Mindset...

EG13-G3

I haven’t been working for most of the week. In fact this was the first assignment call I accepted this week.

Instead, I spend a couple of days trying to extract my lungs and some parts of internal organs from one of two body orifices and occasionally both at the same time. A stomach flu will have that affect sometimes. A couple of more days to recover and I’m good to go.

The district SubFinder system called Thursday night for a 5^th grade assignment at a school I been to frequently this year.

I arrived at the appointed time and was given a key to a room not in the usual block of 5^th grade classrooms. Curious because I know they group the grade levels together.

On entering the classroom, I notice the desks are arranged in groups of four. Again, for some reason, it struck me as odd for 5^th grade. The room, somehow, didn’t “look” like a 5^th either.

It wasn’t until I counted the pods of “groupings of four” desks that I realized that this couldn’t be a 5^th grade class. There were only 20 desks where there should be something like 30.

It was only then I checked the class attendance list and saw this was, indeed, a 3^rd grade classroom.

Without realizing it, I had a mindset going in ready to deal with 5^th graders today and was temporarily disoriented to find I had to adjust for 3^rd graders. That hasn’t happened before.

It seems that this teacher taught 5^th grade last year, changed to 3^rd this year and the system hadn’t been updated yet.

Resetting the mindset for 3^rd grade wasn’t really a problem, just a mild suprise. Third graders are a fun trip. I had one of the best “problem free” and “stress free” classes I have had all year.