As part of my job, I leave a preprinted one page report for the teacher that summarizes the day I spent with his/her class. It has only four main sections and my contact information if the teacher requires additional information. (I adapted this form format from another substitute teacher I met online...)
The first section is an area to list any assignments we didn’t complete for one reason or another.
The second section list the overall classroom behavior report. It’s a simple check rating indicating:
- Class was excellent! (Super day for me. Kudos to whoever is responsible for these kids!…)
- Class was well behaved (Sooo-kay day, no real problems, no letters on the board…)
- Overall class behaved (We got through in one piece, maybe only a couple letters on the board.)
- Overall class was challenging (Ouch!…see following comments)
I very rarely give the “challenging” rating, but I do when it’s warranted.
The last section is for any additional information the teacher needs to know about (i.e. Student absences, notes and notices that came in, who had to leave early, etc.)
To date, I have not had any teacher contact me about the report information. Until this last week, I have had no feedback if this information was useful to the teacher or not.
It just so happened that I was having lunch in the teachers lounge with two (
T1 and
T2) fifth grade teachers that I had subbed for, the previous week.
Of all the information on the reports I left for them, they both dwelt on the “Behavior” section the most.
(
Preface: a large number of the elementary school classes use a marble jar to accumulate credits toward some end of the year party or privilege. Good class performance “adds” marbles; poor class performance “subtracts” marbles…)
T1: I read them the report you left about their behavior:
“Lesssee…..Class was
well behaved for the first part of the day…OK! Ten marbles in the jar…Oh,oh!.. it also says: Class kinda lost it right toward the end of the day….Hhuummm….Ouch! FIFTEEN MARBLES OUT!)”
T2: Yea, I had a talk with my group too.
“Look here, look here. It’s checked ‘Overall class behaved’. That’s the second from the
BOTTOM rating! T1’s class had a BETTER rating than you guys! Next time I want a higher rating OR ELSE!”
It’s good to know it works if the teachers care about it…
(Any guest teachers wishing a copy of my report for modification can use the email address in the blogger profile to request it. It’s a single page in MS/Word 97-2002 format)
