Not all fun

I have said in other posts that 5th grade is probably my favorite grade followed by 4th and then 6th.  Well, yesterday I had a late call to sub for 5th and 6th grade.  I knew I would be late and I wasn’t disappointed in this regard when I ended up 15 minutes late mostly due to the snowy roads as we got another couple of inches overnight.  This district by the way is famous for its schools closing their parking lots when the buses arrive.  I thought I was safe from this at this school since the buses don’t go into the parking lot area.  I was wrong, but didn’t realize it right away so I turned into a drive that had cones only halfway across.  This is a common tactic when they only allow one-way traffic so I thought nothing of it until a teacher started blowing her whistle behind me.  Well, I will now add this school to the list of the district’s schools I can never be late for if I actually want to park my car.  Since I was already in the lot, she let me park.  This time.

So, once I got in, there was the teacher, still in the room.  She was still getting things ready and hadn’t left yet.  She would come back in the afternoon too to test some of the kids one on one.  She got the kids started while I looked over the plans.  There were only two things: math in the morning and language arts after lunch.  Oh, there was a special in the morning so I had a half hour off to continue to look at the plans.  Besides the special, I had math all morning because I taught two classes.  First was 5th grade, then they went into another room and 6th grade came in for their turn.  Following lunch, I continued with 6th grade for writing before swapping back for reading with the 5th graders.

All in all the day wasn’t too bad, but these kids were talkers.  Whenever they had a chance they would chat it up.  By the end of the day this really wore me down.  The last three short nights for me probably added to this too.  I was glad when it was over.

Today I was set to do 7th grade science.  Then every sub’s favorite “you are no longer needed” call came in first thing in the morning.  Apparently the districts didn’t wan’t kids coming to school in -8ishºF weather as all of them around me called a day off.  Unfortunately, tomorrow looks like another non-payday for me too with a forecast of even colder morning temperatures.  What a day today for a plane to end up in a freezing river.  I pray that all involved fare much better than the bird the plane apparently hit.