Massage the teacher = bad. Just remember that, m’kay? In reference to a previous post we learned that while paper passer, messenger, and librarian are good jobs for teachers to give their students, massaging the teacher doesn’t quite fly. However, apparently not all service jobs are a problem. From the title I think you can guess what unusual job I ran across today. Coffee. That is, making and serving coffee to several teachers in the school. That’s right, this teacher is training her students up for the type of job they can only hope to achieve should the economy not pick back up. Another 733 points today- sigh. There’s more to this story though. Apparently today was something like clothes mismatch day. Some students traded a shoe to have mismatched shoes. One boy had a sandal on one foot, a gym shoe on the other. Other students turned shirts inside out or wore them backwards. It was quite funny to see hoodies with the hood in front, like they were made for people who get carsick… 😮
So one student was wearing an apron. A forest green apron. I walked up to him in the morning and joked with him, “could I have a grande latte, please?” I had noticed the coffee job by this time by the way, so it wasn’t coincidence much like I would like to say it was. There were two girls assigned to this. As a non-coffee drinker I don’t have much experience making coffee and I guess they didn’t either as we tried to set the older-type coffee maker up. Guess who did know what he was doing and came over to help? Mr. forest green apron of course. That was the coincidence and what I found funny. I left it to him and the girls and started with the lesson.
Let me tell you that this had to have been the noisiest group I ever worked with. Sixth grade and social. This sort of group should have been in a middle school still trying to learn the new system back at the bottom of the food-chain. Some people disagree and say that sixth graders in elementary school is better for them. I was in a sixth grade middle school class myself, so I guess it’s just what I’m used to. When I first got there today I found out they had a sub yesterday. I read some of the notes she left about their behavior. Great… It could have been worse though. There is bad behavior and annoying behavior, and chatty behavior falls into the latter category. The ELL class I mentioned several posts ago would be the bad behavior, as would some of the BD classes I have subbed for. Talking I didn’t mind so much, except when I or someone I have called on is trying to talk of course. They turned out to be good kids, just chatty.
And I will be with this class again tomorrow (a two-day assignment, yay!), so more on this in another post.
Here 6th grade is the middle of middle school. Middle school = 4th – 8th grades.
Not sure what it is here anymore… used to be 6-8. But I remember mismatch/backward days from my high school days during “Spirit Weeks” guys (hmm… not mentioning any names… but no pictures to prove it) would come in wearing dresses. Some attempted to wear their underclothes on the outside (that I never did).
As long as they wore another pair of undergarments underneath, and as long as the undergarments outside were clean, then I would laugh rather than be grossed out… As for the dresses, these days in many parts of the country non-transgender guys wearing dresses would probably get in trouble for harassment, maybe even criminally, of true transgenders.
@taylhis: I don’t remember if you told me before, but are 4th and 5th graders truly in middle school, with ~40min class periods, daily PE and a special (art/music)? Or are they just sharing a building? Several years ago, district 300 had pulled 5th graders from the elementary schools and 6th graders from the middle schools due to gang activity and put them in one separate school. The 5th graders continued an elementary school program while the 6th graders were on a middle school program.