The assignment I took for today at that furthest school was art and drama.  Interesting combination as usually drama is the realm of the music teacher.  It was actually a pretty easy day.  School started at 8:00, so I was there at 7:45.  My first class? 9:30.  That’s right, I had over an hour and a half to kill reading, answering nature’s call, eating free food in the lounge…

This is teacher’s appreciation week, so the PTO provides food all week for the teachers.  Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to offend the PTO by not doing my part here.  Bagels, doughnuts, fruit, juice- a second breakfast!  Okay, I didn’t eat that much, but suffice to say I was satisfied with my mid-morning snack.

9:30 rolled around and the first of three classes came in.  Now three doesn’t sound like much, but remember this was art and drama so I had to teach two of the classes both, so it was really more like five classes- still an easy day though.  This first class was 2nd/3rd grade, and it turned out I had subbed for this class before earlier in the year, which had its own interesting tale of two subs showing up for this one job.  The teacher had requested a particular sub, making the arrangements herself, then proceeded to put the job in the system as sub needed but not filled so I took that job when it showed up.   The principal chose to side with the system, so the requested sub had to do work elsewhere in the building.  She wasn’t too happy because this apparently was the second time this had happened to her.

Anyway, back to today they just completed a project for art- in fact all three classes did, though differing projects of course- and then I got to teach some drama.  Well, play some drama games with them.  We did a game called “Change Three Things” which was n observation game.  They partnered up and observed each other for several seconds.  Then they turned around, changed three things about their appearance then turned back and tried to figure out what changed.  It could have been something as simple as closing an eye, or as obvious as, well I will use one of the students as an example for this- one boy unbuttoned his shirt and put it on again, backwards.  Yes, he held up the game doing this- it took as long as you can imagine.  Now if it was a t-shirt like most kids wear it would have been quick.  Oh, well.  This was a pretty wild group so we only did one round of this.  Next we moved on to a murder-mystery game, where one person is throwing a party (his/her choice of type of party) but there is a killer at the party.  They walk around shaking each others hands while at the same time acting like the type of party it is- pizza, tea, whatever.  The killer would “kill” someone by tickling another player with his/her finger while shaking hands.  The “victim” would wait ten seconds before “dying” dramatically.  The ten seconds being so we wouldn’t catch the killer in the act.  Of course, being 2nd and 3rd graders this more sophisticated game didn’t go quite so smooth.  Sometimes they would forget to wait ten seconds or the killer would forget to be discrete.  And of course everybody wanted to guess at once.

6th grade was only art, so I will move on the the last class, 4th/5th grade.  This class was supposed to be a pretty bad class, but to be honest, aside from a few boys who just wanted to make origami “fortune tellers” because they were finished with the project then go and bug everyone around them with their fortune tellers, I had more trouble with the 2nd/3rd grade class.  In any event, for drama I didn’t get to choose the mystery game, so for them we did skits about three items.  In groups they would pick three unrelated items (example: frog/basketball/telephone) and make a skit around these three things.  The trick was they were not allowed to say the names of these objects in the skit.  When a group finished, the rest would try to guess the three objects.  Of course the goal was to make the objects easy to guess and this would be an indicator of how well they got their message across in the skit.  In the end, many were easy to guess but there were a few tough ones.  In all, I would say they did a pretty good job with it.  Only some audience participation left something to be desired.

Well, I was able to find another job in the same district tomorrow while writing this.  More free food I hope.  😀  Same school as the rejected job, a school I will be at on Friday as well.  So far four days in this same district this week.

Hmm. Mr. Webber’s Phantom of the Opera line doesn’t quite work since this was during the day. How about, “The hills are alive, with the sound of music…” Yep, that works better. If you haven’t guessed by now the position I subbed for today was music. Elementary music. Like most specials jobs in the district I was in, it was a traveling job, but fortunately this time I went to the right school first. The first two classes were great. They were fourth graders and they were really focused. As they were in a unit about stage productions/musicals, they got to watch a video with scenes with a couple of famous dancers if you thought of Billy Elliot, you are dead wrong. In fact, he’s not even real. Did you know there is actually a musical based on this movie by the way?. Nope, not Michael Flatley. At least he’s real, but you are thinking too modern! Go way back to the 1930s-1950s to get this one. Okay, you have them- Fred Astaire and Gene Autry… No wait, not the kind of dancing that involves bullets at your feet- Gene Kelly of course.

Anyway, they saw scenes from a few shows including Ziegfeld Follies, Royal Wedding, and, of course, Singin’ in the Rain. In Royal Wedding, There was a strange scene where Astaire danced not only on the floor, but on the walls and ceiling as well! If you go to the Royal Wedding link and check out the trivia for it you can find out how they did it. These days they would just use computers of course. The kids really enjoyed that scene, as well as Kelly getting wet in Singin’ in the Rain.

I wish I could say that the fifth graders at the other school did as well with this video, but I can’t. There were technical difficulties (the LMC gave me a DVD player that was broken- it wouldn’t play the disc) and the first class just talked and talked, even after I finally got another player and started the movie. The second class was a little better, but still excitable during some scenes. The third class did much better, though not quite up to the fourth graders.

Finally, I had lunch then four afternoon classes with younger grades. No video for them, but instead the second graders worked on a show they were doing- we just went through all their songs on CD. I noticed this show involves the fifth grade as well. At first I wondered why the teacher didn’t have me do this plan with that grade, but remembering how the first two classes went I quickly shelved that question. First grade had yet a different lesson, which we only got partway through, but that was expected by the teacher. Well, that’s it for now.

This will be a shorter post this time around I think.  Today I worked in a second grade classroom.  This is stretching my comfort zone a bit, but toward the end of the year they are becoming more like third-graders as they grow.  Unlike yesterday I was the sole adult in this room, which is the norm for regular classrooms.  The other second-grade teacher, a rare male primary teacher, was very helpful in making sure I knew what was going on and checking up on me when he could.  As this was hardly my first time in a classroom I didn’t need too much help, but he did make sure I knew about an assembly at the end of the day that for some reason didn’t make it into the plans and gave me some tips about the class as well.  Even though this was also a no-specials day (if you don’t count the assembly) it was rather enjoyable.  I had only a break a lunchtime, but was able to do an acceptable job with the plans.  I didn’t finish the reading plans, but typically a teacher writes more than can often be taught to make sure there is no time the students aren’t engaged.  The fact that the plans were well-written and detailed was a bonus.  Not to pick on any gender, particularly mine, but I find that most often women leave more detailed plans than men.  This is not always the case of course but it is typical.  The only real downer for the day was that I had to stay longer than normal because again there were no breaks other than lunch, so I didn’t have time throughout the day to leave all the notes I wanted so I had to spend time after school instead.  Fortunately this school was in my home town so I still got home at a reasonable time.