Summer!

Well, I have no sub stories, but I figured I needed to wrap this baby up for the year. I didn't work the last week of school, which isn't really surprising. Most teachers don't want to be gone during the last week, and they're not allowed to take personal days anyway. So there are sometimes a few jobs for people who get really sick, but not many. Roommate did get a job on Monday (which figures, since if there's a job available she'll always get it before me). But apparently the kids were horrible, so I wasn't too jealous.

But yes, school is officially out in Salem-Keizer as of last Friday. I'm spending the summer relaxing, catching up on reading, tinkering with cake decorating and trying to see if I can stir up any business, and the dreaded applying-for-jobs-for-new-year! I may try to update this blog occasionally, but I'm still going to try to keep it mostly teaching-related.

If you have facebook, you can keep up with what I'm doing there: http://www.facebook.com/nessajean

Have a great summer everybody!

-Vanessa

Drippy, Sticky, Melty Messes

Kindergarteners are busy.

Today was a bit of a lesson in chaos.

I get a semi-late call (it was just barely an hour before the start time, but the school's not close, so it only gave me about 30 minutes to get ready).  I got to the school though with plenty of time though.  However, I soon discovered that there were no plans, no lesson book, no schedule, no sub folder.  Thankfully, I knew and aid was coming soon, and hopefully she'd have an idea of what we were supposed to do.

She arrived soon, and realized we had no plan, so she ended up calling the teacher to check what she wanted us to do.  Once we had a plan, the aid had to leave for some meeting.

The day was interesting.  Some of the time it felt like trying to give directions to a brick wall - they just weren't listening!  Sometimes, even when somebody was calling a kid's name, the kid just didn't respond - it actually reminded me a lot of subbing in head start.  Hopefully this was just the end of the year, substitute behavior, and not an all time thing, or I'd feel bad for the teacher!

A few things that were weird/frustrating/distracting:

There was a volunteer mom there with her younger child, who I'd guess was about 2.  The little one was pretty fussy and kept trying to escape - I was distracted by this a lot.  Fussy crying and seeing doors opening out of the corner of you eye grab your attention pretty quickly.  

The aid told the kids to get a book if they wanted before we started the Magic School Bus video.  I guess they look at books when watching a movie.  I didn't understand this, and I think I've decided that will never do this in my class.  Most of the kids didn't pay attention to the movie at all, and they were so talkative over the books that they made it hard for the other kids to pay attention.

A giant moth got into the room at once point and it was pretty interesting I'm sure to watch me and the aid try to get it out.  (We succeeded.)

It was one girl's birthday so we had birthday popsicles.  I never want to have popsicles at school again.  I'm sticking to dixie cups, cupcakes or cookies. That's it.  Popsicles are drippy, sticky, melty messes.

And with that, I'm signing off - grateful for Friday.  Only one week of school left!  We will see what the week holds for Captain Substitute!

Dang Yearbooks

Today I got a call to sub at 5:30 in the morning! I was happy about the job, not so happy about the time of the call!

The day was fine. I had two classes because the teacher I was subbing for team-teaches with another teacher, so they switch classes halfway through the day. Both classes were really small, so that's nice. One had 14 kids and the other had 15. And I'd been to these classes before, so it was nice to kind of know my way around.

The morning went really smoothly, but the afternoon was a bit annoying. First, I was told some kids needed to finish a project, but it turned out that nearly ALL of them needed to finish it. And it was a project they needed a computer for and there weren't enough computers for all of them to do it. So I was trying to sort that out when we had a fire drill! (Thankfully, I was warned that this was coming.) Also, in the late afternoon the yearbooks got delivered! So the kids were stoked about this (even though only 4 kids ordered them). When I went to pass them out, I discovered we didn't have enough! So it took a while to sort that out. Then, they had some yearbook signing party in the cafeteria for kids who ordered them, so that was crazy. And then I couldn't really do anything with the remaining kids because a third of them would miss it. So it was just kind of a mess. And to top it off - it was also popcorn day! So I had popcorn to pass out as well.

Thankful for Air Conditioning

Today was a nice day.

It was stinking hot in the school, but my room was one of the few that had air conditioning in it, so it wasn't so bad.

The kids were sweet.  I didn't have to do a lot.  For the morning hour I only had half of the class at a time because the other half went to the computer lab.  While they were in the room the kids were working on a bunch of projects that kept them pretty busy.  In the afternoon we worked with geoboards, which was like my favorite thing when I was in school, so I was sure to give the class some time to just play with them.  Then, I could tell we were all tired of doing structured stuff by the end of the day so I let the kids do math centers.  It was a nice way to end the day, and I was pleased to see how well the kids got along with each other! :)

And that's a really boring entry, but I tired and have nothing else to say! 

I Smell Good

I think that was the first thing one of the girls told me this afternoon.  The class was coming in from recess and she walked right up to me, said hi, and then announced that I smelled good.  I must say I enjoy this comment more than the ones about my lips being weird.  Not sure what smelled good - laundry detergent, shampoo, deodorant (haha) - she seemed to think it was perfume, which is weird because I was not wearing any perfume or body mist stuff.

Anyways, the rest of the day was easy.  I read a book, did a reading group, and then supervised the kids while they worked on an endangered species project.  For the last hour we had a guest science speaker.  While I was standing at the door saying goodbye to the class, kids from two other classes in the pod that I've subbed for noticed me and bunches of them came over to give me hugs.  So I got three sets of goodbyes today.  It's nice to be remembered fondly. :)

Those Darn Lips Again

Yes, again!

Today it was a fourth grader during ELD that asked me while I was walking around checking on students' progress, "Hey, what's wrong with your lip?"  I asked her what she meant, but she quickly back-tracked and just said "never mind."  I responded with my tried and true response of, "that's just the way my lips are."  

But really!  That's the third time I've had a kid comment on my lips!  What is wrong with me?! Ah!  No one ever asked me this when I was subbing in Astoria...perhaps I am only a freakish lip mutant in Salem.

Anyways, I thought that was weird.

In other news - this hot weather is not at all pleasant when you're spending all day in a non-air conditioned room with around 30 sweaty kids.  They kids are irritable (as is teacher) and it doesn't smell that good.  And then I'm doing battle all afternoon trying to get kids to pay attention while we're reading a book that none of them like (Summer of the Swans) and do a long math test that none of them seem to get.

I know Summer of the Swans is supposed to be a classic book and all, but really, it's pretty boring.  And I'd guess that about 95% of kids don't like it.  Just seems like not the best way to inspire a love of reading.  But then again, those are the books schools have class sets of.  And the books that kids like aren't always the best suited for use in a classroom.  I don't know, I have mixed feelings on that.  

I did think the book the teacher was using as a read aloud was interesting.  That one's going on my list-of-books-to-read-someday-if-I-ever-have-time-and-ever-read-the-hoards-of-books-already-on-the-list list.