Waffles Radio

I’m still trying to figure out why 5th graders are changing classes.  It still doesn’t make sense to me.

What it does do though is let me pretend I’m in middle school.  Well, a weird middle school where I have to eat lunch with the kids and take them to a special area class and only have to take attendance once.

For math most of the kids left, and those who stayed had a review sheet to do.  We turned it into a competition between the 3 groups who were left.  1st place only had 2 more points than 3rd, and 3rd only missed 3 questions on the whole thing.  I’d say they know their stuff.

Science was a bit boring.  We read a section and I have them a worksheet.

Social Studies was the real fun though.  It was some really basic economic theory.  Supply and demand, how you can change one to effect the other.  That sort of thing.  I’m a giant dork, so I loved it.  Thankfully some of the kids there are giant dorks about it too.

I can see how a sub might not like these groups though.  They were rather talkative the whole time.  But really, they were talkative about the content.  It’s exactly the way I’d want them to be if they were my class.  Maybe a bit quicker to quiet down, but that’s about it.

It also meant for this one that I got to teach basic economic theory to elementary schools kids.  We had some fun with that.

Special area classes in elementary schools are always fun.  You get the kids for at most an hour, sometimes as short as 30 minutes.  If a kid can find a way to get in serious trouble in a special area class then there are some issues.  They don’t expect you to remember names like the kids do in elementary classes most of the time.  You don’t have to take roll.  Heck, a lot of the time the teacher just leaves something fun for them to do that takes almost zero effort on my part.

This was no different.  I had about an hour before the first class came in, and 10 minutes between each class.  Plus an hour lunch break in the middle of the day.  Which is the longest actual lunch break I’ve had since I started, although I have had plenty of days where the teacher’s planning time was right next to lunch.

I was also filling in for someone who had been there the entire week before and had already had most of the classes.  So I had a head’s up on who wouldn’t behave.

It was a weird day.  I showed a video and gave them free drawing time when it was over.  The 5th and 3rd graders just wouldn’t listen at all.  The kindergarteners wouldn’t either, and wouldn’t stop hitting on each other during the video.  The 1st, 2nd, and 4th graders however were great.

The person I was filling in for will have this group again and knows how they were.  I don’t think the ones who misbehaved for me will be very happy about that.

5th graders should not switch classes.  It’s weird and not elementary school-ish and is just weird.  Honestly, it’s the only thing that keeps me from grabbing some 5th grade jobs over other things that are available.  Unless it’s at a school that I know doesn’t do that.  I guess I just want to be at an elementary school when I’m at an elementary school.

Ok, rant over.  Now let’s talk about how the day went.  It actually wasn’t that bad outside of the fact that they wouldn’t be quiet.  I don’t like silence so I usually don’t mind if the classes talk a little if it’s an activity that won’t be ruined by that.  But both sets of kids I had today started being so loud that the late finishers had a lot more noise to deal with.  That just isn’t going to fly.

If that was the only problem though I would have classified it as a good day.  It wasn’t.  We watched a video that went along with what they were studying in science.  An hour long thing that we got about 20 minutes into because people wouldn’t stop talking.  And wouldn’t stop talking.  And decided that it would be a good idea to say the race of people we could currently see in the video was stupid.

That’s just not cool.  So I stopped the video and had them write a note to their teacher saying why we stopped watching the video.

I hope they’re really well behaved when the teacher gets back, because they’re really not that bad.

I was about 3 seconds away from going back to the most non-economical economics class ever.  Someone grabbed it while I was listening to the details on the phone making sure it would be a whole day.  So instead I went to 1st grade.

It twas your standard 1st grade kind of day.  Give them work, do the calendar, try not to laugh when they start to freak out when you do something not exactly like the regular teacher does, that sort of thing.

All of the clocks were different, so I ended up getting everywhere early.  Jumped in front of 2 other classes when we went to lunch.  Not the nicest thing in the world to do, but they seemed to understand.  And thankfully didn’t try to get in front of us.

I also had my second straight day where there was a principal’s kid in my class.  Both dad’s worked at the same middle school.  How’s that for freak?

Oh, how I’d missed the little ones.  It’s nice to get rid of gets and have a whole new crop throughout the day.  But there’s something nice about having the same kids all day too.

The teacher was off in the school doing some training, and came by to make sure I understood everything.  Which worked out really well since there was something she’d forgotten to put up on the wall.  I also got a warning from her and one of the other teachers that there are a lot of teacher’s kids in that class and I might have my hands full.

I didn’t.

This class was great.  They packed up quickly, the were quiet during the silent part of lunch, everything I could have wanted.

Weirdest of all though was who I had in the class.  The guy who came down and took care of things in the bad Spanish class, I had his kid.  That was pretty cool.

Yes, that’s right.  A week in kindergarten.  I liked it, it’s the closest I’ve gotten to being a real teacher so far.  By the end of it the kids, and sometimes even the teacher, seemed to forget that I’m not there all the time.

And yes, there were times were I started wondering why I accepted a week long job where I wasn’t the only person in the room.  But every time I really started thinking like that it was time to start doing something else.

In the end though, I liked it.  It was a week right before Spring Break where I didn’t have to worry about getting a job.  And I learned that I shouldn’t teach kindergarten for real.  I know I’m wrong, but I just don’t feel like the kids or the teacher do all that much.  Since I have an age I know I want to teach, I’m not going to try to figure that out.  So just knowing that I’m wrong and don’t see everything that’s really going on works for me.

Again, I went to a class that had a different sub the day before.  Unlike last time, I didn’t have to try to clean up their mess.  Although I’d really like to know how someone could do that in PE anyway.

I called the teacher before any classed came in^[1] and she told me I could either have everyone practice relays for field day or get stuff out for free play.  We went with the free play for the older ones, mostly because she said they hardly ever got that.  Well, not exactly free play because there were stations.  The little kids actually did relays, but that was partly because someone from one of the local high schools came in so I let him run the class.

The next day was exactly the same, except that guy didn’t come in.

1. Not something I’ve ever done before, but she called the school and asked me to do it. [↩]

It’s always nice when you’ve had a class before.  The testing is reduced, if not gone entirely.  Sometimes you don’t have to tell them your name.  Really, it’s good for everyone.

I can understand a sub having problems with this class.  I did the first time I had them.  But really, they’re one of those classes where you just have to let some things go behavior wise that you normally wouldn’t and understand that going in.  They have such a wide maturity range (both socially and academically) that it’s actually a lot of fun for me since it’s like being in elementary school and middle school at the same time.  The fact that they change classes doesn’t hurt either.

They’re a challenge, that’s for sure.  But they got the work done.  And in the end, that’s the important part.

It’s always an interesting day when I get to talk to the teacher. I get to ask questions and make sure I get everything understood right. Really, I wish everyday would be like that. Too bad it can’t happen.

Anyway, the only problem was that I didn’t remember the Constitutional amendments and had to ask what one of them was because I didn’t see it in the book. But it all worked out. They did their work, I probably went into too much detail about some aspects of post-Civil War society, and they got to watch a corny video where a globe tried to rap. If that doesn’t put you in a good mood then you really don’t need to be around kids.

Oh yeah, and they weren’t high schoolers.

You know what I really love?  Days where I get to do stuff.  Especially when I get to do stuff with a class that knows how to behave, and wants to learn, and where we get to skip all of the introduction stuff.  Just in case you haven’t guessed, this was my cheating 3rd grade class.  The ones where I don’t have to try at all to get them to behave or anything.

My favorite part of subbing in this class is that even though I’m not certified, the teacher knows that I’m willing to teach whatever she leaves.  I like knowing that someone is trusting me with their class.  I like even more that I’m actually able to do it.

Ironically enough, they had to take a test while I was there.  The for real test as opposed  to the pre-test that they took the last time I was there.  I just thought that was kind of cool.