One of the most common roles I fill in for is special education. Sometimes it’s quite challenging, sometimes quite easy. Well, it is only truly easy when there are teaching assistants who pretty much take over while I take the role of assistant. This is commonly the case in mentally impaired classrooms (autism, Down syndrome, etc.). Yesterday was mostly on the easy side. I was subbing for a junior high teacher who actually only had one class of her own- the rest were “team teaching,” which generally means the sub plays the part of assistant while the other teacher teaches. But what does one do when both teachers are out and both left plans saying the other teacher will take over? That appeared to be the case when I walked into second period and compared notes with the other sub. Fortunately, this turned out to be a non-crisis as the teacher he was subbing for left plans on the board in addition to saying that my teacher would take over. I can only guess his teacher found out about my teacher’s absence only after writing the plans. Whew. The rest of the day was quite uneventful, just following the same group of students around through social studies, math, science and language arts. I also had to help look over a group of homework lunchers (detention really). It’s just as it sounds- students who didn’t turn in homework in one or more classes worked on it during lunch. I was told when they first started this program there were over 60 kids in the room at one time! Now that has to be against fire codes. I was quite happy there were only about 15. In any event this was definitely a position I would do again.
