I know, I know, it’s all been re-PCified to call it “Spring break”, “Spring Bunny”, and “just Friday before Spring break” But, that’s neither here nor there.
One of the unintended perks of substitute teaching is the extended break surrounding the official breaks during the year.
Understandably, the days before and after the actual break are usually pretty bleak for subbing assignments.
There’s probably something in the union contract about requiring a Dr’s note if a teacher calls in sick the day before or after a scheduled school break. I don’t really know but the slowdown of calls around the break week is noticeable.
This means that I have only one day of work this week lined up for tomorrow. I don’t expect to have an assignment on the Thursday before “Good Friday”.
…or as it’s now known, “Spring Get Away Friday”.
Late afternoon update: “…I don’t expect to have an assignment on Thursday…”
Two teachers called me this afternoon to sub for them on Thursday so I guess that blows THAT theory.
G6
For todays “How it went” report on subbing in this 6th grade class, I’ll turn it over to one female student who wrote following:
(Unedited for grammar and spelling)
The Class
Through my eyes and ears this is how the class act today.
In morning everyone was calm like waves of the ocean.
As time went in the afternoon, the class were waves clashing against each other. Some were howling like wolves. Some were like birds say who got in trouble, calling each other cheaters.
Each time we have a subsitute, I wish that the class would change. Maybe my wish won’t come true after all.
That pretty much says it all…
G5
Last week and most of this next has me scheduled almost every day. Same school, three different teachers, all 5th grades.
How do I know when I’ve spent too much time at the same grade level at the same school?
It might be when I start getting personalized notes from parents:
On the second day of my four day assignment, I called for everyone to turn in their homework from last night. The left behinder kid from last month came up, and without saying a word, handed me a note from his mom.
Dear Mr. (my real name!)
This letter is to inform you that J-- is on modified homework. What he is turning in is what he did within the agreed time frame that I have with Mr. (real teacher). So, do not bench him as his work is not incomplete (sic). If you have any questions please call me at (home number) or (cell number)
Thank you, (J--’s Mom)
Now I’m not sure what “modified homework” is but if it’s anything like the “modified classwork” that J— turned in the rest of the week, it’s not much.
The irritating part of this preemptive communiqué is that I hadn’t even threatened to bench anyone over incomplete homework. My job is just collect what the kids turn in and possibly leave a note indicating who didn’t do any.
It might be when it’s proven that I’m not smarter than a 5th grader:
Last Monday’s class of really bright kids breezed through all the classwork with about half an hour to kill before the dismissal bell. The kids were really great for me, so I gave them the rest of the time to break out the games and puzzles for some free time. If they had given me a hard time that day, it would have been “SILENT READING” until the final bell.
Anyway, one of the boys approached and asked if he could challenge me to a chess game. This class had been so perfect today that I felt safe allowing my vigilance over the class to relax enough to accept the challenge.
Mistake! I hadn’t played chess in…oh…about 10 years? Still, I should be able to hold my own against a 10yr old!
After the first dozen moves, I lost my queen. It was all downhill after that.
I tried to concede at least twice, but the kid wanted to play it out. Evade and delay became my game strategy. I only had to last until the final bell. I could then concede but not actually “lose”. Yea, yea, I know. A minuscule, face saving distinction indeed.
Well the final bell came and went and the kid would not let me quit! I’m down about half the pieces I started with and this kid would show no mercy.
I was finally “saved” by kid’s mom who pried him out of the classroom a full fifteen minutes after the final bell threatening that they would be late for his music and martial arts lesson.
“Good game, kid! Maybe we’ll play again sometime!”
My excuse for poor play? I lost the game on purpose! I just wanted to build his self confidence. Self confidence! Yea, that’s the ticket!
(I am NOT smarter than SOME 5th graders…)
Subbing assignments so far this month have been pretty sparse. Counting yesterdays 6th grade class, I can count them all on two fingers. Yesterday’s class was excellent. No problem kids, all hard workers and I had a lot of fun with them.
The only incident of note, and not with just this particular class, is that telling time is still a baffling concept to some of the DA (Digital Age) generation.
I can’t count how many times I’ve had the following exchange:
Kid: It’s almost (lunch/recess/library/computer lab...) time!
Me: No it’s not.
Kid: Yes it is!
Me: What time does your cell phone say?
Kid: Ohhh…
Every classroom I visit has the traditional analog clock with big, little and sweep hands to let me know how I’m tracking on the lesson plan. Now, while it’s true that sometimes the clock isn’t set to the correct time or flat out isn’t working at all, I’ve yet to see a precision digital timepiece replacement in the classroom.
This inability to tell time isn’t relegated to any particular age group. I’ve had similar dialog with every grade from Kinder to 6th and in every instance I was right. Well, almost every time.
Now, where did I leave my buggy whip?…
No calls to sub this week so I have time to see what else is going on out there in the blog-o-sphere.
Elementary grade school math instruction has been pretty basic since the invention of the one room school house and the schoolmarm.
Teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division has been the same for at least the last couple hundred years (…that I know of)
I have, on occasion, questioned the value of teaching estimates in 2nd grade math and when I asked other teachers the “Why” question, the response is: “It’s in the state mandated curriculum. We don’t have a choice”. Meaning that teachers have no leeway in what and how certain subjects are taught.
While cruising the posts of blogger NYC Educator, I came across something even more alarming than teaching estimates.
Take a look at what some doofus-butt “brilliant” educators are pushing to replace the “old way” of teaching math for the 4th and 5th grade levels in favor of constructivist-based math programs such as TERC (pronounced "turk") Investigations or Everyday Mathematics.
Watch the video here:
(Warning! It’s 15+mins in length. Dial-up readers may want to wait till you have access to a faster connection)
Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
Now what would happen if some school district or the state of
I’ve already heard the answer: “It’s in the state mandated curriculum. We don’t have a choice”
While I think there IS value in the TERC and other constructivist methods as an additional way to give H.S. or college students a different way to look at problem solving, I see no value in using it as a replacement for the tried and true basic math algorithm skills learned at the elementary school level.
It’s sad to say but parents would be well advised to skim the text books, at least at the elementary school level, your kids will be using each year to monitor how proficient or deficient your kid might be at the end of the schooling program.
EG13-G6
My approach to each new day in class is, all kids are angels unless proven otherwise.
So today, as I opened the door to Mr. Outlaw’s 6th grade class, I was sure we wouldn’t have a repeat performance of last month’s encounter.
In case you missed it, I booted this kid to the principal’s office for being a constant pain in the ass disruption in class.
Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. Outlaw has a short memory AND gained a couple of posse members since the last time I was here.
I held it together for most of the day, but finally caved and booted Mr. Outlaw and one of his sidekicks next door to another 6th grade class for some "sitting on the hands" time.
This school has great teachers that encourage exporting sucky students into neighboring classes to save the substitute teacher’s sanity contemplate the errors of their ways.
That left the weak member of the posse to cruise by every 10 minutes to ask if they could come back to class.
Just how many synonyms for the word “NO” are there?
I’ve seen a lot of “special condition notations” on lesson plans dealing with kid's individual problems:
But Monday’s 5th grade lesson plan special notation for student “R” was a first:
“ R. – If he smells like he had an accident, send him to the office to call for clean clothes.”
Now my job includes potty training for an 11yr old?!!
At the first hint of classroom flatulence, cheese cutting, fart, gas passing, tooting, pooting, air biscuits or other gas polluting the ozone odor am I supposed to assume it’s R? Then do I then have to ask him if he was the guilty party and needs to leave the room?
Even if the kid does have some control problems, shouldn’t HE know when he poops his pants and decide on his own to go get cleaned up?
If this has been an ongoing (no pun intended) problem, wouldn’t you expect his parents to invest in something like the NASA urine and fecal containment system, good for 15 hours or 900 miles whichever comes first?
I already did the potty training bit for my own kids and still do, on occasion, sniff butt to change my 2yr old granddaughters.
Enough’s, enough already!
I got a peek at this latest question game show clone.
It's much funnier than "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" except that it should be re-titled: "Am I dumber than a post and willing to admit it on national television"
The adult "drop out", who claims to be a computer consultant, walked away with a $175K after hearing and passing on the question: "How many decades in two millennium".
(...For the record, the kids on the show got all the answers right.)
"...Substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing kids to porn using a classroom computer, but the facts strongly suggest that she was wrongfully convicted. Many issues remain, from the need for an independent computer forensics investigation and the presence of spyware and adware on the machine, to bad or incomplete legal work on both sides of this criminal case."
"...Ms. Amero, 40, a longtime substitute, contends that when she arrived that day in October 2004, she asked the regular seventh-grade language arts teacher at Kelly Middle School if she could use his computer to e-mail her husband. But first, she says, she went to the bathroom, and when she returned, the teacher was gone and students were gathered around the screen, watching a hairstyle Web site.
When she tried to close the site, what she got was an endless barrage of pop-up ads for pornography sites. The images continued all day, since “I absolutely have no clue about computers,” she said in an interview."
----------------------Day 2 of 4 opened with only one absent.
LB’s mom called him in sick today.
-- No comment --
The remaining sixteen 4th graders were great today. All were eager, bright, energetic, enthusiastic, and fun to be with.
The lesson plans for the week consist mostly of “packet work” for math, language arts and science. They plow through these things in half the time allotted so we have lots of “silent reading” time.
I decided to give them a break and dug out my video of "The Seedy Side of Plants". I asked them to write at least five interesting notes from the video.
Being the high group they are, only ONE student wrote five “interesting notes”. All the rest generated 20 to 50 “interesting notes”
I read them all but was intrigued by the somewhat Haiku-ness of one student’s paper:
Ants eating the seed…
Eating ants is only hope…
Plants starting to grow…
When woodpeckers store acorns…
Bats flapping wings…
Bats eating fruit…
Bats hanging upside down…
Bats spitting seeds…
Bats pooing out seeds…
Zebra walking…
Melon plants grow…
Snow falling…
Thick wind…
Damp of hair goes down…
They ALL liked the part about how the Strangler Fig tree propagates its seeds. Sample comments:
There’s nothing like good quality subject material to keep the kids interested…
I was asked last month to take this four day, 4th/5th combo class assignment this week while the teacher and all the 5th graders are at Science Camp.
The combo classes at this school are reserved for the high end students who can work independently at or above grade level. It’s considered a privilege to be selected for any combo class at this school.
So this week while all the 5th grader half is away, I’m left with the remaining sixteen, “cream of the crop”, 4th graders… and one 5th grade LB (Left Behinder) from another class.
I could tell right away LB wasn’t happy about the situation being stuck in this “younger” class. His teacher’s lesson plan for the week was: “He’s to do all the same work as the 4th graders”
I couldn’t tell if the half completed work and lackluster participation in class today was the result of not being able to keep up with the high-group 4th graders or the general resentment of being the only 5th grader in school left behind.
Seeking a clue as to what I might be in for the rest of the week, I lightly broached the subject privately by asking him if he had something like allergys that didn’t allowed him to go with the rest of the class.
LB: My mom had a “bad feeling” about the trip and wouldn’t sign the permission paper to let me go.
Me: Wow. Does she have these “bad feelings” often?
LB: Yea. She has them all the time. My brother and I don’t get to do much.
Me: I bet that’s hard.
LB: Yep…
When I asked the office staff person about LB’s situation, she told me that “Mom” is very controlling, WAY too attached to her boys and a general PITA when she doesn’t get her way at the school.
Poor kid…
I was talking to another "retired teacher and now working as a sub" person in the teachers lounge today.
I was telling her that subbing is hard enough without being assigned the before school, morning yard duty since that is when I need to go over the lesson plan and locate all the material needed for the day.
She revealed the following bit of "sub sneaky" tactics.
When she was a full fledged teacher and she knew she was going to get a sub, she'd ask her other buddies if anyone wanted to dump their assigned yard duty and she'd just add it to the lesson plan.
Now that SHE'S the sub, I hope Karma gets her!
---update---
(An interesting sample of follow-up comments from the ProTeacher Discussion Board)
“…We used to give the sub "study hall" duty that normally rotated amongst us middle school teachers when I taught middle school. One week, everyone on my team got out of study hall because we had a sub covering for the week. There is not much a sub can do and we had a great week off.......THAT'S LIFE”
“…Honestly, I believe it boils down to treating others the way you would want to be treated. I would never switch a duty so that a sub would have to do it. Just another reason I think every classroom teacher should have to sub from time to time. Subbing is going to make me a more considerate classroom teacher. It's not "just life" it's common and professional courtesy. Do unto others and all that.”
January 2007 has been the busiest month I’ve ever had guest teaching.
All of the classes were pretty stress free. Yea, even the Kinders were kinda fun.
This week has been a blur but one memorable conversation comes to mind from a 5th grade boy.
The teacher that runs the “Homework Club” asked me to let the kids know that the after school club was canceled for the day and to let them make calls home from the classroom to arrange for early pickup after school.
Me: Sure…
(Kid begins dialing…stops…hangs up)
(--Awkward pause—looking at me expectantly)
Kid: Well….you ARE the teacher!
EG13-G6
Communication is the key. Most teachers will tell you that they have “A Look”.
When some student in class isn’t paying attention or is pushing the limits of a teacher’s patience or just plain defiant, the teacher will give them “The Look”.
The message is clear. “Enough is enough! Knock it off, NOW! Get back to work!”
Most of the time, the targeted student will get the message and comply…at least for a while.
For me, I’ve found that simply standing and without saying a word, staring at the kid in question will provide a quieting affect within less than a minute. Even if the “kid” has his back to me, the room will eventually go quiet until the oblivious “kid” is the only one in the room still ignoring me, yakking away.
Eventually the “kid” will notice that the classroom environment has suddenly “chilled” and get the message. Sometimes the clueless one needs a table mate to nudge and point in my direction that he’s missing an important communiqué about desired classroom behavior.
If that doesn’t work, a raised eyebrow and a look of incredulity to the rest of the class will usually generate a few giggles from the rest of the class to get his attention.
Rarely, will a kid dare to push beyond that point.
A 6th grade boy, named after a famous outlaw, in Wednesday’s class is one such rare case. Having failed several attempts to end his antics in showing off for his two buddies in class, I approached him one-on-one, in his face, and in a low voice have a point blank conversation:
Me: “This isn’t working for me or the class. This is a final warning. The next time I have to deal with your acting up in the classroom, you will be spending some time in the office. Clear?”
Outlaw: “Yes, sir.”
As I’m walking away, I hear Outlaw tell his buddies “He has bad breath…”
I pretend not to hear the comment and things remain pretty good for a while until they return from lunch when Outlaw starts up again. I remind Outlaw of our earlier conversation and his comment to me is:
Outlaw: “I think a visit to the office would be nice…”
Me: “You got it!”
I call the office and ask if I could send a student down for a little timeout. They tell me to send him on down.
Outlaw: “I’m not going!… ”
Me: “What do you mean, ‘You’re not going’?… ”
Outlaw: “I’m not going!… ”
The class goes dead silent. (Long pause…)
Me: “Fine, I’ll have Principal D. come here to talk to you about that.”
(I start dialing the phone…)
Outlaw: “Ok, I’m GOING!!”
I sent a trusted student with him to make sure he didn’t lose his way to the office. I called the office secretary again to let her know that 10-15 minutes of “quite contemplation” on his part should be enough before they should let him come back.
Office: “Oh, he’ll be longer than that. The principal wants to have a word with him before he’s allowed to return.”
I believe that I have finally communicated my message to Mr. Outlaw. We’ll see the next time I sub this class.
I think I'll start with “The Look”…
EG11-G3
This is the first day back in class (grade 3) for 2007. This wasn’t the first opportunity to work this New Year as I turned down the call to class every day since January 3 (the first day school resumed).
I think I had an excuse to not take all those Kindergarten assignments. If not, I made one up. I just didn’t feel up to it yet. Just exercising the only “guest teacher” perk I have.
BTW, the 3rd graders today were great. Lesson plan was complete, the material readily findable, in a brand new school room with working heat.
I’m in 6th grade tomorrow. Maybe something excitingly blogable will happen...
It’s that time again.
It’s the time the government starts demanding a cut for every last nickel you “earned, found, gifted or eBay’ed” this last year. The 1099s, the W2’s, the K1’s, the DoWakka2’s will all start arriving in the mail so the arduous process of deciphering the United States tax code can begin.
I have a college degree in mathematics. I have successfully designed, coded, and programmed some pretty complicated, complex computer programs over the last 30 years. But for the life of me, I have a block when it comes to filling out tax forms.
I despise the process.
Not the actual writing the check which I also don’t enjoy, but the process of trying to decode the government legalese used in the tax forms. The “combining of lines 1 and 2 to enter on form SE10$orkU line 46”, the itemizing every last lint ball that might be considered income or a deduction. The whole process. Hate it, hate it, hate it, I hate it all!!
That’s why I don’t do it.
I let my friend, Gary, do all the heavy lifting. He REALLY, REALLY loves this stuff. The plowing through all the minutiae, the excitement of new tax forms, the installation of this years version of TurboTax Deluxe (plus state). The whole ball of wax.
If you’ve ever seen the TV series NUMB3RS, Gary is my “Charlie” guy of taxes.
I’m more like the detective guy sitting at the desk in the back whose eyes start to glaze over and head tilts back in a coma when “Charlie” starts spewing chalked tax equations and explanations in the analysis of crime patterns of crazed serial income earners.
If only the answers to real world questions were somehow made available in the tax preparation process, it might go something like what I found online at Consumerism Commentary:
Q. This year, I’ve been taking bribes to keep the caviar smuggling ring off the FBI radar. Do I have to report this?
A. Yes.
Q. I found an abandoned car and kept it while the person who lost the vehicle presumably wept. Do I have to report this?
A. Yes.
Q. I hosted a party to sell products to my friends (and use my social circle for multilevel marketing from some corporation), and my guests brought me gifts. Do I have to report this?
A. Yes.
Q. Do I really have to give the government a cut of my estimated $0.65/kid/hr substitute teaching job where I get to deduct absolutely nothing?
A. Yes
I can hardly wait till April 15 when it’s all over.
…until next year.
So greetings to all you culinary aficionados from such far flung places as:
I hope that using the Google search engine for the key words: “turkey boobs” enabled you to cook and enjoy a traditional American Thanksgiving holiday meal.
If that’s not what you were looking for…sorry weirdo!
EG13-G5
The phone is ringing at
But what the hell, this is a different school and a different grade. Maybe it won’t be so bad. As it turned out, it was a short, short assignment for a full payday.
Once you subtract the 15min school tour of decorated doors, the 40mins where the art prep teacher takes over the class, the 35min lunch, the 40min movie, the 20min recess and the minimum day dismissal at 01:15pm, the actual classroom instruction time works out to about 2 hours.
…AND NO PARTY!!
The kids were hyper for the holidays but still trying not to rate a mention on Santa’s naughty list. All in all, it was a fun, successful afternoon.
Maybe that’s why when the office called at lunch time; I agreed to sub for a class of left behinders four days this February while the rest of the school is off at science camp. If I was wrong about all “last day” assignments, maybe the “left behinder” assignment won’t be too traumatic.
Right?...right?...a little help here…
EG7-G4
We returned home last night to five missed calls for subbing jobs for Monday so I wasn’t surprised with this mornings call for a half day afternoon 4th grade assignment. It seems this last week before the Christmas break is a busy time for substitutes.
Lesson plan is minimal and easy.
1. Go over answers to the math exercise they were doing when I arrived.
2. Lunch (40 mins)
3. Make sure they pay attention while Parent/Volunteer reader reads the story.
4. Cursive writing exercise (20mins)
5. Social studies – 6 pages
6. Clean up, Pack up and Go home.
Total class time 2.5 hours! This should be an easy day!
It’s such a short amount of time that any one student shouldn’t have had enough time to find that button that really ticks me off.
This kid has NO impulse control. Whatever thought sails through his head detours out the mouth, hands or feet. Sometimes all three at the same time! Constantly!
Hopefully my report to his teacher will allow me to have the last shot as he spends 20min of recess time on the bench tomorrow.
There are two schools in the district that have very similar names and are easily mistaken for one another. One is a country club school where discipline is never a problem. The other is the polar opposite to the point I don’t take any assignments above 3rd grade at that school.
The first school is overloaded with parent volunteers who sign up to chaperone field trips, grade papers, organize fundraisers and anything else the school might ask of them.
The other school, not so much.
So it happened that I got a call from a teacher to take his 5th grade class at what I thought was the “good” school. He mentioned I was scheduled take his class on a field trip with all the other 5th and 6th grade classes at the school to see the “Nutcracker Ballet”.
“Sure! No problem.” (I’m still thinking this is the “first” school)
When I called the system to receive the assignment number, I realized it was for the “other” school.
Now I know that either I’m going on a field trip with minimal chaperone coverage for a bunch of kids that need the maximum level OR they’ll want me to stay at the school and monitor the real bad ass kids that weren’t allowed on the field trip in the first place.
No winning options here.
As it turned out I ended up on one of three busses with about 250 kids, three teachers, two substitutes, the health aid and one parent chaperone. We arrived at the theater along with busses from about 20 other local schools. The place looks like opening day at the Giants game.
The experience wasn’t any where near as foreboding as I anticipated. The packed house “Ooh’d, Ahh’d, and clapped in all the right places. They seemed to enjoy the ballet even if there were a few grumbles from some of the kids about it being: “boring”, “they didn’t talk”, “I didn’t know what it was about”, etc.
We managed not to lose anyone after the performance and I didn’t notice any discipline disturbances anywhere from the full house of about 5000+ kids in the audience.
We got back to the school with about an hour left before the dismissal bell. My class was rejoined with the five “left behinders” kids that didn’t go.
They also rejoined us with a student teacher that had them while we were gone who informed me that four of the five “left behinder” boys were caught exiting the girl’s bathroom after lunch.
Somehow, I’m not surprised. I'm glad I didn't have "left behinder" duty today.
This is a slow week for subbing. I had a half day in 5th grade Monday and another half day Tuesday in 1st grade.
I’m usually not real fond of 1/2 day assignments but if I have a choice, I prefer the afternoon half of a 1/2 day assignment. It’s usually shorter because the kid’s lunch time is part of that half day. Since you don’t have to be there until
If you compute the pay by the hourly rate you are actually in the afternoon class, then it’s the highest paid job for substitutes (per hour) in this area.
The rate (a little more than ½ the regular day rate) divided by the actual hours in the classroom (around 2.5h) works out to be about $25/hr. Slightly less if you do the morning half class.
Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary in the district you work…
Sorry! This is about a week late but I’ve been babysitting the granddaughter while her parents are in warm, tropical
My wife is a big fan of Rachael Ray and her “30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray” show on the food network.
For the few of you who have not heard of this perky Italian-American cooking dynamo, let me give you the short stroke picture. Her claim to fame is producing a complete gourmet tasting meal in less than 30min. The show is fast paced and entertaining in a down home cooking style where a “half a handful” is a precise recipe term.
Now, the week before Thanksgiving, she had a show that purported to produce the whole Thanksgiving feast in less than 60 minutes. Claudette decided that this year, we were going to try it for the big event.
Monday (T-day minus 3), she returned from the stores with all almost all ingredients required as listed on the recipe sheets printed from the shows web site. The only thing missing was….unsalted shelled pistachios and
“I should have picked them up last week when I saw them all over the place” she lamented.
It was hard for me to believe that
So confident that I could find the elusive turkey boobs much cheaper, I volunteered to complete the shopping list for her on Tuesday while she went to work. Easy-Peasy as Rachel might say.
Tuesday morning, Costco was my first stop. Pistachios and turkey breasts. No problem. Peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts…no shelled pistachios. Whole turkeys, turkey legs, chicken breasts with skin attached…no turkey breasts. The butcher behind the counter said they had them last week, but some Rachael person on TV seems to have caused a run on them this week.
I was starting to get a bad feeling about my ability to locate the main ingredient for Thursday’s dinner and called Claudette to see if she had an acceptable alternative if the required turkey breasts couldn’t be located. Claudette said she since she had already spent considerable time and effort acquiring all the special ingredients for this special Rachael Ray Thanksgiving dinner that I should really try to find said turkey breasts.
As an alternative, I also mildly conjectured on just how hard it might be to buy a whole turkey and perform a bird double mastectomy myself.
I was then informed on how uninformed I was about butchering meat so off to Lunardi’s, another gourmet market, in search of the main dinner attraction. Amazingly, they had them! Whole boneless turkey breasts with skin attached. Fifteen dollars…EACH!
At this point, I didn’t care about how much they were. I have been on the hunt for over four hours now, driving more than 20 miles (at $2.50/gallon) and was getting tired. So with $30 worth of boned turkey breast, I continued the hunt for the last item on the shopping list.
This store has an entire isle devoted to nuts. I don’t mean moi, but the edible kind and sure enough they had pistachios! Salted pistachios in shell, unsalted pistachios in shell, shelled and salted pistachio meats but…NO UNSALTED shelled pistachios! The last stop at Trader Joe's 10 miles across town in search for pistachio meats produced success.
Fifty miles and six hours later, I have finally acquired the only TWO remaining items necessary for our “quick and easy” Thanksgiving feast.
I greet Claudette at the door with the happy news only to find her standing there with a bag of turkey breasts she picked up at the local PW on the way home.
Guess what we’re having for Christmas?
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 5th 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 5th 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 5th grade. The room, somehow, didn’t “look” like a 5th either.
It wasn’t until I counted the pods of “groupings of four” desks that I realized that this couldn’t be a 5th 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 3rd grade classroom.
Without realizing it, I had a mindset going in ready to deal with 5th graders today and was temporarily disoriented to find I had to adjust for 3rd graders. That hasn’t happened before.
It seems that this teacher taught 5th grade last year, changed to 3rd this year and the system hadn’t been updated yet.
Resetting the mindset for 3rd 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.
I’ve been remiss in my blog entries lately. It’s not that I haven’t been working. In fact, I’ve logged four class days out of six since we got back from our short midweek trip. One 4th, one 5th and two 6th grades.
Here are a few of the things I learned or noticed in the last week:
The last two days in a 5th and 2nd grade were really great. The kids had a good time, I had a good time and things got done.
Even though the 2nd grade assignment was a last minute call and, of course, didn’t have a lesson plan (…the teacher was in a car accident on the way to school today), it was a pretty mellow class and we even got some math in before the minimum day dismissal bell sent them home at 12:45pm.
It was a REALLY short full payday from
The only real downer of the week was the annual substitute teacher in-service seminar at the district office.
I was hoping to learn some stuff related to student discipline techniques, classroom management, how to turn off the substitute system caller after I already turned down an assignment because I said I was sick (…he was too sick for that 3rd grade class today, but let’s see if he’s well enough for the kinders)
No such luck. Instead we had a presentation of the FOCAL / CTAG (Closing the Achievement Gap) students and how it relates to us. (…We didn’t find out what FOCAL was a acronym for)
For the non-academically affiliated, FOCAL and CTAG are programs supposedly implemented to focus more teacher/class attention to the under achieving and/or slacker students with the goal of getting them to kick it up a gear and buckle down to business. (…my simple minded interpretation, not theirs)
The obvious question was asked: “How does this relate to us? We’ve never seen a list of CTAG or FOCAL students on any lesson plan or what we’re supposed to do with them.”
There’s a Catch-22. For confidentially reasons, the teachers aren’t allowed to disclose kids identified for CTAG/FOCAL to the substitute teachers. We’re supposed to figure it out for ourselves and do the best we can.
Doing “the best we can with minimal info and preparation” is pretty much the job description of a “substitute teacher” anyway, so this in-service was pretty much a waste of time.
Maybe I should change the post title to: “Sub Standard Inservice...”
EG13-G6
While I have subbed in classes where some of the kids don’t speak or understand much English, but there have always been other bilingual kids there to help translate instructions and questions. Not so with today’s class of thirty-three 6th graders. I had one very shy Thai girl, “J”, that didn’t speak or understand English.
I asked the kids if there were any other bilingual Thai kids in class. No!
I asked if there were any other bilingual Thai kids in the school. “YES! She has a sister in another class, but she doesn’t speak English either.”
I evidentially didn’t emphasize the “BI” part of bilingual. Surprisingly, her parents didn’t send her to school with a “Thai-English” dictionary either.
“How does your teacher communicate with J.?”
“She knows the words ‘yes, no, hello, goodbye and trashcan’… For everything else the teacher uses hand signs and gestures”
With few alternative solutions, we began our day of classroom assignments. The little Thai girl could handle most of the math assignments well enough until we got to “mean, mode, median and average”. Try to explain those concepts with hand gestures.
The rest of the assignments were a total loss for her. She sat quietly watching the other girls at her table during class.
During the writing assignment, a cart of thirty-five wireless Apple laptops was wheeled in from the computer lab. These laptops are available for the kids to access the internet for informational research.
This gave me an idea. I asked one of the other girls at J’s table to do a search for an online “English to Thai dictionary”. Surprisingly, they found a pretty good one that allowed English words and phrases to be translated into
But this allowed J. to hunt and peck English words and learn the meanings. I checked and got permission from the computer lab to let her keep one of laptops for the rest of the day.
I feel like I accomplished something useful today!
“Hello. Goodbye Trashcan!”
EG15-G4
OG2-G4
It’s all about seed propagation, plant cycles, seed dispersal and…..bats and aardvarks pooping fig and melon seeds. Perfect addition to my backup activities bag for that unplanned dead time in class.
This week was ALL 4th graders. Two different schools, two different districts, totally different atmosphere.
The first two day assignment at the country club school was with 24 very well behaved, intelligent kids. It all went pretty easy. They were running through the assignments so fast, that they were becoming bored with all that extra silent reading and down time between lessons.
Me: “How many of you have seen the movie “Holes”?
Them: “Yea! It’s really funny! Are we gonna get to see the movie?...”
Me: “No! You get the sequel about what goes into holes. It’s all about seeds.”
Them: “GROAN!”
By the end of the video, the class comments seemed pretty evenly split between:
1) Eeeeewwwww! Grossss!
2) This is so awesome!
The third day was with a class of 35 kids. Lesson plan included a “Halloween art project” involving paper, scissors, glue, crayons and black paint! This turned out to be more or less partially controlled chaos.
No matter how carefully you explain what parts to cut and what not to cut, they cut wrong, painted wrong, colored wrong. I had a mess of paper parts and paint mixed with glue on tables and carpet.
After lunch, the lesson plan indicated a science project on.......“Seed identification and dispersal”!!!
The lesson plan explanation was an entire page, included worksheets, six little cups with different kinds of seeds to be passed from table to table, magnification lenses for seed examination that the teacher was very worried about losing. I was also directed to do a reading from a book about “Plant Sex”.
I looked at all six delicate little seed cups, the precious magnifier lenses and then at the art project debris on the back table that I would have to clean up after class and saw visions of seeds dumped all over the floor in the paint and glue mix.
The temptation and video topic convergence was too tempting to ignore. I bagged on the project and science class got the video instead. First time viewing for them, second time this week for me.
Comments:
1) Eeeeewwwww! Grossss!
2) Oooohhh!
3) This is so cool!
I penned a note the teacher report that I wasn’t confidant about doing the seed project the way I knew she would want it done so I showed the video instead.
I hope she understands.
