Me And My Freakish Lips

89th blog post by the way!  Looks like I'm gonna make it to 100 before the year's out!

Anyways, I subbed in 3rd grade today.  In the morning I did not do much.  The teacher was still there.  She wasn't leaving until around 10.  There was also a student teacher.  I worked with a group of 5 kids on math.  Then the kids had music.  I helped the student teacher organize books.  Then the kids came back and the student teacher taught a lesson.  Then the kids had PE.  I helped the student teacher organize books again!  After lunch the student teacher left as well and I had the kids by myself for the rest of the day.  They were ok.  Lots of chatty ones in the bunch so I was forever telling them to quiet down.  There were also a couple kids who didn't really want to pay attention or do their work.  They annoyed me, but at least they weren't defiant.  

One funny tale for the day though: during one of the reading groups I had 3 kids reading with me - two boys and a girl.  We'd been reading for about 10 minutes when all of a sudden the girl blurts out, "Hey!  Your lips are differently shaped than ours."  I responded with some great wisdom such as, "Well, everyone's lips are a little different."  But seriously, what is it with my lips?!  Last year I had a kindergartner ask me why I had a hole in my lip!  I think they must be seeing another dimension.  Or maybe I am!

Kindergarten Craziness

Today I traveled far, far away (well, about as far as I can and still be in Salem) to sub in kindergarten.  The day went pretty well, and the kids were sweet, but wow, was is busy!  The AM class had 29 kids in it.  I think one or two might have been gone, but I can't remember now.  Either way, that is a LOT of kindergartners!  The PM class had 28 kids.  

During the day we did calendar and a multitude of songs, a Mother's Day art project, some writing, snack and sharing.  It was a little crazy at times trying to squeeze all of this in.  I was running back and forth collecting finished art projects, putting them on the drying rack, bringing the writing booklet to the kids who were done with the art, checking the writing to make sure they'd done it right, etc.  Times that by 29 or so kids and I didn't sit down much today!

In the afternoon session I met a little boy who had the same last name as me.  He thought this was pretty hilarious, and reminded me that our names were the same quite a few times.  This was nice as it distracted him from eating paper and glue, as I was told he sometimes does.

So it was a good day, and it's almost always fun to spend the day playing with the cute little ones, but I'm sure tired!  Kinda hoping for some older kids later this week.

Chicks & Fish & Silkworms, Oh My!

Today I returned to the kindergarten class that has a bunny.  Only now they not only have a bunny, but they have multiple types of fish, 2 young chickens (who I believe they've had since they hatched), butterflies, and silkworms!  The bunny wasn't there today, but despite that and the fact that I took some allergy meds before I came, I still had a bit of an allergy attack shortly after I got there.  I think I just took the medicine a little too soon before I got there and it didn't really have time to "kick in".

But even though my nose didn't love the first 3o minutes or so, it was a really easy day for me.  (Finally!)  The teacher stayed until around 2 because she had some stuff she wanted to do with the class and her appointment wasn't until later.  So while she was still there I cut some stuff out.  After she left, the kids went to recess with the assistant (who apparently, had not had the same speech on all the things assistants can't do - thank goodness!).  When the came back from recess I read a book to the class and read through a Scholastic News paper with them while the assistant and a parent volunteer called kids back to finish up an art project.  This last for about 25 minutes and then the kids went to PE.  After PE they went home.  So my pay is pretty sweet today considering how little work I actually did! :)

No Shoe Stories Today

In fact, no one commented on my shoes at all! Perhaps I should have worn a different pair - I was hoping to continue the streak, after all.

On the plus side, my day was much smoother and calmer and simpler today. I had a class of fifth graders, and they were quite enjoyable. They were funny - a few jokesters in the bunch, but they were very polite and quick to listen when I was giving instructions. They are having a sub tomorrow as well (in fact, it's my roommate), and I'm actually disappointed to not get to go back to them! One girl told me she wished I was going to be their sub tomorrow too. I left my ID number for the teacher, so I hope she requests me back! In fact, I told the girl I was going to leave my number, and that she should tell her teacher to ask for me if they have to have a sub again. I have no shame. :)

I'm not subbing for them tomorrow because I've already had a job for tomorrow for over a month. I'm going back to kindergarten (just for the afternoon) to one of my favorite classes, so at least I'm looking forward to that even though I would have liked to do today's class again.

It's nice to have an easy day again!

Shoes (Again!), and Frustrations

Yes, I do have another shoe story!  In this one I had the same shoes as a student (kindergarten).  Yes, mine were much bigger than hers.  But they were the same style of silver flats.  She seemed to think it was funny that we were wearing the same thing.  The fact that we were was pointed out to me many times.

In other news, my day was incredibly frustrating!  The kids were amazing sweet little things, but I was running around virtually the whole day with no lesson plan.  The teacher had been gone the day before, so hadn't written out a detailed plan for today.  I was reading the tiny notes on her weekly plan as well as yesterday's plan to get a feel for the class.  The notes specifically said that the assistant did a lot of the instruction when the teacher was gone.  I was okay with this, so I just assumed that's how it would go.  However, when the assistant got there she told me that she couldn't lead the class because they had had a meeting at their school recently where some union rep told them that assistants couldn't lead the class without specific written instructions on what to do.  And since the teacher hadn't left specific instructions she was reluctant to lead the class because she was afraid she'd get in trouble.  Unfortunately, this left me in a really hard place.  I didn't know what the stations the teacher mentioned were.  The assistant did, but she didn't feel she could even explain them without breaking this new rule.  Ugh!  Whatever idiot made that rule really is not my favorite person right now.  

It really bugs me when people act like the instructional assistants are somehow less competent or capable than licenced teachers.  Yes, the licenced teacher has more training, but I have meet many, MANY assistants over my years of substituting that were absolutely wonderful, and more than capable of doing everything the teacher did.

Anyways, the assistant ended up calling the teacher and the teacher emailed directions over to her.  Then she was able to give directions for station time and lead her group without breaking the rules.  It was just frustrating that we had to jump through all those hoops when the day could have been much smoother (and might I add, more educationally valuable for the students) without it.

My Shoes Are From China

Yes, again, we are talking about my shoes.  Today a girl told me my shoes looked "kinda Chinese".  They are ballet flats with lots of differently colored vertical stripes.  So then I said, "Maybe they are Chinese!"  I took one off and looked inside and sure enough - they were made in China!

You learn something new everyday!

Anyways, I was subbing in a bilingual kindergarten today.  I think is a kind of weird that they call it that.  Because it's not actually "bilingual" in the literal definition of the world - the whole class is taught in Spanish.  The don't do anything in English (well, today they did).  Shouldn't they just call it Spanish kindergarten?  Other weird thing was that about half of the kids were native English speakers and I meet a lot of the parents who spoke only English.  So I was puzzled as to why the kindergarten was all in Spanish.  Wouldn't it make more sense to do a mix of Spanish and English - as "bilingual" implies?  There's probably a reason for it, but I did not get to the bottom of it today.  Maybe next time....

Learn to Summarize

Today I returned to one of the classes I subbed in last week - the second graders from last Monday. They were much like I remembered them. Small group, with mostly good kids and a couple pesky ones.

However, part-way through my afternoon with them (I only worked half of a day) I got a righteous headache. Making matters worse, my headache was repetitively aggravated by one particular little boy. He was trying to "help" me. And what I mean by this is that he was one of the most obsessive-compulsive uptight little kids I've meet. He was constantly telling me (sparing NO detail) how his teacher did every mundane task of the day - from where she stood, to what phrases she used, to who could work with who and why, etc., etc., etc. I wanted to rip my hair out. He told me how one boy didn't do his work. He pointed out how a girl near him wasn't doing something right. He showed me how I'd written on the overhead sheet and not on the roll like his teacher does. He explained in what order the class went to the library. He lectured me on how their teacher does one thing to get their attention but not the thing I was doing. It just went on and on and on. And to add to my annoyance, he absolutely could NOT summaraize anything. He gave me the supreme expanded edition with all the commentary and delete scenes he could come up with. He'd just start talking even though I hadn't called on him and was talking to someone else. And he wouldn't stop! I kept saying over and over that I didn't need the details and that it was fine the way we were doing it. Eventually I started telling him that I didn't care what way they normally did it. I told him that my way worked too and that was the way we were going to do it. But still he kept talking. Aargh! I had to try to ignore him but like I said, my head was splitting so this was not the most attractive option.

Another funny moment was when, near the end of the day a little boy asked me why I was wearing the shoes I was wearing (brown flat sling-backs in case you were wondering). I was puzzled by his question, so I replied, "Because I can't come to school barefoot!". He laughed a little but then persisted with his question. I told him I was wearing them because they matched my outfit. He asked why I wasn't wearing black (even though nothing on my outfit was black). At this point a girl chimed in with, "Because she's wearing a BROWN shirt, not a BLACK one! It was odd, I still have no idea why he was asking that.

A Laser Pointer and Lots of Kids

...put them together and you get lots of whining! As in, "Teeeeeacher! So-and-so has a laser pointer and he pointed it in my eye!!" The pointer changed hands at a few points I believe, but eventually it landed in mine where it stayed for the remainder of the afternoon.

Other than that my class today was pretty good. They got loud easily, but that probably had more to do with the fact that there were 28 of them crammed in a room! But for the most part they listened and we got stuff done and they were pretty polite. So I have very little to report. Which is good I suppose, because I need to start getting ready for the weekend! I'm heading out of here in a little over an hour to go to Vancouver! Once there Dani and I will venture forth to the holy grail of books - Powell's - my love, my sanctuary! And yes, there will be cupcakes! So thank you kids for making my day easy!

Substitute Bailout Program

So I had a new experience today, which is getting rarer after doing this whole subbing thing for three years. So everyone has been hearing a lot about the government bailout programs of banks and auto companies, but I bet none of you have heard about the new "Substitute Bailout Program". I can't really blame you though, because I'm it. I am the bailout program.

You see, I got my job for today at around 9:30 - right about the time I'd given up on getting a job! I arrived at the school at around noon (not because I'm slow, but because that was the time I was supposed to get there) and learned very quickly that I was taking over for another substitute, who apparently, had had such a terrible morning with the class that she didn't want to stay until the end of the day. (She knew this at 9:30!!) So I was defiantly mentally prepping myself for battle. And the kids had those looks on their faces like they smelled fresh meat. The former sub informed me all the ways the class was horrible to her before she left. So I braced myself for the storm and stood in front of that riled up group of kids who just watched their previous teacher leave in defeat and stood my ground. I told them immediately what I expected from them and that I was sure that they were going to do a better job this afternoon. About thirty minutes later, during their lunch time they got a visit from the principal who lectured them on their behavior and read off the list of names of kids who the sub had said were misbehaving. The offenders had to stay in during their recess with the vice principal, who made them write letters explaining their behavior while he filled out behavior referrals.

When I got them all back together after recess we did literacy block and writing. And actually, for the most part they were pretty good. Not sure what did it - probably had a lot to do with the fear put in them by the principal and vice principal, but I kind of like to think that I had a little something to do with it. They seemed to respect me, which the first sub reported that they did not do for her. And oddly, despite me right off the bat telling them what they were and were not going to do and sticking to it, they seemed to really LIKE me. At the end of the day some of the biggest trouble-makers of the morning list were asking me if I would come back tomorrow!

If Only Kids Hired Teachers...

...because I think I'd have like 100 jobs by now!  And while currently, the kids' opinion of me isn't seeming to make much a difference in the job hunt, it does make me feel good.

Today I got one of the sweetest notes today from a kid in the class I was subbing.  The girl, who is in second grade (although the job listing said this was a first grade, it wasn't - it was second), wrote "Dear Miss Barnes, You are nice and you are a fun teacher it helps me learn.  I wish you were my 3rd grade teacher please can you? Love, *name omitted* P.S. Please, please and please."  And at the bottom of this note was a cute little picture of stick-figure me writing swiggles on the white board with stick-figure girl sitting at her desk, smiling and writing.  Even though I'd only been with them for about two hours at this point, I was still so touched by her adorable little card.

The class was actually really sweet as a whole.  I kind of wished I could do a full-day with them.  I also had fun seeing the 3rd graders who I've subbed for a lot this year across the hall.  The only times I've been at this school this year has been for that class, so it was fun to see another room.  I left my sub number with the teacher so maybe she'll request me back sometime!

Thank You Teacher

This morning I got called for an afternoon job in a bilingual kindergarten.  There were no special instructions pleading for a Spanish-speaking sub, so I took the job.

When I arrived I read in the note that one little boy in particular could be quite the handful.  When the assistant arrived she also mentioned this boy and showed me his behavior card.  However, as was the case yesterday, we had more problems with a different child than we did with the one who usually had the problems.  The normally difficult child still had a few moments.  The most charming of these I believe was right after I had called clean-up time.  All the children started putting away the blocks and toys from choice time - except for this one.  He grabbed himself a stack of unifix cubes and walked in big loops around the room breaking off the cubes one at a time and dropping them on the floor - much like Hansel and Gretel did with the bread crumbs.  It was annoying.  After a bit of this and him completely ignoring me telling him to stop, he came back to get more!  I then picked up the container of cubes and said to him, "You're done."  Oddly, at this point he completely calmly retraced his steps and picked every cube back up!  And for the rest of the day he was mostly really good!  He listened.  He sat still.  He cleaned up more than any of the other kids later in the day.  It was shocking really. 

Cutest part of the day though was when we were sitting at the carpet getting ready to go to recess and this boy raised his hand.  He was sitting right in front of me, so I called on him and he stood up, saying, "Teacher, I just wanna say thank you for coming today and helping me to be a good boy and make good choices!"  Then he threw his arms out and gave me a big hug.  So I told him thank you for making good choices and working hard.  He seemed mightily pleased with himself.  It was cute.  Hopefully if I ever go back to this class he'll remember how much he admires me. :)

I Gotta Get With It

I think this is the first time I've actually forgotten to write a blog. I did sub on Monday. I'm writing this on Tuesday. But I'm going to date is as if I did write it on Monday.

And because I've forgotten until tonight to write something I'm having a really hard time thinking of something to tell about my day. It was pretty uneventful judging from my lack of memories of it. I subbed in a second grade class. They were a small group - only 16 kids. For the most part they were okay although they were really slow to follow directions. It usually took about 5 minutes for the group as a whole to move from one activity to sitting at the carpet, which was pretty frustrating. I was told one boy was the difficult one of the bunch, but I actually had less problems with him than I did with a girl in the class that was not mentioned as being a behavior problem. Funny how kids can sometimes act so differently than they normally do with a substitute. Some improve, perhaps simply because I'm a new face and they don't know what to expect. And some are worse because they decide they should try to get away with everything that their teacher doesn't let them do.

I'm Wearing Lots of Green

That what one girl told me today.  I didn't think I was wearing that much.  My shirt was green.  My skirt had some green in it...but is also had some black and it was mostly white.  My shoes were black.  I thought I just matched.  Apparently it seemed that I was wearing lots of green.

My day was fine.  I don't have much to write about mostly because I can't remember anything terribly amusing to tell and I'm sort of in a cranky mood at the moment (which has nothing to do with the students today - it's basically inexplicable).  

I didn't have a lot of down time today because during my prep time I had to cut a bunch of tissue paper squares for the teacher and during the kids' lunch time I had to supervise them.  Guess I'm just tired.  Normally at this school you get a nice long lunch because they have assistants doing cafeteria and lunch duty.  But today we couldn't use the cafeteria because of an special presentation that was going on in there for the upper grades.  We had to pick up sack lunches for the hot lunch kids and eat in our rooms.  Lots of schools do this every day because they don't have a cafeteria, but I've gotten used to not doing it at this school so it felt odd.

So other than the odd comment on my outfit and the lunch alternative it was fairly typical.

Off to Neverland!

Super easy day for me!

So I got this morning job for today at around 4:30 yesterday.  It was at my new number-one favorite school in a fifth grade class.  This morning I arrived and was surprised to see how very little I was going to do today!  

I had the kids for about 10 minutes in the morning.  During this time they were working on some "Daily Geography" questions.  I had to write those on the board.  There were three of them.  I also had to write the morning schedule on the board.  A ton of work, I know! :)

After that I took them to music.  After music they had PE.  When we returned from PE they got their snacks out and I started up the movie Peter Pan (the newer live-action version).  Apparently they'd been reading some version of Peter Pan in their class so today they were going to get to watch the movie.  This movie is about 2 hours long and that took us right up to lunch time!  I deposited them in the cafeteria and was on my way.

I think I'm getting spoiled.

Full to Half AGAIN!

Last week I took a job online for today at one of the schools on the other end of town.  There were actually two jobs that I saw for the same school - one was first and the other third.  I took the third grade job.  

So today I arrived bright and early (start time is at 8), and met the student teacher.  She lead me to the room where I then met the teacher.  While the teacher was explaining to both me and the student teacher what the schedule was going to look like she kept saying "it's going to be a pretty easy morning for you."  So I finally asked, "Are you coming back for the afternoon?"  She said she was.  I was surprised because the job I took online listed as a full day job.  But the teacher told me I was supposed to go to a first grade class for the afternoon but she didn't know which one.  I was surprised no one in the office has mentioned this when I first checked in.  So I went back to the office and asked and the secretary told me that I didn't go to a different class in the afternoon unless I had signed up for another job on the site.  I then pointed out that the job I had signed up for was listed as a full day.  She apologized a lot but told me there had been a mistake and it was supposed to just be a half day.  Bummer.

The class was pretty good.  I didn't have them for long.  The student teacher did one morning activity.  Then I did calendar and then was went to watch a presentation about trees for an hour.  The kids did a fabulous job listening during this!  After the presentation we went back to the room and they worked on a writing project.  By this time they were getting a little wound up, but it wasn't too bad.  The student teacher read a story to them and then they had lunch.  When we got back to the room after delivering the class to the cafeteria the teacher came back and I left.  I'm getting really tired of all these adjustments to my schedule after I arrive!

Fifth Grade Friday

Shock of all shocks - I got called for a job today. And I'd already had 1.5 days this week! It was an afternoon in a fifth grade. The kids were pretty chatty but okay. They did pretty good during work times at actually working and staying mostly under control. It was the transitions that they were horrible at. They just took forever and couldn't stop talking. But that's survivable. A little annoying, but survivable.

At the end of the day I had a different group of kiddos for ELD (English Language Development). The teacher had told me that they were an energetic group. So right off the bat I told them that if they were good listeners and we could get through the lesson quickly, then we would play a game at the end of the day. This worked fabulously, and they got about 8 minutes to play "Four Corners" - a game where one kids closes their eyes while the others go to one of the four "corners" of the room. Each corner has a number. Then the kids with their eyes closed calls out a number and all the kids in that corner are out. Then everybody moves around to a new corner and the kid picks again. You keep doing that until only one kid is left and they get to be the next guesser. They had fun and it made the end of my day easier. :)

Oh, and Rhonda - a "pull-out" is a term lots of the schools use to refer to music, pe, library, counselor, etc. - anything where the kids are taught by a different teacher and the classroom teacher has prep. In essence, the times when the kids are "pulled out" of the classroom. Although this isn't entirely accurate because most people use this term for counselor visits as well even though usually the counselor comes to the classroom not the other way around. Sorry for not explaining! You don't realize how much lingo you're using when you're around educators ALL THE TIME! haha

Full to Half

Got a call this morning at around 6:30.  I had to listen to the job description about 3 times because I couldn't understand the special instructions.  This lovely computer voice reads it to you and it doesn't always pronounce things the right way!  I ended up having to get on the website to see that it was trying to tell me that I was teaching LRC at one school in the morning and then travelling to a different school to teach LRC in the afternoon.  

I got to the school and got sent to the room.  I sat in there for about 5 minutes waiting for one of the assistants or other teachers to show up to tell me what to do since I couldn't see any schedule or plans.  Then the head LRC teacher came in and told me they'd sent me to the wrong room!  So I went upstairs with her and found the lesson plans! Yay!  Shortly after I'd come upstairs though the phone started ringing.  (They had to call twice it took me so long to figure out where the phone was in the maze of a room!)  It was the office calling to say that the teacher I was subbing for didn't need a full-day sub after all so I was only going to be needed for the morning and wouldn't have to go to the second school.  I was disappointed because I wanted to have a full day's pay and also because I like the other school I was supposed to go to and hadn't been there for a while.  But I'm mostly glad that I had a job at all today!  

I ended up teaching 2 groups of kid this morning.  The first group consisted of 2 boys, and the second group had 4 boys.  They were all working on reading.  After I was done with the groups I had nearly an hour before I was officially "off the clock".  So I asked the head teacher if she had anything I could do for her and she had me make posters of some poems she'd printed out.  Basically I just wrote the poems on big chart paper in colorful markers. 

So it was another easy day for me!  I have an inkling of a possible job for the afternoon tomorrow... so we'll see!

Crazy Hair Day

I almost forgot to write a blog entry today!  I did work.  It was supposed to be just a morning job in one of my frequented kindergarten classes.  But after I'd been there an hour or so the secretary came in and asked if I could stay all day.  So of course I did, but I was mentally kicking myself for not bringing a lunch with me just in case.  I ended up having to eat cafeteria food, which is not horrible, but I wish I'd been smart and brought food I'd already paid for instead of having to buy more.

I hardly had to do anything today.  I spent the morning pulling kids over to read to me while I took running records - a skill that I learned years ago at Corban and has apparently been embedded in my brain because I mostly remember how to do it.  The assistant taught most of the content of the day.  I think I had the kids by myself for about 25 minutes.  In that time I supervised silent reading, took them on a bathroom break, and did a quick write activity.  In the afternoon the kids had an hour of pull outs, and a short time in the classroom.  Again, the assistant took care of that.  I spent the time coloring.  Seriously, I did.  The assistant had this sample book she wanted to laminate, but it needed to be colored in first so she asked me if I'd do it.  So that was fun and incredibly easy.  At the end of the day the assistant said something about how she hoped I didn't feel like she didn't think I was capable of doing the stuff, that it was just easier for her to do it than explain it.  I said that I didn't mind in the least, and that I was happy to do whatever worked best for them.  (And in my head I thought that the district's going to pay me the exact same amount whether I'm up front with the class or sitting in the back coloring!)

To add to the madness of the day, in an effort to prevent jokes and pranks on April Fool's Day, the school had declared today "Crazy Hair Day" and everyone was encouraged to do something weird to their hair.  I saw quite a few wigs, and ponytails in large quantities or in odd places on heads, as well as an array of differently colored locks.  Tons of kids had obviously invested in spray-on hair color.  I put my hair in a ponytail on the left side of my head and clipped my bangs to the right.  Then I put silver curling ribbon in it.  I take advantage of all opportunities to make a fool of myself! :)