She Lives!!

I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to write in this blog again!  It's be pretty weird for the last month.  Let's catch up!  Okay, so the week before Christmas vacation we had a wild snow and ice storm here in Salem and school got cancelled for the entire week.  Then it was vacation for two weeks, and I spent the first week still stuck here in the snow.  Was able to make it home for the second week before I returned to Salem to start back subbing (or so I thought).  I expected the first week back to be slow - but I did not expect it to be non-existent!  I ended up not working at all last week.  This week I was hoping it would pick up, but again, it has been mind-numbingly slow!  My roommate, who also subs, got called 4 times this week while I have not gotten called once.  It's been very frustrating.  

I did however, manage to snag myself a job online for today.  I was subbing in a first grade bilingual class in one of the smaller schools in the district.  The day was mostly fine aside from the soreness of my voice called by talking over the ceaseless chatter of my first-grade charges.  That and the 10 minute delay getting into the building.  I go there on time, but I couldn't get in because all the doors were locked.  All the schools keep their doors locked, so I'm used to that - you just have to ring a buzzer by the door and someone in the office remotely unlocks the door so you can come in.  Problem today was the no on was in the office (or anywhere to be seen) when I got there to ring the buzzer!  Turns out they were all in a meeting.  So I had to wait outside quite a while before someone finally found me.  The kids were mostly nice, but they just could NOT shut up to save their lives!  Every time I turned around I was telling someone to be quiet or to sit down.  Lots of times I tried to get their attention by using a clapping pattern.  They would repeat the pattern back to me like they were supposed to, but then they just keep right on talking like nothing had happened!  I was about to lose my mind!  They also liked to yell out "TEACHER! TEACHER!!" whenever they wanted my attention.  And no matter how many times I told them to raise their hands, or that "I don't talk to people who yell at me" it didn't seem to stick with them for long.  I had to speak loudly many times simply because that was the ONLY way I could even get their attention.  So my voice is very tired...doesn't help that I haven't used it this much for nearly 5 weeks either!

I've got a job for Thursday next week, and there's no school on Monday or Friday.  I'm hoping I can get some stuff for the other two days so I don't feel like the despised one of the calling system anymore!