When they say the average American is stuck in traffic (i.e. not moving or moving slowly, not the total commute) commuting to work 38 hours per year (nearly double that if you hail from L.A.) it is nice to have a short trip.  In fact, this is a trip that I could easily walk if not for the heavy bag I carry.  I suppose I could stick my stuff in a backpack, but that really wouldn’t look very professional.  In any event, coincidence gave me two half-day jobs- for two team teachers!  From my understanding they did not coordinate this, but had to take off half-days for two different reasons.  I literally walked through the wall to get to the other class.  Okay, it was a collapsible wall that was partly open, but still.  Both teachers taught 3rd/4th grade multiage and so I even saw some of the same students both morning and afternoon due to switching classes- they switched for spelling and math.  It was a pretty pleasant day overall, in the top 15-20% of all my workdays.  I just had to look around, because this is exactly the sort of thing I will see in June if I get to do camp again.  What I mean is, combined 3rd/4th grades just graduated to 4th/5th.  I would put up a video here of last year, but since I am not their parent I don’t think I can since I’m sure more than my friends read this even if they don’t post (hint, hint!).  Perhaps I can be persuaded to give a private viewing if asked though.  Of course it’s possible I already showed a couple of you the video last year, but not all.  What, still with me?  Go on, leave a comment already! 🙂

Bleah. All weekend and no post to show for it. I could throw in a some edu-humor but I think you five readers would rather me put something substantial. Unfortunately it is too late in the evening for that. Besides, I really don’t have anything to post- Friday was uninteresting and I didn’t go to church since I had the weekend off from kid’s ministry and needed the break. Should I start adding posts for one of the other passions I hold- retrogaming? I wanted to start a sister brother blog, but I have a hard enough time writing for this blog. Here are a few sites to whet an appetite for retrogaming:

https://www.mameworld.net/

https://www.emulation9.com/

https://www.retroremakes.com/

The first site is everything MAME for arcade emulation. The second is pretty much just a news site for all types of emulator releases: computer, arcade, and console. There really is no good site these days for computer and console emulation. For emulators you need game files to play, be it ROM images, disks, or CD images, but I don’t think I should be telling you where to find these given their legality. The third link is all about remakes of older games, usually for Windows but sometimes for other systems. This would be the easiest one to get started with, but as remakes they are usually reimaginings (thanks Sci-fi Channel for the term!) rather than exact copies, so if it’s the original you want you will need to go with emulation.

Back to middle school, thankfully.  Not many would actually say middle school is an improvement over younger grades, but it is over yesterday’s special needs preschool classroom.  In any event, I mostly enjoy middle school though there are those days of course.  Science was the subject, and will be tomorrow as well since this is a two-day assignment.  Today’s repeated middle school lesson, only four times at least instead of six, was a video (surprise, surprise).  This video was one of several Squigglevision/Science Court episodes.  This series uses the really bad (in my opinion) Squigglevision method of animation and is about two lawyers who battle against each other over some science fact, one science-challenged and one who basically does the teaching and (you guessed it) always wins the case.  There were some funny moments, and it was entertaining.  However for education it seems like they could have put more content in there.  For a half-hour show (commercials were included, yikes!) it really could have said much more about the topic at hand, which by the way was work.  Not that one episode necessarily defines the series, mind you- I haven’t seen any other episodes.  The students just started a unit on simple machines and this video taught the scientific definition of work.  In it they also talked about a few simple machines that would make the work seem easier by increasing the distance moved (work = force × distance, so increasing distance will decrease force if the work the same). We wrapped up after the video with a short discussion and a few minutes of silent ball.

If Squigglevision sounds familiar, it may be because of one of the other shows produced using this patented method.  I specifically remember a show called Home Movies back in 1999.  I’ll tell you, I watched one episode of this show and that was enough for me.  One of the drawbacks of Squigglevision animation is the lack of fluid, well, animation.  Squiggly outlines are in abundance but the animation of the characters and whatnot is just lacking.  Case in point is the entrance of a character.  Rather than appearing a little at a time to show fluid motion, the character will just all of a sudden just be there.  One frame not there at all, next frame, bam there he is.  This is part of the reason I really disliked the show.  The other was I just didn’t care for the premise.  All in all I found the show to be quite a snooze.  So, when the show creators switched to Flash animation for the second season I still did not switch back.

Anyway, back to school.  You may have noticed I wrote that I only had to do this lesson four times.  The reason for this is: 1) this is the school that has tutorial for one of the periods (some students do a foreign language instead of tutorial), and 2) at this school each core teacher does one social studies class.  Why they don’t have a dedicated social studies teacher is a mystery, probably budgeting.  So for social studies they just colored pictures of African masks.  All period.  Well, you wanted to know, right? 😀

People who know me know that my preference for teaching is about 3rd-7th grades. Stretch a year in either direction, and those are pretty much the jobs I gravitate toward when I have a choice. Of course specials are an exception; I do take those no problem though they may include kindergarten or 1st grade. Since you are an observant reader, you will have noticed the words when I have a choice. Well, I was unable to procure an assignment yesterday leaving me at the mercy of what’s available in the morning. First call came in at about 5:40 and was for kindergarten. I thought about it and foolishly chose not to do it. I figured I would take a chance and check the web since I was awake. I did find a couple of half-day jobs which I also skipped. Then came the full-day preschool assignment. I didn’t think I would see anything younger than the one I rejected, but here it was. Being about 5:50 I decided to gamble again and keep hoping for a better assignment to show up. Nope. Oddly enough though, no one was picking up this full-day assignment for some reason. Finally, the system called me for the assignment so I gave in and took it. At least it was a lot closer to me than the kindergarten job. Then I went back to sleep for an hour.

As it turns out, this district as far as I know does not offer normal preschool. It does however offer special education preschool for the “developmentally delayed.” The morning had eight of ten students there, and was actually kind of a breeze. This kind of classroom has teaching assistants (three!), and today the speech teacher actually came in to take over the class! I had absolutely no problem with this as this age is really out of my comfort zone anyway. I just acted as another T.A. The most I did teachingwise was running a center where they matched patterns and did a connect-the-dots worksheet. Other than that it was keeping kids focused and helping as needed.

The afternoon was a little different. There were slightly fewer students (seven), but this was a more challenging group. One was very autistic and needed special attention, and as a whole the group was lower than the morning group and like the one autistic boy, required more attention. The title of this post refers to me, but in actuality one of the part-time T.A.s in the afternoon was a guy! I would guess he really likes kids to do this, because he is a retired principal from the school I was at and retirement packages for top school administrators tend to be very generous. Either that or some bad investments, but his actions during the afternoon clearly showed the former. He was very good with the kids- unlike a T.A. from another school I worked with recently. That T.A. really yelled at the kids, sometimes for very minor things. To be fair, that school was a middle school, but I really felt for those kids. Aside from that she did a pretty good job, doing things for the students she didn’t have to. If not for this I would have thought she was in the wrong profession entirely.

I was somewhat relieved to go home a little early- preschool ends 15 minutes before the regular grades- partly due to the afternoon class and partly due to the relative inactivity of my job. This is one reason, aside from the very low pay, that I would not want to be a teaching assistant full time. The absolute wost times I have had subbing were as teaching assistants, particularly one-one-one assignments. Never again on those, though I would sub (at regular pay) for other types of teaching assistants, like those with multiple kids or general classroom helpers.

I’m too tired to blog today, so here are a few jokes off the ‘net.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have a real post for you.  Enjoy!

A lesson about blood flow and circulation

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, he said: “Now, students, if I stood on my head the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I should turn red in the face.”

A little fellow shouted, “‘It’s because yer feet ain’t empty.”

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Kids’ Perspective

Kids’ Views on School

“I can’t read, I can’t write – and they won’t let me talk!”

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On the way home from the first day of school, the father asked his son, “What did you do at school today?”

The perplexed child looked at his father and said, “Daddy, didn’t you go to school when you were a little boy?”

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The homework schedule

Here is an explanation of the school homework policy for the average student. Students should not spend more than ninety minutes per night. This time should be budgeted in the following manner if the student desires to achieve moderate to good grades in his/her classes.

10 minutes sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Mom or Dad to do the assignment.

7:15.  That’s what time a sub has to be at the junior high schools (still called that even though they are on a middle-school system- I guess they didn’t want to change the letterheads 😛 ) in the district I was in today.  That means being up before six.  At least I had a solid night’s sleep instead of constantly waking up like I often do.  Once I got there, it turned out this teacher had a class that started ten minutes before the regular classes.  Say what?  Fortunately the plans said another teacher was asked to run this class so no problem not being able to completely go over the plans.  The one I was subbing for was also a traveling teacher, which in this case could be called class-on-a-cart.  This teacher had a class in a different room every period.  One class even had two different rooms- more on that below.

So I got to the room with my cart and the teacher who was supposed to take over (surprise to him!) just said that I could handle this and just ask if I had any questions since he would be in and out of the room.  Well then, I had to look at the plans again after all.  It really wasn’t hard like he said.  All I had to do was pass out quizzes they had to complete, inform them of their class/homework assignment once finished, and then monitor them.  Fortunately I had second period off to look at the rest of the day.

The next period was communications, basically a speech class.  Well, they were good at speaking all right- to each other in conversation that is.  They were completing an assignment as well, so again no teaching- just monitoring.  The next two classes actually lasted for a period plus another half-period.  Being math classes this was a bit odd.  This is actually why one of the classes was in two different rooms.  They spent one period in one room, then had to move for the next period.  I would gather the regular teacher in that room doesn’t have two periods off in a row to allow us to be there for the full time.  To get the half-period the students actually sacrificed their study hall half of lunch to have the longer math period.

Where does the small classes part come into play?  Well, you three who actually read this blog ( 😛 ) already know special education classes can be smaller.  Well, two of the math classes were such classes- the first had about eight students in it.  Most of them worked well, but there were two girls who thought they were in that communications class and chatted pretty much the entire time, sometimes with others across the room.  At least they did some work so I was able to put up with it without sending anyone to the office.  I left a note about this of course.  This was the first of the two special-ed math classes.  The second, get this, had two students.  That’s right, just two.  They pay for a teacher to teach a class of two students??  I would really like to know more about this but as a sub for just the day I really only know what’s in the notes- nothing about it there!- and from what I might pick up from other teachers, but I didn’t want to be nosy.  Oh well, some things just remain mysteries.

Until tomorrow then.  Time for me to sleep…

I thought the passing mention of Mr. Gore’s inconvenient half-truth last post would be all I had to say on this topic. That was before I came across this little news item. Apparently Time magazine has took it upon themselves to compare global warming to World War II. And to do so, they took an icon of WWII and changed it to replace the U.S. flag with a tree. This gaffe is enraging veterans everywhere, and rightly so. They had no right modifying such a sensitive image as the one showing the hard work our soldiers put in (and heavy death tool they suffered) at Iwo Jima and elsewhere in the war to keep our freedoms alive. Just click on the picture to read more about this atrocity.

P.S. While I don’t believe in the accuracy of the global warming effects we are being force fed, there is definitely something going on. Polar ice caps have been melting among other things. I am just highly skeptical we can do anything about it. Yes, all the carbon emissions we put out are having an effect on our lives- after all CO and CO2 are poisonous to our bodies. We used to simply call this pollution. Now we are trying to pass draconian laws that will bankrupt us with the expense before it has any significant effect on the carbon monoxide/dioxide levels in our atmosphere.

Many times when a teacher’s absence is planned he or she will plan something even the most brainless substitute can handle.  Often this is a test or book assignment.  Other times, like today, it’s a video.  Actually yesterday I showed a video in 5th grade, but that was only one half hour out of the entire day, so that doesn’t count.  You see, I am talking about middle school with its repeated lessons throughout the day.  This is where videos can turn the most brainy into the one of those most brainless by the end of the day.  Since it was social studies (not language arts as I said yesterday) the same lesson plan was done six times.  That is six times showing the movie Shenandoah, or at least the first 35 minutes of it.  This movie stars the late James Stewart as a farmer and father of six boys and a girl in 1864 Virginia, during the Civil War (oxymoron: nothing civil about that war).  His wife had died sixteen years ago and so he raised his family on his own.  Though he is Virginian he is staunchly opposed to slavery, and will not support the war in any way, shape, or form.  The part I saw has him at odds with a soldier trying to recruit his boys, a man who wants to buy a mule from him and pay him in Confederate dollars, and a buyer for the army who wants to buy or confiscate his horses for the army.  Later on I understand his youngest gets kidnapped by one of the armies, but I didn’t get that far yet.  So thanks to this class, I now have to find the movie and watch the last hour fifteen of it.  Just one time through though- six was a bit much 🙂 .

At least this time the video was actually interesting.  Previous videos in middle school included Al Gore’s propagandistic global warming documentary and a 7th grade sex-ed film.  Both made me feel dirty afterward.

Also interesting to note was today was another 5th grade tour day.  It included 5th-graders from the school I was at the other day.  The ones I had met were pleasantly surprised to see me.  One of the previous days this happened too with a different school I had subbed at.  It’s great to see their faces light up in recognition.  Though it unfortunately reminds me of a time last year when I ran into a sixth-grader at a store who recognized me from a couple weeks before.  I say unfortunately because he was so disappointed when I didn’t recognize him.  Names and faces have always been a weakness of mine, and this was exacerbated by memories of all the students I had seen since then pushing out memories from two weeks ago.

One thing about my life is that I don’t easily form relational ties, as in friends.  This does make it easier to live on a substitute teacher salary since I don’t go to social events, but it does make for a boring life.  I have strong ties with my church,  particularly children’s ministry, but  outside of that I don’t do much.  I occasionally visit with friends I have made, particularly those now in Ohio, but making new friends?  Really just acquaintances I only see at church and usually nowhere else.  Is it any surprise then that I am still unmarried?  Anyway, when I’m not teaching I am usually on the internet or watching TV.  Tonight I came home, surfed the net, watched a few episodes of Everybody Hates Chris, a hilarious weekly comedy loosely based on the teenage life of Chris Rock, and am using the internet again to write this.  Unfortunately this is how just about every night looks.  I have filled nights in the past with more schooling and musical theatre, but it has been awhile since either one so now I am just reflecting.  I pray to meet someone I could eventually call my wife, but that requires social work on my part which just doesn’t seem to happen.  I really should make sure to get out tomorrow night to singles group at my church.  It is a prayer and worship night, but it is followed by fellowship.  Unfortunately I am in my mid-thirties and still socially-challenged.  I often say really stupid things among people I don’t know (and sometimes with people I do!).  Also, after this month the singles ministry is breaking for a month to revamp the ministry somehow.  I do know I filled out a questionnaire on this about a month ago so I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Well, enough about this.

Today I had 5th grade again, only this time it was an ELL (English language learner) class.  Mostly Hispanic, but other nationalities were represented as well.  This was at a school where I have had problems before, so I wasn’t expecting it to go as well as in my home district, though I tried to not act as if that were true.  Expectations are important.  I don’t know if this is a true story or not, but in one of my classes in college we learned about a new teacher who was hired to teach a class, and one of the first things she noticed were numbers by their names.  These numbers were in the lower to mid 100’s, but all starting somewhat above 100 (120 maybe?  I don’t remember).  She assumed these to be IQs of the students, so knowing that smart kids would easily get bored with a standard curriculum she prepared a challenging and engaging curriculum which over the length of the school year tremendously grew her students.  She ended up with a very successful class with top grades.  After it was over her principal (I think) asked her how she was so successful and she pointed out to him the IQ numbers for the students which made her try hard to keep them challenged so they would better learn.  To this the principal replied that he was very happy with her teaching, but those were their locker numbers not their IQs.

Anyway, the day actually did not go as badly as I had feared.  Sure, there were a few incidents involving a desk falling on the floor and a couple of boys getting hurt by slapping and punching each other, and also some strong-willed kids, but they did their work and they learned.  In the end it wasn’t a case where I just wanted to be done with it like some days.

Tomorrow: 7th grade language arts

When subbing for a regular classroom teacher in an elementary school one would expect to have the same class for at least most of the day, granting of course switching for math which is common in the intermediate grades. Aside from the start of the day and a very short time in the morning for snack, I did not have the same class until after 2:30 PM! They had a special in the morning so that accounted for part of it, but then they came back, had snack time, and left just 15 minutes later to go to another classroom for science while another class came in for social studies. Following that was math, which of course all four 5th grade classes mixed up according to ability which as mentioned is pretty standard. After lunch they came up, I took afternoon attendance, and then they split for reading- and I don’t mean a few students left for resource while the majority stayed. I mean just the opposite: most left while only a few stayed. The students were doing a Roald Dahl unit and the students who came in were reading The BFG. Other classes were reading different books. Finally, after reading the class came back together again… and promptly left for recess. Finally I had the class together, working together for language arts. I don’t know why I bothered making a seating chart when I came in. 😮

I have heard of preparing students for middle school, but I have never seen it to this extent. The closest I had seen before was a school where they actually had a set of lockers which the fifth-graders would take turns using to practice for middle school, but even there I don’t think they switched classes so much. I know I never did when I was in fifth grade. At least I don’t remember doing so aside from specials. But that was the early eighties we’re talking about, somewhat removed from today’s teaching methods.

By the way, The BFG reading assignment included making a comic strip based on the chapters they read. So, to make a connection here I will give you a couple of links for your reading enjoyment. Of course since this blog is primarily about education these won’t be your regular comics.com (hah! You thought I would give a link, not just the name! Uh, whoops… 😀 ) newspaper comics. On both sites they have links to purchase their ‘toons, but they are free to view on the web so you don’t need to bother. Well, enjoy!

Cartoons by Randy Glasbergen

EDUCATION CARTOONS