Substitute Teacher - FAQ

Someone suggested that I needed a "frequently asked questions" section so...

FAQ's - Elementary School

"Do we have too?"

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

"What time is it?"

"Is it time for recess?"

"When's lunch?"

"Can we have P.E. today?"

"What do we do when we're done?"

...and this is just from today's 4th grade class.

(feel free to add your contribution(s) to this list in the comments section)

Planet Earth...

 After a long day at school, it's nice to find something to relax with...

It's official - School Year 2012-13

The new school year started last week and I was able to pick up a half day in a 3rd grade classroom on Monday and a two day, 5th grade assignment for Thursday and Friday.  

The two days with the 5th graders was just average. Constant requests to "watch a movie" (not on the lesson plan) and requests for when they get P.E. (also not on the lesson plan). The best part of this assignment was the Hawaiian shortbread cookies and chilled Diet Pepsi the teacher left for me (That was on the lesson plan!).

I needed the caffeine.

The 28 newly minted 3rd graders on the other hand, couldn't have been more fun. One boy surprised me with his problem solving math skills.

The worksheet question was: How many teddy bears are there in the picture?

While all the other kids started counting, he called out "13" without apparently counting. I asked how he came up with the correct answer so quickly.

"It's easy! There are three rows of four bears and one extra. Three times four is twelve and one extra makes 13"

I not sure at what grade they start teaching multiplication facts, but I'm pretty sure this kid is ahead of the curve.

I Don't Upgrade Often...

I don’t crave the newest "whatever" when the next "better" one comes out.

I’ve been operating the last nine years on a state of the art desktop PC built in 2003. Yes sir! An Intel Pentium 4 processor, 1Gb of memory and a 120Gb of disk space should be all I’ll ever need.

While it has been pretty much trouble free and is still operating, the disk is kinda full. Full of what I can’t imagine. It’s probably all those photos, blog posts and ten years of M/S Windows upgrade files.

While it was blistering fast in 2003, it’s painfully plodding in 2012.

Most times, I can’t operate Quicken AND a web browser window at the same time as it sometimes takes 2-3 MINUTES to actually switch from one program to the other as the disk activity light churns continuously. Online videos stumble and pause, making a 2 minute video stretch to a 10 minute, unintelligible feature film.

So it’s time to retire the old man and upgrade to something bigger, faster and more up to date. I ordered a new PC with an Intel i7 core processor, 2Tb HD and 16Gb of memory.

That’s 6x more processor(s) power, 20x more disk space and 16x more memory than the old man has and yet…

And...today I ran across this breaking development that appears to obsolete my new computer even faster that the old one:

 "...Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700Tb — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times."


(Update: 09/26/2012 - New computer up and running. Now working on how to network the "new" to the "old" so I can retrieve documents and pictures...)

The Start of School Year - 2012/13

 The 2012/13 school year began this week. I got a teacher emailed request to sub her class this Thur/Fri. 

This will be the first assignment(s) for this new school year…IF they aren’t snatched away in favor of the RIF’d teachers list.

I was told that there were some pink slipped teachers that will have priority over us part-time employees.

Crossing fingers…

Sunday update: The assignment showed up on my class list today

Substitute Summer...

Summer vacation is almost over as school starts again next week (August/15).

What does a substitute teacher DO during the summer? The school district does not as a rule hire substitute teachers to work summer school so I don’t know what a school does if a "regular" summer school teacher gets sick but I know they don’t call me.

Substitute teachers pretty much do what most of the students do during summer vacation – watch TV. Fortunately, every four years there is something to watch.

A friend sent me this earliest known photo of an Olympic "swimmer"...

Weird Al on eBay

I used to buy and sell on eBay when they were charging only $0.25 list your junk valuables for auction. I even bought a car on eBay 10yrs ago. Still have it.

California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and NON-Fruit Based Computers…

(July/31 update: After a week with no updated status for the new school year, a second visit to the district office was needed to get registered and good to go for the 2012/13 school year)

It’s that time of year again. The new school year starts Aug/15. If I want to work the 2011/12 school year, I need to renew my credential.

My “California Commission on Teacher Credentialing 30-day Substitute Teaching Permit” expires August 1, 2011.

The yearly bribe to renew, which is not tax deductible btw, previously cost me the equivalent of ½ a full day assignment pay rate. The state of California is evidentially broke, so they increased the fee to about 2/3 of one days pay starting this year.

For that fee, I previously received in the mail a credential certificate that I could copy for the local school district(s). The fancy certificate was done away with a few years ago due to budget cuts

“Click here to print your credential permit” saves the state millions on envelope costs, postage and handling I guess. I know the drill so it’s no big deal…except the local school district won’t accept the credential as printed from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing web site.

While the web site will print a page with all the correct data, including name, document number, expiration dates, etc, it won’t, for some reason, include the official “California Commission on Teacher Credentialing” identification banner on the top of the page.

This banner is prominently displayed on the computer screen, but for some reason it isn’t included on the printed copy. Maybe some fruit based computer does print this page correctly, but the only way to get almost the same result on a Microsoft computer is to use the screen capture key “Prt Scr”, and then “paste” the result onto a blank photo editor program page like MS/Paint. You then need to crop all "not credential" looking stuff off and print just the credential image.

Of course that clips off all original web site identifiers and time stamp info that district claims they need to make it official.

I would hope that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing might use some of the increased fees they charge to  hire a professional web page developer to redesign and TEST this “print credential” feature using a few more of the popularly used computers…not just the fruity ones.

Alternative Vacation Accomodations - Airbnb

IT WORKS!

We were attending a wedding in the Chicago area in July. Claudette and I have never been to Chicago before so we thought it a good idea to extend our stay and see the sights of downtown Chicago. We needed a hotel room.

Our wish list included:

  1) Short walk to/from the hotel and CTA

  2) We were informed that the preferred area to stay would be near “the Loop” and/or the river.

  3)  Of course, a view would be a bonus.

After checking some other hotel rates in the area, I realized that our wish list might be a bit too ambitious for our budget.  It was then I remembered coming across an “alternative accommodations” web site called Airbnb.com.

Located on the river across the street from Trump Tower, Airbnb listed Ruth’s place. It satisfied ALL our wish list requirements at a much more affordable price. It’s a short walk to the CTA Blue Line back to ORD. It’s near all the river boat tours and “river walk” access.

As this was our first experience with Airbnb, Claudette was a bit hesitant about my “alternative to hotel” stay. A lot of "what if" questions had to be answered.

"...What if this is a scam? What do we do? Where is this place? How do we get there? Sleep on a sofa bed bed for three nights?, etc,etc"

She soon warmed to the idea after seeing the photos and reviews of Ruth’s condo at the Marina Towers in Chicago

We had full access to the studio half of the condo that included the kitchen, living room (with sofa bed), a balcony with fantastic views of the river, bridges and across the street from Trump Tower. Our host was warm and friendly and eager to make sure we had everything we needed.

During our stay, Ruth occupied her bedroom/office to give us privacy while we were in the condo.

We had three days of exploring the Navy Pier, marina beaches and Millennium Park.  We took the Chicago River Architecture Cruise tour (which includes Ruth’s building) and Lake Michigan & Fireworks cruise tour. We even managed to hit “Taste of Chicago” week to sample the best of Chicago’s restaurants.

Everyone we encountered was friendly and helpful (with the few exceptions of the ever present panhandlers), but on the whole three thumbs up for Chicago!

7 Minutes of Terror

Rube Goldberg would be proud: 
 NASA: Curiosity Rover's Risky Mars Landing

Could I get Fired For Doing This?…

By “this”, I mean writing a blog about the daily experiences and commentary about the characters and events in schools. The question stems from a recent news story about a teacher that did just that:

“…Natalie Munroe, a teacher at Central Bucks East High School in Doylestown, Pa., was fired Tuesday night after a long controversy over the content of her foul-mouthed, tell-all blog”

She’s now suing the school district for violations of her right of free speech:

”It's about freedom of speech. It's about having integrity and not compromising the truth”

I’m not gonna guess how this all turns out but I suspect she won’t be working for that district in the future, but that’s not the point.

What would happen to me if the school district took issue with something I wrote about? Would I get fired? Would I get sued? 

While I don’t think my blog is anywhere near as controversial as Natalie’s, the district could take exception and do something about it.

Would I get fired?  The answer is: no! If they formally “fired” me, I could theoretically file for unemployment benefits which increase the employer insurance contribution.

It’s more likely they’d just quietly remove me from the call list and not say a word.

How do I know? It’s happened before (for a different reason)

Where’s Waldo (Marko?)…

A comment to a previous blog post read: “What are you going to do for the summer?”

Well, I won’t be in summer school as all those vacancies are taken by the regular teachers for the summer.

I realize that my posting frequency declines when I’m not in class and…well…It IS summer. No classroom drama, no interesting students doing surprising things, no school administrators making my life blog worthy.

We already took two weeks off toward the end of the school year (one of the only perks being a substitute teacher) to vacation in Hawaii. That pretty much blew the vacation budget for the year but we will be off to a wedding this summer to a location we’ve never been before.

I won’t say exactly where and when so as not to tip off the burglars at home. But if you recognize the location where we’ll be staying for a few days next month and notice a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and Kauai ball cap looking a little lost and directionless, then come on over and say “Hi”. 

Mr&Mrs. Homework could use a few tips on what to see and do while we're there.

(I'll publish ALL the comments after we get back).
So far we have 1 correct guess:
     Erin is correct. Thx for the suggestions!

Udacity Online University Course

Sal Kahn pioneered free online education with Khan Academy so it’s no surprise that the idea is spreading to the university level.

Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun is the co-founder of a new low-cost (and sometimes free) online university website called Udacity. He saw the advantages to those who may not able to afford or attend university life.  Check out his story over at Carpe Diem:  Stanford Prof starts free online university course in artificial intelligence (AI).

It’s a long video (approx 30min) but the letters in response to the course are worth the time. If you just want to skip to the student letters, they start about the 08:00min mark.

(Hat Tip: to Mark J. Perry (no relation) at Carpe Diem)

Final Tally: 2011-2012

The number of days worked this 2011/12 school year:

76 full days
19 Half Days
-------------
95 of 180 in the classroom

They Were Too Smart For My Own Good…

I subbed a 6^th grade class the week before the last day of school. As a class they were really good natured and very smart.

They had a full day of work assignments and even a test on the anatomy of the human body. They had to identify the location and spelling of some of the 206 bones in the human skeleton.

That and the other daily assignments convinced me that there would be little if any idle time for them to get bored and restless.

As it turned out, most of the class completed all the work with oodles of time left. I broke out my standby activity for the early finishers: The Night Watchman Maze.

By the time the rest of the class completed their classroom assignments, they joined up in teams to see which team would solve the puzzle first.

Frustrated team member: What’s this thing called again?

Me: The Night Watchman Maze

I didn’t think anything more about the inquirer as he returned to his team at the back of the room until later. I saw that the “team” members were crowded around one of the classroom computers.

While my blog isn’t exactly anonymous, I know of only one teacher who has discovered its existence so far. There may be more but if so, they haven’t told me they read or even know about it.

All that changed in one afternoon. There on the computer screen is a familiar looking "book shelf"  Blogger template

Kids: Hey! Mr. Homework! You’re on the internet! We Googled “night watchman maze" and found this!

What else could I say? -- I lied:  

Me: No, that’s not me. It must be someone else…someone with the same name.

Kids: No, no…Isn’t that your picture right there!

Me: Hey, It’s time to go out for some P.E.

Who wants to play some NationBall?   

If you don’t know what NationBall is, I’m sure you can Google it and find out. It seems like ALL the answers are on the internet….

Kicked In The Nuts...

2nd grade end of day status report for the teacher:

1) One boy kicked another kid in the nuts. Dad had to come to school and read him the riot act.

2) Another parent contacted the school today to complain that a boy (different one) said "inappropriate" stuff to her daughter yesterday. The boy is a repeat offender and spent the rest of the day in the office talking to the principal and maybe a "behavior counselor" if there is such a thing.


The rest of the class was pretty well behaved.

--- How was YOUR day?

Haiku To You Too!

I kinda knew that commenting on “fluff lessons” these last few days of the school year was gonna come back and get me.

Karma struck in a 6^th grade assignment. The lesson plan called for teaching “American Haiku” imagery to thirty 6^th graders who had already mentally checked out for the year.

Not that I’m all well prepared to teach Haiku, because I’m not. All I know about the subject is what I read in the teacher’s edition text some 20min before class.

Three 5-syllable, 7-syllable,  5-syllable lines of imagery describing a scene, feeling or thought.  This was to be followed by an art project representing the students’ Haiku poem.

What I got in return were mostly variations on the theme:

I don’t like Haiku,

It’s really boring to do.

Can’t wait until two… (Dismissal time)

At least it was 5-7-5 syllables in three lines.

I didn’t even attempt the “art” project part. Instead went out to join extended P.E. with all the other 6^th grade classes for the rest of the day.

You Know the Year Is Over…Part II

The school staff knows it’s over when they send a late comer student to the classroom with a tardy slip indicating the student is late because…

“My shoes flew up into a tree” – Unexcused

(sigh!)

You Know The School Year Is Over When…

I was able to pick up the afternoon half of 6th a grade assignment yesterday. The room was empty when I arrived which means the class is out for P.E. or already at lunch. 

There was no lesson plan for the afternoon on the teacher’s desk, so I went searching the lunch room/yard for the teacher. She was out back monitoring her class playing volleyball.

She gave me a copy of the lesson plan for the rest of the day and indicated that individual students will conduct and teach all the lessons. All they needed me for was “monitoring” until the end of day bell.

Today’s lessons:

·      Crochet

·      Magic Card tricks

·      Volleyball Serves

On the list were “classes” for the rest of the week also:

Wed	Gin Rummy	Paint Ball	Henna Design
Thurs	Baseball Pitching	Basketball History	Making Cupcakes	Iris Folding
Friday	Football	Drawing Cartoons	Cake Pops (?)

At lunch in casual conversation, I mentioned some of the “creative” lessons for the day.

One of the teachers indicated that all the testing and grades were complete for the year.  All the textbooks have been returned to the library. So, while there are still twelve days of “school” left, there was actually nothing left to do…

Sex Ed...

This is why the schools don't deal with the subject until 5th grade. By then, they already have a good idea how it works...

Nurture, Nature or Demographics?

The first two classes after three weeks off (two weeks vacation, a third week to recover from vacation) were like night and day.

The 5^th grade class preparation at the country club school included all neatly stacked materials in the order needed.

A single page lesson plan succinctly stated that all I had to do was monitor the class while trusted students handled everything from taking attendance, conducting the morning meeting and some of the actual lesson instruction. The class required only minor orchestration from me.

It was an amazing demonstration of twenty-eight well organized, motivated, self-sufficient students.

My next day’s assignment in a 4^th grade classroom in the working class neighborhood school less than 5 miles away was the polar opposite experience. Herding cats might be harder, but not by much.

Classroom prep for the sub:

I needed a stapler. Found four empty staplers and one empty refill box. I borrowed some from the classroom next door.

Warm-up activity instruction: Scan the warm-up book under the doc reader until the kids stop saying “We done that one already!”

Get the laptop cart for the kids to use for their “city reports”. When the time came, I was told that: “Subs aren’t allowed access to the laptop carts”.

I called the school library and got permission to bring the class over to use the library computers.

Student conduct:

Three boys, two girls kept the party atmosphere going for the other twenty-eight kids in class.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help but wonder what differences would result if these two teachers swapped classrooms for the year.

Could the 5^th grade country club teacher repeat the “miracle classroom” or would it devolve into much the same as it is now?

Could the obviously exhausted (I assume after 150 days with these guys) 4^th grade teacher duplicate the same motivational skill with the same 5^th grade population or would the class devolve into a six hour, party day?

Is it nurture, nature or demographics?

What’s SUP?

It’s been a few weeks since the last post. We went on vacation for a couple weeks and I didn’t want to advertise that the house was empty while we were gone. We’re back now and I’m scheduled to be in a 5^th grade class tomorrow...

Here are a few pics for you to try and guess where…

 (SUP:  Stand Up Paddling)

Replacement For the Replacement…

Last week was spring break and the first three days of this week was spent recovering from a hacking cough that I’m sure wouldn’t be appreciated in the classroom or anywhere near the teachers lounge.

It’s going to be a light paycheck this month.

Still, I hated to turn down those multiple class offers for Mon/Tues and Wed but that’s one of the “perks”, if you can call it that, of being a substitute teacher.

I don’t have to make arrangements for a replacement in my job since I am one.

(I just reread that last sentence and it sounds a bit circular, doesn’t it?)

And …no assignment for tomorrow as of 08:00pm tonight.

Complete Lesson Planning…

My 6^th grade assignment did not start very well yesterday. I couldn’t get in the classroom door. It was the right key but door simply would not open.

“Oh, yea. We forgot. You have to give the door a bit of a shoulder/bump action while turning the key. Go out and wait by the classroom and we’ll have the custodian help you get in.”

Now that I’m in the classroom (…and after testing my prowess practicing the shoulder bump door opening procedure to make sure I could actually replicate the result for the rest of the day), I found my lesson plan.

Now, I’ve experienced all manner of lesson plans from the no lesson plan, the tiny lesson plan, the giant plan, the Hi-Tech plan, last minute plan and everything else in between.

I’d have to say that this might be the most complete detailed plan I’ve ever come across. Nine pages long and I didn’t even get to the daily work until page 7.

The last three pages of the plan dealt with what I would consider the “working guts” of the lesson plan.

The first six pages dealt with all manner of emergency drill procedures, procedures needed to address the medical issues with the twelve (of 31 total) students in class with allergies, EpiPens, learning, behavior, physical disabilities and what to do or who to go to in the event I needed help.

It even had instruction on how to “open the door”!

That particular page would have been especially helpful if it had been taped to the outside of the door this morning.

Klepto Katie…

Katie put a booger on my chair!!

As designated chair inspector for the day, I pointed out that the indicated booger on his chair was just a scuff mark. 

“It’s NOT A BOOGER! Now let’s get back to work and quit tattling!”

At first impressions, it appeared that the short, cute little girl was being picked on and bullied by some of the other kids in the classroom. But after the first half dozen, tattletale complaints, I started watching Katie with more than the usual frequency of required scrutiny. Initial impressions can be wrong.

It’s the second day in this classroom and I’m see that “they” aren’t picking on Katie, SHE is picking on “them”!!  

 Katie goes out of her way to tick off as many of her classmates as possible in the most irritating ways and she’s very sneaky about doing it!

When she thinks I’m not looking in her direction and she’s off on the next quest to push some buttons. If she’s not constantly blowing her nose and pretending to wipe it on chairs, desks and bodies on her way to the trash can, she’s snatching anything that isn’t nailed down off/under/around the desks of other kids as she wanders the room.

Katie (not her real name) is a 3rd grader at the country club school just up the road from where I live. She is having a hard time making friends. It’s pretty easy to see why.

When I had a chance, I called her over for a quite conference to point out that I was aware of some of the things she was doing.

K: Nobody likes me.

Me: Why do you think that?

K: (shrugs)

Me: Do you think maybe that when someone takes things without asking might not be the best way to “borrow” stuff?

K: (nods yes)

Me: Katie, can you see how words like ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘May I’ might help you to make friends.

K: I don’t have any friends.

Me: No friends at all?

K: (she nods the affirmative).

Me: Don’t you want to have friends?

K: (another nod).

Me: Do you see how taking other kids’ things and putting pretend boogers on peoples’ stuff might not seem “friendly”?  

K: (another nod)

Me: So why don’t we try to do the ‘friendly’ thing and “ask” permission before “borrowing” stuff and also stop putting pretend boogers on people.

Do you think that might work?

K: (smiles and nods again)

Me: Let’s get back to work, OK?

As she makes her way back to her chair, I watch as she snatched a pencil off the first unattended desk she passed.

My end of day report, including observations about Katie, was probably not new information to the teacher.

Books & Covers...

 Simon gets a lesson about "Judging a book..."
...but you'll have to jump over to YouTube to see it.

How Was Your Day - Part 2

After Monday, comes another day at a different school and classroom...

How Was Your Day?

That’s the usual question Claudette greets me with when I get home.

“Well, let’s just sum it up with the last exchange I had with a future inmate as he’s leaving at the end of day”

Kid: Are you gonna be here tomorrow?

Me: Ahh, No.

Kid: Yay!

Me: (almost thinking out loud) Yay!