Snow Week

As I believe everyone who reads this knows, we've been having some crazy weather down here in Salem this week.  It's been snowy and icy and just a big mess.  School ended up getting cancelled for the whole week, and now it is Christmas vacation.  School starts back up on January 5th, but I thought I'd just write a short entry about this week.

Sunday night it started snowing like mad.  We got about 3 inches before 8 o'clock, and Salem-Keizer cancelled school that evening.  The next day there was snow everywhere - including the roads.  I didn't do much.  Just stayed inside and tried to keep warm.  I watched the kids who live in the complex spend most of their day sledding down the driveway - which is a very nice angle for sledding and completly covered in snow.  There were not many cars coming and going either. They cancelled school for the next day that night at around 7.  Tuesday was pretty much the same.  We didn't get any new snow, but it was REALLY cold outside so nothing melted.  The cancelled school for Wednesday on Tuesday night at around 5:30.  Wednesday it started to warm up a little and the snow thinned out a bit.  There was no decision made Wednesday night, so I had to set my alarm Thursday morning to see what they were going to do.  I didn't sleep very well because I kept dreaming that I was watching the morning news and reading the crawl announcing school closures that goes across the bottom of the screen and ever time Salem-Keizer would go by, something would distract me and I'd miss what it said!  Then I'd change channels, and the same thing would happen!  I finally gave up at about 6 and turned on the tv to see that they had in fact cancelled school again.  Thursday was probably the warmest day.  The snow in our parking lot turned to slush and everything was just very mushy and wet.  The roads were clear.  But then it got cold again Thursday night and all of the slush froze into a lovely layer of ice.  So Friday morning I turned on the tv to see that school was cancelled yet again.  The kids of Salem-Keizer ended up getting a whole extra week off of school.  Today it's starting to melt again, and I can actually see the pavement through the snow in our driveway.  I'm getting really sick of it, since I've been stuck inside most of the week, lost a potential week's worth of pay, and now my plans for going home are a little up in the air.

But I guess this will be the last entry for 2008.  I hope to have lots more to write when school starts back up!  No more of this snow all week junk.  Merry Christmas everybody!

Warning: Long Post

So after my great excitement Thursday on the return of our internet, it died on me again that evening! I was trying to figure out why Bobbie couldn't log onto our wireless network, and then everything just went kaput. Thankfully, earlier on Thursday when the internet was working I had gotten a job for Friday on the sub site for a 4th grade class in south Salem. They were pretty funny kids, and a very small group to boot (only 20 enrolled, 19 present that day)! So I've got lots of stories to tell! I even wrote some notes last night so I would not forget all that I was going to write come Saturday. Here we go....

We started the day by doing a Second Steps (problem solving) activity that they had started the previous day. They were working with partners to act out an emotion for the class. Then they would present it and the class would try to guess what their emotion was. Some of the funnier ones included "Fury" (two boys pretend shoving each other across the room), and "fear" (two boy "zombies" chasing another around the room and then removing his shoes while a kid from another group turned the lights on and off rapidly). The zombie group was quite proud of themselves and just BEGGED me to let them do their skit one more time before PE. They mostly wanted to do this because another boy volunteered the use of his hoodie for one of the zombies. This particular hoodie had a bizarre pattern all over it, but it's most distinguishing characteristic was that it zipped all the way up - I mean ALL the way up - to the top of the hood. The hood then covering the face had 2 eyes and a giant grinning tooth-filled mouth design on it. Apparently the eyes were made of a see-through material so you could still see where you were going. Odd stuff. I've never seen anything like it. So I relented and let them do their zombie play once more.

After PE we returned to class to do the next activities - one of which required the use of the overhead. It was at this time that I discovered the bulb in the overhead was burned out! I ended up having to write out the material from the overhead onto the white board. However, I knew that all the activities for after lunch were going to require the overhead as well. So while the kids were working I was coming up with back-up plans. Plan A - Kid volunteers to go to the library to tell the librarian the bulb is burned out (she's the one who replaces them). He goes, but she's not there. He leaves a note, but I don't hear anything back for a while. Onto Plan B - borrow overhead from class next door. So I wait until the kids' recess time (my lunch) to go next door and ask if we can borrow the overhead. The teacher says yes, so I cart the thing over to my room and proceed to move the broken on and plug in the new one. I get it all ready to go, flip the switch and.....nothing happens! By this time I've pretty sure I have an overhead curse! I try everything to get it to work - plugging it into a different outlet, moving it to another cart, but nothing works! Moving now to Plan C - go to office and ask them to make copies of the overheads so I can just give the kids hard copies. I get there, tell them my problem, and they do me one better - they make Plan A work by finding the librarian for me, and covering her class so she can help me replace the bulb! After that's all done, I've missed pretty much all of my lunch, so I scarf down my sandwich and some crackers and chug my Pepsi in about 5 minutes. Ugh.

Later in the afternoon we had some extra time and I did a Christmas Mad Libs with the class. And it was pretty funny, so I'll just type it here for you to read!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (italicized words provided by students)
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, an eagle in a peach tree. On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two stinky doves and a glue stick in a pear tree. On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three French lions, two turtle doves, and a name tag in a pear tree. On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 800,000 weird papers, three French bugs and a cheese in a pear tree. On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five golden heads, four calling birds, three Chinese hens, two turtle doves, and a toilet in a pear tree.

They really loved the toilet part, as I'm sure you can imagine. The golden heads got quite a few laughs too.

After this the 3rd and 4th grades had "Fun Friday" where they can choose a room to go to to do some kind of activity. One was capture the flag, one was coloring, on was a movie, my room was quiet ball. Two girls from my class stayed and a bunch of kids from other classes came in. They all pretty much policed themselves so I didn't have to anything. Although I did have to step in once to break up an argument over whether or not they could sit on the couch when they were out. When Fun Friday was over that was the end of the day. The kids came back to get their stuff, and I was glad because the ones who'd gone to play capture the flag came back completely soaked! They all looked liked they'd taken a shower with their clothes on. It made me cold just looking at them!

So Easy, I'm Bored

If you haven't read the entry before this - do it now! :) Because I've written 2 in one day now that my internet is working again! More info in previous entry.

Okay, this one is about Wednesday's sub job. I was quite angry Wednesday morning because I got a call at around 8:10 for a job that started at 8 that was at a school that was about a 20 minute drive away! I had to get dress in like 5 seconds, pack my lunch in 3 and run out the door! I was also not sure what I was walking into because it was a bilingual first grade. So I had no idea how their English skills would be, or what the plans would be like. (One time last year, I subbed for 2 days in a bilingual first grade where the teacher had left lesson plans IN SPANISH that had me teaching reading and science in Spanish. Needless to say, I didn't teach in Spanish.) Anyways.

I got there and met the IA, who was a young guy who, I kid you not, looked like a Hispanic version of David Archuleta. He had the same facial features, just had a darker complexion! It was funny because when I first say him I kept thinking, this guy looks familiar! Then I finally figured out why. :) So the literacy block for this class is a nearly two-hour time period, and it's supposed to be done in Spanish. But these people were smart, and they realized they probably wouldn't get a Spanish sub, so the IA was all ready to teach it. So basically the entire morning I did nothing. The IA taught all the stuff and then the kids went to recess with him and then he brought them back with their lunches! After lunch, I read a book to them and then had them color a gingerbread man coloring page before the health teacher came in to teach a health lesson. She was having them using the small white boards at their desks for part of the lesson. However, she couldn't find the dry-erase markers, and she had them using vis-a-vis markers instead (which are intended for the overhead and only erase if you whip the surface with a wet cloth). All the kids are trying to erase it with their kleenex and it's just smearing around so I see a bunch of them licking their fingers and rubbing that around to wipe it off. One boy licked the whole palm of his hand and then started smearing it around on his white board! It was disgusting!! After their lesson I took them to PE and then came back and helped the health teacher disinfect all of the white boards!

After PE I did a couple short math lessons with them and then let them do their math stations for the rest of the day. They were really sweet kids!

Blue Hands

As some of you know, I have been without internet service since Monday morning. I woke up and it wasn't working and after a few phone calls, and a couple trips to the Comcast office I managed to get someone here to work on it Tuesday night. Unfortunately, after the guy changed the modem, spliter, cord and got us hooked up again, he couldn't program the modem to our account because their servers had crashed. So I had to wait some more. Miracle of miracles though, it was working again this morning! (Much better than my original 8-10 appointment on Saturday morning).

So yes, I have been working this week, although not as much as I would like. My roommate has been easily getting twice as many calls as me, which has been really frustrating. I did not work Monday, but I did on Tuesday and Wednesday. No job today either. Thankfully, I did snag one for tomorrow! So this entry is going to be about Tuesday's job, and I'll write another for Wednesday after this.

Here we go!

On Tuesday I subbed in a first and second grade class - one I'd been to before, actually. This class. They were good again, and the day went by pretty smoothly. The literacy time was the hardest for me. They started by switching classrooms with the other first and second grades. Most of my kids left and I got a bunch of new ones. Then they did two 15 minute stations. Then they read to themselves for a bit I think. And then these 2 other teachers came in and we split the class into 3 groups and we each took one and did the lesson from the Reading Mastery program with them. That was kinda stressful, because I've only done RM a few times before, and I didn't have the book to look at in the morning when I arrived. The teachers that came in brought it with them. So I had no time to look at what I was teaching, I just had to totally wing it. It was okay though.

After that another class came in and we did writing all together. The writing assignment was for them to write something that they wished for someone else. Basically, they weren't supposed to wish for new toys and a Wii and all that stuff, but wish that their mom had a better job, or that their brother would get an A on his test, etc. The idea came from some book they'd read the previous day. It was kind of an abstract thing for this age of kids, but they did a pretty good job of it. The sweetest one was a little boy, who, all on his own, decided to write "I wish that everybody had shelter."

Oh, and in regards to the title "blue hands", another boy who was in my class only during the math time, colored the entire back of his hand blue with a markers. Isn't that charming? I didn't see him do it, I have no idea when he did it, but he did, and it was blue the rest of the day. The things a first grader will do!

Is this the same room?? Oh yes it is!

So I walked in the classroom this morning that I've been "affectionately" calling the "messy desk" class only to find that it was SPOTLESS! All the furniture had been re-arranged, the cubbies were tidy, the teacher's desk was cleared off, the closet was organized, the white board was cleaned, the floor had been swept, the carpet vacuumed, the shelves were neat - it was a COMPLETE opposite! I'm wondering...is this the same class?! Oh, yes, it is.

Actually, the day wasn't horrible. I've definitely had worse. But that's not to say that it was wonderful. There were about 5 boys who were all very energetic and always out of their seats, goofing off, or bugging each other. One was clearly the ring-leader. I learned later in the day that he is usually on medication, but he didn't take it today. Joy. He missed most of his recesses because I made him stay in with me. And at the end of the day the teacher came into the room (thankfully, it was at a moment where they were mostly under control) and he took him out in the hallway and talked to him, and then kept him and 2 other boys in the room when I took the class out to their final recess.

There were a lot of good kiddos though, and I tried to avoid punishing them along with their classmates. At first I wasn't going to take them out to recess because of the naughty ones, but then I changed my mind and made the naughty ones sit out and watch while the others played. It worked much better. And at the end of the day I cut up some sheets of smiley-face stickers and gave a couple to all of the kids who had made it onto my "on-task" list. They seemed really pleased with that, so if I ever end up going there again, hopefully they'll remember that I'm not a total meanie. Last time they seemed to find me a bit annoying, but at the end of the day today some of them (the nice ones) told me that I was the best substitute because I was nice to them. So it wasn't all horrible this time. I'm not jumping at the chance to go back, but I think I could survive.

Oh Bother...

Well, today was interesting. I traveled up north to sub in a 4th grade class. It was only a morning job - I took it online last night. I was hesitant, but I figured a half-day was better than no day. I wasn't sure about the school either - I've only been here once before, last year, and I couldn't really remember my impression of the school. But I figured they'd have PE or Music or some pull-out in the morning (the intermediate grade always have these in the morning), so it couldn't be that bad even if they were difficult.

The teacher I was subbing for only taught this class in the morning anyway, and another teacher taught the afternoon. The afternoon teacher was there when I arrived and she showed me a couple things before she left. She also told me that they were a "good class" but that they are often "bratty for subs". Now this statement just puzzles me. Now, I don't want to judge the teachers, because I don't know what they have or haven't tried, but I would not be okay if I knew my students were brats to subs. If it was my class, and I'd heard that they were obnoxious to subs I'd keep them in from recess, take away their free time, make them write letters to me explaining how they should have acted, and then, I tell them that if it ever happened again we'd be doing the same thing all over again. Yes, I expect that kids are going to push their limits a little with a sub. I expect that. But when kids are just blatantly disrespectful - that's not okay. And there's only so much I can do in one day to combat this.

Lots of the kids in the class were nice kids. A few seemed kinda hyper, or easily distracted. About 3 or 4 boys were pretty rude. I was glad to be done with them.

Tomorrow I'm returning to this class. Not super excited about it, but I took the day before I'd been to the class the first time, and I can't cancel it and get something else. If I cancel, I don't work. And I really want the money. I'm going to try to have a positive attitude. I'm going to have high expectations despite what I know of this group. I'm going to bring books, and prizes and games. I'm going to bribe them! haha That sounds bad, but I am going to reward them for good behavior. I hope I'm running low on prizes tomorrow evening!

December Already!

I not really in the blogging mood at the moment, so this may end up being kinda sort.

Subbed in a bilingual first grade class today. I know the teacher, who requested me. We look a lot alike, and I was mistaken for her 3 times in the morning by staff, and one kid asked me if I was her sister!

The day seemed oddly long - I think because in first grade you have to do so MANY different things all for really small time periods because they have short attention spans. You'd think that'd make the day go faster, but really the opposite is true.

Most kids did pretty good speaking English for the day (usually, they do most everything in Spanish). There were a few kids that weren't comfortable with their English - sometimes I could understand what they were asking/telling me, and when I couldn't, I just had one of the better English speakers translate for me. They were all really eager to be my "Spanish helper" so that was good.

I honestly cannot think of anything else to tell about the day. Can't even remember all of what we did! Oh well, better luck next time. Happy December all!