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.