Well That Was Easy!

So this is gonna be really short, because I've been up late the last 3 nights in a row and I'm pooped! I was going to write this tomorrow, but I was afraid I'd forget, so I'm writing it tonight.

Today I subbed up in north Salem in a 5th grade. It was just a morning assignment. The kids arrived at 9, and did their independent, everyday morning-work for a half hour. Then they had music, followed by PE so I didn't see them for an hour. I picked them up from PE, then we went back to the room, got supplies ready and went to the computer lab. The assistant and I helped the kids with some project they were working on that had to do with explorers. After an hour in the lab, we went back to the class where I was supposed to lead some math activities. But we arrived, and their teacher had returned, so she took over. I took some cardboard out to the recycling for her, then help a few kids with their work before I left. Pretty uneventful, but great to get paid for it!

There was one funny moment: when the kids were arriving a boy came in the door and I could tell by the way he acted that he was trying pretty hard to be "cool". I said "Good Morning", and he looked at me and asked, "Are you a substitute?" in a sort of mildly smarty-alecy way. To which I replied, "Yes, I am. Are you a student?". At this he lost control of his cool exterior for a moment and a chuckle escaped him. He recovered quickly though. Can't let the other kids see the you think an adult is funny ya know? :) Even so, they were nice kids!

Sub Fairy

Today I had a very interesting day subbing! I dubbed myself the "sub fairy". Reasons forthcoming... I was at a school in southeast Salem serving as a "roving sub". They were having grade level team meetings (or something like that) throughout the day, so there were 4 subs (including me) assigned to rove about the school going to 5 different classrooms for an hour each. I've done days like this before and they're kinda fun because you get to see lots of different rooms, and if a class annoys you, you don't have to be with them for that long! Well, it ended up that a lot of the time I wasn't actually needed in the room I was assigned to, so I spent most of my day flitting about doing random deeds for people around the school that needed assistance! I just popped in, did a bunch of work, and then flew away again! Hence "sub fairy". Lame, but I needed a title. haha

My first hour doesn't start til 9:15 and it's 8:15 when I arrive, so the office manager (who had the same last name as me, by the way) told me I could just go to my first room early. This was a fifth grade classroom and the teacher had me work on a project for her for the morning. I went through her book library, looked up each book on the Scholastic website, and wrote down the reading levels in the back of the book. When the students arrived she described the math assessment they were going to work on while I was there. She left, and the kids did the assessment for the whole hour while I continued to catalog books. It was quite easy.

For the second hour I went to the next class only to discover their was a sub in that class already for the whole day. Since the sub wasn't going to the meeting, I wasn't needed there. So I went back to the office and the office manager took me to the library to help them in their. The Librarian had me re-shelf books and then "read the shelves" which basically means I started at A in the fiction section and went down the rows pulling the books to the front and making sure their were in correct alphabetical order.

After that I had a lunch break and then went to my third classroom. But, surprise! This class had a sub already too! So I returned to the library and started reading the shelves again where I left off. I got through the "L"s before I had to leave for my forth class. This class did actually need me. I worked with a group of 6 kids doing a reading lesson. Tough stuff. :)

This class did frustrate me in a way though - not that they were naughty or anything, but while they were working on a project we were visiting and somehow the topic of discussion turned to movies and all of the kids were saying how they wanted to see Saw V(5) in the theater! I told them that they were too young to watch that kind of movie, that it was rated R and they shouldn't be allowed to see it. One boy said he could sneak in. Another said his mom would take him. So then I said that his mom shouldn't be taking him to movies like this. (Not something I would say probably if I was the actual teacher, but as the 1-hour sub I felt a little freer to say what I thought to him.) But honestly, what kind of sick people would take their 4th grade child to see a movie that's about people being tortured to death?! Who in their right mind thinks that this is appropriate for someone of this age? Personally, I don't think it's appropriate for anyone. Why do people like to watch other people murdered, tortured, terrorized? Why is this considered entertainment? Why can the movie industry produce one slasher/horror flick after another after another and people will still flock to see them? What does is say about our society that torture is something to watch? That it is something to let our children watch? Yes, it's not real, but it looks real and it only serves to steadily desensitize the youth of America until nothing seems "off-limits" anymore. How much more difficult will it then be to draw the line between fantasy and reality? It's a disturbing tread in adults, but even more so when I see how prevalent their popularity is among young kids! Sad sad sad. Parents should use better judgment.

Moving on though...next up was my last class...and guess what? I went to the room and there was a sub in there already! So I went back to the office for a third time and once again ended up in the library, re-shelving books. The office manager did find me another task to do this time around though - he found a teacher who could use a little extra help in his room. So after I put the books back on the shelves I went to another room and did a bunch of filing. It reminded me of my days in 8th grade, working as a teacher's assistant in my dad's classroom, filing papers all day! The teacher in this room even reminded me of dad - he had a lot of the same mannerisms and way of saying things. And that was the end of the day! It was oddly disjointed, but went by pretty quickly. I did a lot of tedious tasks, but everyone I helped was REALLY grateful and kept thanking me repetitively. I didn't mind doing any of the jobs really - they sorta fit in well with my OCD personality! Plus I was getting paid really well to alphabetize books!

The rest of my day as been really busy as well. I went to the Dollar Tree, Walmart, and Fred Meyer looking for bunches of stuff that I NEEDED. Then this evening I was surprised by Erin calling me! Hence why this post is so late! And now I need to go to bed or I will regret it tomorrow.

Gotta love Hannah Montana!

Let's see....what to blog about today? Well, I subbed at a school way up north in Salem this afternoon in a 3rd grade class. The kids were a little rowdy when they first got there and the assistant in the room jumped in a said something about respect to them which kinda threw me off because I hadn't even said anything to them myself yet. But oh well, moving on...

So I started reading to the kids from this book the teacher left and they were talking a lot so I had to stop and lecture them on being polite and how I was their teacher for the afternoon and they needed to be good listeners, blahdy-blah, etc. After that they were a lot better. We did some other reading and writing activities and everything was going just peachy. Then at the end of the day they kids were finishing up their work and a bunch of them were talking, but I was just ignoring them and trying to figure out what to do for the last 10 minutes of the day. Well, at this point the assistant jumps in again and makes all the kids put their heads down and apologize to me. That was kinda awkward because I didn't really feel like they owed me an apology, but I also didn't want to say that because it'd make the assistant look bad. So I just pretty much just stood there. She meant well, and I appreciated that she wanted to help, but it just made me look ineffective.

But we moved on, and I passed out folders before the kids went home. Some of the girls' folders had Hannah Montana stickers on them, so I sang a few bars of some Hannah Montana songs while they were coming to get their folders. This had all of them quite amused (and I think impressed with my great knowledge!) Nothing like a little Hannah Montana to entertain the youngsters!

Ever been to Hucky-Tucky?

Oh the things kindergarteners say! Today I subbed in an afternoon kinder class at a south Salem school. While working with a group of about 5 or 6 kiddos, we were talking about brothers and sisters. One boy told me he had brothers and sisters in India and that he went there last summer. Most of the rest of their stories were fairly typical. I told them my brother lived in California. This sparked many stories about California and how it's a "long way away" and how they slept in the car on the way there. Then, another girl told me that she had a sister in Hucky-Tucky (or was it Yucky-Tucky? can't remember) and that she used to live there too. I said, "Hucky-Tucky? Where's that?" She didn't know really. "Is it far away?" I asked. She said yes. So I asked, "Do you mean Kentucky?" "Oh yeah! Kentucky. Yeah, that's what I mean." she replied.

Just too cute! :)

Oh! And I just remembered another story from the day. One boy showed up in the morning with his mother, who informed us that he'd decided to spray himself with a little perfume on his way out the door. Well, after she left and the boy took his coat off her just REEKED of perfume! The assistant ended up taking him to the office to get a new shirt to wear!

Feeling Discouraged

The new sub system is convenient I guess, but it kind of a pain. You have to be REALLY quick with the clicker or somebody beats you to it. It's frustrating! I'm hoping it will turn out to be a nice change, but right now I'm not loving it so much. It makes me feel like I'm just a number.

Anyways, I feel like blogging, but it looks like there will be no new story for today. So here's another short old one from last year:

I was subbing in a Head Start preschool and I had brought my book (the one my aunt wrote and I illustrated - from here on known as "the Kailey book"). I read the book to the class and they really liked it and were very impressed with my drawing - I've been told I'm a "good draw-er". Anyways, the class and I went out for recess and one of the little girls ran up to me and told me that when she "growed up" she was going to be a teacher too and she was going to write a book and read it to her class too! It was cute.

Hey! Here's a little plus - I do have a job for tomorrow now! I've conquered the clicker!

Teacher on the Phone

Today I got my very first sub job via the online sub assignment system. I logged on in the morning when I got up at 6:30 and didn't see anything listed I wanted to take (something bilingual and the other was a library job). But I checked back a couple minutes later and a job was listed for a grade 4/5 at my favorite school! Unfortuantely, it was listed as being "in callout" so I couldn't accept it. But I waited and refreshed the page a bunch of times, but eventually the "in callout" display went away and the site let me accept it!

I got there a couple hours later and was pleased that lots of teacher, the office staff, and the principal all recognized me and seemed pleased to see me. The secretary said she didn't know I was subbing still and that she would put me on their preferred list (which means I'll get to see the jobs available at that school before people who aren't on that list get to see them.)

Anyways, they were having the jog-a-thon today and the kids were pretty wound up, but we didn't really have any problems.

The only weird thing was that at the end of the lunch the teacher called the room and wanted to talk to a couple different students. They were on the phone for a while writing down things and reading things back to her. By this time I was supposed to be starting the next activity, but I wasn't sure if I should wait or not, but after a few minutes it didn't seem that they were about to get off, so we just started anyways. It worked out.

Anyways, it was nice to be back and have everybody remember me. I saw lots of kids too both in my class and in the hall that recognized me and waved or said hi. I always feel a little like a celebrity when I go there. :)

Paleontology

"A science dealing with the life of past geological periods as known from fossil remains."

Today my little second grade charges were studying fossils and dinosaurs. Which posed some interesting moments as the book kept talking about the fossils that were millions of years old and the earth being billions of years old and then some little boy piped up to say that he didn't really think the earth was that old. So then I'm trying to acknowledge him, because I sorta agree with him (although I do think the earth really could be that old, just hasn't been around that long - I mean Adam wasn't created as an infant so the earth probably wasn't either - but I digress.) And then I'm also trying to explain why the book says what it does - basically that most scientists believe what the books says but that some people disagree. And then somehow this becomes a discussion on whether people come from apes - so I'm diving into the theory, not fact discussion again. And then some girl asks where trees came from - but bless her, another girl piped up with "God made them" and that satisfied the questioner and she didn't care anymore what I had to say. :)

We also had to go get their pictures taken today. It's always an adventure when you have to pass out multiple pieces of paper to kids when you don't know any of their names! But it went well.

I also read Piggie Pie to the class today, which they enjoyed - kids always enjoy that book. :)

And that was my day pretty much in reverse order! haha don't know why I did it that way.

Little Penguins

Today I was subbing in the afternoon at a Head Start at a school really close to my apartment. I've done quite a few Head Start classrooms last year, but not this particular one. I get there, meet the assistant and help get ready for lunch.

The kids arrive at 12:30. There are 20 of them - 6 girls and 14 boys! Just get that imagine in your head - 20 little 3-foot-high four-year olds all trying to get into a straight line to walk from bus to classroom.... which was a pretty long distance!

I do not have any entertaining stories for the blog today except to say that I am VERY tired! Even just 3 hours with these little guys and they had me wiped! Ever been to the zoo and watched the penguin habitat? You know how they kinda run around in circles and jump in the water and jump back up and run into each other always in constant movement? Yeah, that gives you a pretty good picture of what my day was like.

Now here's a interesting piece of news! Salem-Keizer has officially joined the 21st century! The electronic calling system is finally online! I got my first call from the machine just about 15 minutes ago. So I've got a job for the afternoon tomorrow over in west Salem in a 2nd grade. So stay tuned for that episode tomorrow!

4th Grade Drama

My blog has been silent for the last week because I did not get one sub job all last week! I got up, got dressed and ready and then sat around waiting for a couple hours for a call that never came. It was frustrating.

However, my long-suffering (haha) was rewarded today with job call at 7am! It was nice to not have to sit around waiting and wondering again this morning.

So this job is at a school in east Salem, in an ESL 4th grade. This isn't my favorite school of the lot, but you take what you can get you know? The day went pretty well for the most part. The teacher had left detailed plans (except she forgot to mention that I was supposed to go out with the class during their recess and I didn't. There were other teachers out there, so it wasn't the end of the world - just made me look a little bad), and the kids were mostly good. A couple boys had a bit of an attitude near the end of the day, consisting of things such as being a smart-alec, not doing what they were supposed to and instead doing things they weren't supposed to, and scoffing at me occasionally. Charmingly typical forth-grade behavior. Especially in ones who mistakenly think they are cooler than the whole earth. Once I just landed on the kid and told him he was being rude and that he'd better knock it off or I'd be leaving detailed notes on his behavior for his teacher. The other time (with a different kid) the instructional assistant in the room decided it was her job to take care if it. It was kinda nice of her, but also kinda frustrating because it just makes me look like a wimp who can't handle the kids. This happens to me from time to time and I think it's because I'm young and look young and most of the time the assistants are older than me, and often have been working in the school for many years, so they feel like I surely won't know enough to handle the situation so they better just do it for me. This assistant wasn't really that bad, there were just a few times she jumped in...but on other occasions I've had an IA butt in in the middle of me giving directions to lecture the students on how rude they were. That was really annoying. But back to today...

Another odd part of the day was related to a wardrobe issue. You see, a few hours into the morning one girl in the class noticed that she had a hole in the armpit of her t-shirt. She came up to me and wanted to go to the office to call her mom to have her bring a new shirt to school. I just said that no one was going to notice, but she was resolute that they would and that she just could not go on without a new shirt. I then suggested that she put her sweatshirt back on (she was wearing it earlier) but she refused that suggestion by telling me the tale of how her grandmother was sick with hives and that she caught them, (can you catch hives?) and if she got too hot then that made her hives itch and if she wore her sweatshirt it would be too hot so she couldn't do that! I eventually gave in and sent her to the office to have them figure it out. She comes back later and says nothing so I just don't think about it. Then, before recess she is coming up to me again saying that she wants me to call the office or that she wants to go to the office to see if her shirt is there. So I ask her, "Did they call your mom?" Yes, the called her grandma who was going to call her mom. "Did they say they'd call the room when she brought a shirt in?" Yes, they did. So I informed her that since they hadn't called that there was no point in going down there to bother them again when they aren't going to have anything for her. I assured her that they'd call when it came. She was stressing about the other kids seeing the hole at recess. I told her to wear her sweatshirt. She informed me of the hives again. I told her it was colder outside and she probably wouldn't be too hot out there. She was pretty sure she would be. I said that she should just not raise her arms them and made her leave. Recess passes without crisis and we come back into the room to wash hands for lunch. Is the holey armpit discussion over? By no means!! She comes up to me while the rest of the class is lining up. We have the same discussion about her wanting to go to the office again. I said no, that it was lunch time and she needed to have lunch and that no one was going to see. Well, by this point she's making SUCH a big deal about it and absolutely not relenting but just standing there in front of me waiting for me to pull a new shirt out of my magic hat that the other kids start to notice and saying things like, "she's crying!" and snickering. So now I'm having to shut them up and get this girl to drop it and get in line for lunch. She is very persistent however and keeps harping on me about her woes. I just kept saying over and over how I was sorry that she was having this problem, but that there was nothing I could do for her - I didn't have a shirt for her to wear, so she could either wear the one she's got and keep her arms down or put the sweatshirt on and risk being too hot. Eventually we leave the room and I drop them off in the cafeteria. I turn around to go back to the room and here comes the girl with her sweatshirt on without her arms in the sleeves shuffling down the hall begrudgingly. We then proceeded to have the SAME CONVERSATION all over again. I'm not exaggerating. At this point another teacher happens down the hall and knows the girl so she ask what the problem is, I explain and this teacher suggests that the girl eat lunch in the office then. She finally agrees to this solution and I get some peace!

I was exhausted by the ordeal though.

When they came back from lunch the girl has a new shirt on. Don't know where it came from and don't care! I was just relieved to be done with that conversation. Moral of the story is: always check your shirt for armpit holes so you won't torment yourself or your teacher with the horror of that particular wardrobe malfunction.

Last-Minute Friday

Well, this blog is a little after the fact, but since I was out of town Friday night and Saturday visiting Dani, I did not have time to write an entry about my day subbing on Friday until now!

This day I got one of the latest calls I'd ever gotten - around 10:50. I'd spent the morning packing and getting ready for my weekend in Vancouver. I was totally not expecting a call by this point, but I guess I should learn to never think you've got this subbing thing figured out, because invariably something completely out of the ordinary happens!

So I scrambled around to change clothes, eat lunch and get all my stuff in the car since I was going to have to leave town right after I was done at the school. Thankfully, the school was one nearby and it was also a school with an earlier release time than some.

I got there and found out from the teacher the reason for the late call: apparently the teacher had wanted to go to some meeting/seminar thing that was that afternoon but didn't want to ask for a sub for the afternoon until one of the other teachers in the school heard about this and said that she should just have them call and see if they could get a sub. Well, they could, and it was me, so here I come strolling into the building at noon. The kids (2nd graders) are outside when I arrived, because this was the day the school was having some jog-a-thon sort of event. Of course it was raining steadily all day, so all the kids came back in completely soaked. The teacher next door told me that she was going to let all of her kids go change if they brought a change of clothes and then just kill time until lunch which was in about 15 minutes. So that was what we did as well. Lots of kids headed to the bathrooms to change, and others sat around and looked at books, or drew or visited. I just supervised...and periodically went over to the girls bathroom to ask to girls to get changed and come back and not be so loud. :) It wasn't long before lunch when I paraded them all up to the cafeteria and returned to the room to read my book (Graceling by Kristin Cashore- which I am still working on, and LOVING by the way).

Since it was raining, the kids had inside recess, which meant they returned to the room after their lunch and played with games. The recess duty people kept an eye on the rooms so I didn't have to be there, but I decided to hang around and visit with the students if any of them wanted to chat with me. Turns out on boy in particular wanted to play games with me. First he brought over a couple Rubik's cubes and wanted me to try to solve it. I manged to get one face all one color - which is the best I can do without instructions - and this had him and some of the other kids around amazed and prompted questions such as, "How'd you DO that?!" I enlightened them by stating, "I just turned it around and around until it looked like that." haha how else do you explain it though?? Then we played Uno and War and he beat me every time - which he was quite proud of....as he should be...because I'm pretty tough competition! haha

After recess the kids had to work on math workplaces which is one of the key components of the Bridges/Investigations math curriculum that all of the Salem-Keizer school district uses. So needless to say I have done them LOTS of time. Teachers generally like to have subs do workplaces, because usually the kids are pretty well trained on how to manage themselves during that time, and it's fairly simple for a sub to supervise. They were finishing up this particular round of stations, so the teacher wanted me to check their folders when they were done to makes sure they'd done all the parts and then let them have free time. It went pretty smoothly, after about 30 minutes most of the kids were done, and I had more of a chance to help a few that seemed really confused finish one of the stations. I also had one sweet little girl offer to help them, so of course I let her. Between the two of us we helped them understand the project and before time was up all of the kids had finished! Yay!

After the cleaned up we did another quick little math activity that I led, and then it was time to pack up and go home. I quickly wrote a letter to the teacher, and got my stuff together and raced out of there. Made it out of town by about 3:45. Traffic was horrible all through Portland and I was very relieved to finally arrive in Vancouver. Had a fun weekend with Dani even though it was quick. Today I had church and then spent the afternoon goofing around with Sarah. And tomorrow we start the madness that is subbing all over again! Only a 4-day week though as Friday is a Statewide Inservice Day. :)

Se Habla Espanol?

ummmm...yeah...that pretty much sums up my day.

End of blog.

haha just kidding! We all know I would not be able to stop talking that soon!

Well, here's the annoying part of my day: I got called at 8:30 this morning to go to a "pre-primary" class at a school in Keizer. By this time in the morning it usually takes around 30 minutes to get to Keizer from my house...and this job had already started! So I was kinda ticked. One, because it seems that I've been getting a lot of late calls lately, and two, because not only was this late, but with the exception of about 2 or 3 schools, this one is about as far from my house as any in the district! Oh, and just before I hung up the phone the person on the other end said, "oh, and it might be bilingual". So I was like, "oooookay?" And she said she wanted to make sure I was okay with that but that she didn't have any more bilingual subs. I told her that I'm not bilingual but I've subbing in bilingual before so I didn't care.

Well...she was right - it was bilingual, well, actually I would just call it all Spanish. In fact, it was the migrant education program. Took me a while to figure out where I was supposed to sign in...I wasn't on the main school's sub sheet, I had to sign in at the migrant program...and their sign in sheet was different, so I'm going to have check my October paycheck closely to make sure it gets on there.

I felt kinda bad for the lady I met when I came into their office. Right away she asked me if I spoke Spanish! "Uhh...no." Look of "oh drat" on her face. She took me to the room, introduced me to one of the assistants and showed me the lesson plans (in Spanish by the way). And I just stood there thinking...well, this is going to be interesting!

The day's schedule was actually similar to Head Start and Even Start in ways. Both of which I'd done before, so that was a little plus in my favor. The other plus for me (which the aides learned throughout the day) was that I did understand most of the Spanish they were speaking even though I couldn't respond with anything coherent.

Little sideline: Head Start is a program in place in many of the Salem-Keizer schools that offers half-day preschool to children of low-income families. During the Head-Start program students receive 2 meals at school, dental and health screenings, and a "head start" on academic subjects. Students learn letters, numbers, shapes, colors and generally how to interact with their peers and adults in a school setting. Even Start is a program that consists of a pre-school for children aged 6 months through 4 years as well as classes for their parents. The child program is similar to Head Start although geared toward younger ages (many children who "graduate" from Even Start move on to Head Start for a year or 2 before Kindergarten). While the kids are in their school the parents have classes in the building to work on English, GED programs, and various other things they want to work on.

The Migrant program was for children at the age of 4 or 5 and was structured pretty much identically to Head Start. But this program also offered parent classes and work time similar to what the Even Start program did.

So while I maybe wan't that useful today, I did learn some stuff!

There were 2 half-day classes that we had today. Both had 11 students present. The kids were really cute and sweet. I did a lot of pointing and miming to communicate with them, but they were troupers and didn't seem too flustered by having me there. The aide did all of the teaching since it needed to be in Spanish, so I became the aide. I helped kids do projects and I sat with them while they were eating and such.

The break between classes was busy as well. I had to call payroll and then the sub coordinator to get a mistake on my paycheck sorted out. Then I had lunch, and then I had to fill in the lesson plan for tomorrow (not sure why they wanted me to do this - they planned it all, but wanted me to write it in...maybe they weren't comfortable with their English writing skills??), and then I laminated some folders and some other random stuff that I can't remember. At the end of the day they had me filing papers, and cleaning up the little house, and folding paper and on and on and on until it was time to leave. And I didn't really mind doing it, but I was sure tired when the day was over! As of now I'm not going back tomorrow, but I suppose they could call me again. While it's not my favorite thing to feel kinda useless, it wasn't difficult, so I wouldn't be upset to go back.

Oh! And during the day I keep seeing mirrors everywhere I turned. So I decided to count them at the end of the day...and there were 35 mirrors in the room! 35!! It was a big room (actually 2 rooms with the divider pulled open) but still - that's a lot of mirrors! Makes you really conscious of what you're wearing. My pants were too long and my shoes too short.