Kindergarten

Today has inspired me to make a new tag for my blog: fire drill.

This is my forth day subbing this year and my second fire drill! I'm hoping it does not remain a trend. Fire drills can be a bit stressful when you only know about 5 kids' names.

Thankfully, in kindergarten I have an IA and that was a big help.

The rest of the day went smoothly, and the kids were really good. The IAs told me they were happy to see me again too. And I have nothing else of interest to say! :)

There Really WAS No More Hiding!

Yay!

I was very happy to pick them up from recess both times to find them all in line and ready to go!

Not all parts of the day went so smoothly, but you gotta look for the positive!

The potentially problematic child was once again wonderful! I'd like to think it was because of my great teaching skill that he decided to be a well-behaved student, but perhaps I just happen to have good timing. :) Although it IS good to think that he was so good despite the surprise of sub which can sometimes set the more volatile kids off - change throws some for a loop. But then again I know about Transformers and Star Wars so how could he not love me?

Another kid did give me a run for my money though. He couldn't sit still, didn't listen and basically was disruptive and rude. I finally got tired of redirecting him over and over and sent him to the office (which is something I hardly EVER do - I feel like if I can deal with them in the room then I will. I don't want to be the sub that's sending a stream of kids to the office. Not a good way to get called back.) He was gone for a while, the rest of the class settled down a bit when the distraction was gone and we got rolling on the afternoon. When the disruptor was back, he had a much better attitude and was pretty pleasant for the rest of the day. Guess he just needed a break too.

No More Hiding

This morning I got my first 5:30 AM call. Yay.

Well, I am glad for the job today, I just really didn't need to know about it for another hour - I was still sleeping phone-calling-machine!

This job is for one of the 15 or so teachers I emailed a couple weeks ago to say that I was still subbing. Guess it's paying off already!

The class was fine. A few sweet ones, a few squirmy ones, a few talkative, and few with "selective hearing", etc. In other words, pretty typical. I was briefed on one child in the morning due to reoccurring behavior problems, but I had no problems with him! In fact, I think I blew his mind when he showed me his pattern block picture of some sort of figure and I asked him if it was a person. He told me that it was a Transformer and I said, "Is it Optimus Prime?" His little mouth dropped open and he looked at me in awe and said, "You've seen that movie?"

The biggest problem of the day actually was a few of the kids (mostly girls) who kept "hiding" from me - I use quotes because they were exceptionally bad at it (I'm not complaining about that), but it was annoying! They were supposed to be in line and for some reason they thought it was funny to hid behind a pillar or around the corner of the building. After first recess I had a talk with the whole class about why it was not OK to hide from me, and the little buggers did it again during second recess! I was pretty steamed.

Hmmm...last thing of interest: we had a fire drill! Their first fire drill of the year! Thankfully, we were warned, and they sent another adult up to my room to help just in case.

Tomorrow I was supposed to go to another class in the same school, but today's teacher is still going be out sick, so they switched me. So I've got one more day with these guys. Hopefully they quit hiding. I think I will threaten to not let them participate in choosing time if they do it again tomorrow.

My First, Their Second

Day of school that is!

So today is the second day of school for students in Salem-Keizer, and I was lucky enough to have a full-day sub job. It was for a teacher I know who had the misfortune to get summoned for jury duty. It was for a pretty long and intense case that would have lasted 12 weeks, so she was very glad to get dismissed after a few hours waiting.

My day was pretty simple. The class is a bilingual class, so the IA did a lot of the morning instruction that was supposed to be in Spanish. I helped out with what I could, and found that most of the kids spoke pretty good English, so I was able to communicate with them well.

I was on my own with them during lunch time, and I spend quite a bit of this time opening milk cartons and ketchup packets, cleaning up spilled milk, and fishing forks and spoons out of the garbage can.

In the afternoon I read a story their teacher had left, and did a "game" where we basically decided if various items could be recycled or had to go in the trash.

After that we took them out to an extra recess, and from there to Music. (Also got mildly scolded by another teacher for bringing the kids into the building before the previous music class had left (despite the fact that we were right on time and the music teacher was running late). Apparently I am not the first to be scolded by this person though, so I pretty much just tried to avoid rolling my eyes at the situation.)

Right as the IA and I were heading back into the main building, the classroom teacher got back from the jury duty. She did the last 30 minutes of the day and I got to play assistant.

It was a nice way to start the year! The kids were very sweet and it was sure easy for me. I'm looking forward to receiving a September paycheck! :)