The academy kids complained just as much about having to write an entire page^[1].  But everyone actually had work to turn in this time.  I considered that a huge improvement.

This time the 7th and 8th graders just had to finish something they hadn’t finished yet.  For almost all of them that meant finishing a project based around texture.  I’m still thinking that Home Ec is code for Art, but I’m not complaining at all.  These kinds of classes are fun.

6th graders essentially had the same assignment, but they were sewing some words.  I couldn’t help them with it at all.

The only thing close to a problem all day was that two new students came into the class.  1 was in 8th grade, and I had extra sheets for people who weren’t in class the day before so she got to do the work just like everyone else.  The other new kid was in 6th grade.  He’d lived here before and had moved back so he knew some people in the class.  He spent the entire time catching up with them since I didn’t know where the supplies were to get him started.

At the end of the day I thanked the teacher for letting the kids do real work.  I’ve seen them with another sub this year, they were doing work out of the book.  That’s bad enough in a regular academic class.  But electives should be fun and doing book work just ruins it in my mind.

1. This falls on deaf ears when it’s aimed at someone who wrote 3 page papers in the 2 hours before the class they were due in college.

First block just had a review to do.  Gave it to them, sent them around the room, and grouped them together at the end to go over the answers.

Second block had a different sheet.  I wonder if the teacher thought that it would actually take most of the class.  Either way the class behaved.  Most of them decided to take a nap.  I know principals don’t usually like it when kids sleep, but I just can’t make myself give the kids more work than the teacher thought to give them.

Forth was a bit like first.  They had a quiz to do first, and weren’t happy at all about that.  Apparently teachers aren’t allowed to give quizzes unless they warn the class first.  I will admit that it’s probably a good idea for their grades if the kids know about it.  But this was a vocabulary quiz.  With a word bank.  It’s not that bad.  One kid didn’t want to take it so bad that he just wrote his name on it and gave it back^[1].

The other big difference is that this group was a lot more talkative than the other classes.  When we went over the answers for the review I had to stop after every question for them to get quiet again^[2].

Not a bad day at all, although that last group did leave sort of a sour taste in my mouth.

1. This actually doesn’t bother me at all.  Everyone who has ever done this has been relatively polite about it.  And in the end it’s the teacher that has to deal with the not done quiz and not me.
2. Although I have to admit that part of that was wasting time because I started going over the answers sooner than I should have.

So there was some adjusting on both of our parts.  It worked out pretty well.

It wasn’t a notable day at all except that I made a girl cry.  I thought I heard her cuss, and when I tried to talk to her about it she got an attitude with me.  I was about to send her out of the room when she started crying.

Since she’s a 6th grader I decided to cut her some slack and tell her that teachers can be wrong too, and that it’s perfectly fine to tell a teacher they’re wrong if you do it respectfully.

7th and 8th graders finished a color wheel they started yesterday.  That might seem a little low for them^[1], but the teacher was sneaky.  She made them use paint to get the colors and took out everything that wasn’t red, blue, or yellow.

There were actually some kids who asked how to make certain colors.  I can understand yellow-orange to an extent even though I think it should be pretty obvious how to make it.  But they really asked how to make orange and what would happen if they mixed red and blue^[2].

The only two issues with them were that they all wanted to talk to me about stuff since they’d had me before and 40 minutes is a really short class.  It feels like they have just enough time to really get into the work, then they have to pack up.

6th graders were a different story.  The second group of them was great, acted just like the kids in the other grades except they talked amongst themselves more than they did to me.

The first group is probably going to drive this teacher insane.  6th graders had to design a quilt.  Way too many people in the first group just rushed through that.  They were loud.  Not talking a lot loud, physically loud.  They didn’t know how to use a compass^[3].

I like the school though, and I get to go back to this class next week.  One of the other teachers also said that with her 6th graders they’re skipping sending the kids to another teacher or somewhere else in the room if they misbehave and going straight to their principal.  I might need to do that with them.

1. I know it seemed that way for me.
2. To be fair, I always had trouble making purple and usually ended up with something between black and poop brown.
3. I would have forgiven them and just thought it was because they’d never used one before, but the second group knew how to use them.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.