you can’t just leave the class unsupervised.  In my districts it works out to be that if the teacher is 15 minutes late you’re there for what’s counted as a whole day[1].

There’s also the chance that you can get called and asked to go somewhere else that day.  Once my wife got an extra half day’s pay because of this on top of the pay for the whole day she actually worked.  So having a lunch ready is the way to go.  In fact, just treat every day as if you’re working the entire time because you never know what will happen.

Afternoon half days are a bit easier.  I always eat lunch before I go just because schools are not exactly the best places to eat in the world.  The worst part is that the class has seen the regular teacher all day, so sometimes they can think they’ll get away with things or get your off track in the transition time when you arrive.  I’ve only had afternoon half days in middle schools, so that problem goes away when the kids change classes.

  1. On a slightly related note, my wife once had a day where she was at the school for about 45 minutes.  The original sub left after taking the class to their special area.  When the teacher called to say she’d be late my wife got the assignment  She sat in the classroom reading her book and the classroom teacher came back before the special area class was over.  As a bonus, the sub plans actually had something for the kids to do after they got back from the special area class. [↩]
 
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The Anatomy of an Off Day

18 Aug

I’ve had a few people tell me that it must be nice to have so many days off or to be able to take a day off whenever I feel like it.  I will admit that taking a day off to play video games or watch the newest video from Chrontendo is nice.  But what I don’t feel like enough people realize is that days off aren’t all fun and games, and that most of the time they’re worse than days that I actually work.

The job starts before I go to bed when I make lunch for the next day.  Since I can get called at any time I don’t want to have to spend time making a lunch.  I’ve also had days where I didn’t do this and forgot to put something in there.  Clothes get put out too, but that’s mostly a habit I got into during a period where I wasn’t working everyday and had to scramble to get something out when I got an unexpected job.

The day starts at 5:30am no matter what.  I don’t know when people will be out[1] so my thinking is that I should be ready just in case.  The calls from the subbing agency start at 6, so this gives me a chance to have my computer started (to check for jobs online) and be out of the shower before that starts.

Grabbing jobs is competitive by nature.  I don’t go get breakfast until my wife is out of the shower and is able to watch for jobs.  When I finish making breakfast I bring it back to my computer to eat and watch for stuff.

Then I sit around watching for jobs until about 8:30.  I read stuff online while I do that, or the paper.  But the majority of the time is watching the page with jobs reload.

After that I get things done around the house.

From reading this I can understand how people might think it’s an easy day.  But I don’t get paid if I don’t work.  On a slightly more whiny note, by the time 2:00 rolls around if I haven’t worked it feels like it should be a lot later.  It really throws your sense of time off.

  1. In fact, on the first day of school there was an opening.  That came out of nowhere. [↩]
 
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The First Day of School

18 Aug

Today is the first day of school for the 2 districts I sub in.  Chances are pretty good that I won’t be going anywhere.  That wouldn’t bother me at all actually.  I’d like to let the teacher get things established before I come in.  There wouldn’t be any work I could get them to do.  There’s a good chance there isn’t a good seating chart since the teacher hasn’t had an opportunity to be with the class.

There’s hope though.  I saw a job online for Friday, but it was gone before I could grab it.

 
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Day 135 – 4th Grade

29 May

You’d think that by the end of the year if I hadn’t gone to a school yet I just wouldn’t be going.  There were 4 days left if you counted this day.  I’d had a job yanked out from under me at one of the 3 schools I hadn’t been to the day before.  I thought my chances were gone.  Then I got a call asking if I wanted to go to one of the schools I hadn’t visited.

So I’ve already got to make a judgment of the school based on end of the year craziness, including kids who know that school is almost over and there’s not much the teacher can do when she gets back because of that lack of time.

And you know what?  It was one of the best days I’ve had this school year.  A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that it was Field Day.  I didn’t know this when I went in, I don’t know if the subbing people knew this either.  I really don’t care, because the only thing that would have changed if I had known before I left was that I would have told them I’d be happy to go even faster.  And I might have worn shorts.

The class was amazing.  The only problems we had were clearly because of excitement about Field Day.  I was expecting them to be a lot worse actually.

Best of all, I got a cookie and a freeze pop.

 
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Day 134 – 1st Grade

29 May

Typical end of the year stuff for this assignment.  I was subbing for a long term sub.  Some very basic work was the order of the day.  In some ways, that made the day easier for me because if they teacher came back and didn’t like how I did things, well, she wasn’t actually the teacher.  Not that I took that as a license to slack off or anything, but it was nice knowing that since I had to wait for someone else to get to school who could call the long term sub to get the plans.

What also helped was that we watched a movie.  That took up a large chunk of the day.  And the movie wasn’t that bad either.

The other big helper was a special program that was going on during lunch.  I took my kids back to the classroom to eat and let that stretch out a bit longer than usual.  Recess at the end of the day didn’t hurt either.

The scariest part for the kids was that there were a few kids who could have behaved better.  I know for a fact that they’ll have a sub sometime next week because I know who that sub is going to be.  They know I’ll be telling this other sub who I had issues with.

 
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Day 133 – High School Math

27 May

Back to the school and subject combination of my nightmares.  Same building even.  But a very different day.

The teacher was out so she could go to the doctor for something not serious but you need to go to the doctor to get it confirmed and probably the treatment for.  I know this because she was there until halfway through 1st block, which was her planning period.  It was like I somehow got to sub for the student teacher.  She told me she’d be back a few times throughout the day.  Which is a bit weird, but at least I knew about it, and it’s math that I couldn’t help the kids with so that was a good move on her part.

The first class came in and did their work.  No whining, nothing.  They also knew the teacher was coming back at the end of the period to see if they had any questions about the work.  I’m sure that helped.  When she came in I stuck myself to the back wall (I later moved to the side wall when she had them work out a problem) and just listened.  Partly because I sort of remembered how to do it and partly so I could explain it to a class later that day if I needed to.

The next class was IB, and weird because it was two IB classes put together.  I was never told why they did that, my best guess is that it’s just a favor the teachers trade so they can get things done without having the class in the room.  The one that was technically mine had a review and the other had a project.  Neither of those really happened.  Instead it turned into people playing dots and spades.  I didn’t care[1], the teacher did tell me to let them play stuff when they finished with the work.

The last class had the same review as the first one.  There was a lot more talking, but they still worked.  I don’t think they believed me that the teacher would be back toward the end of the class.  One group started having a pretty heated discussion (with everyone on the same side so I wasn’t worried about a fight or anything) and somehow it ended right before the teacher came into the room.  She was there until the end of school so I didn’t want to worry about any sort of end of the day stuff.

I’d say this was definitely one of my weirder days.  But like I say when I have a student teacher, I’m not going to complain about being paid to basically sit around.

  1. In fact, I didn’t care so much that I helped teach one girl how to play. [↩]
 
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