I only made one post about work last week?  Well, I was depressed about the state of the elections I guess.  I truly believe we are in for a very rough four years, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.  I know who my messiah is and He isn’t a politician.  So my last post was about Wednesday, so that day is covered.  Thursday and Friday were the same job, a special ed teacher.  The interesting thing about this job was that it was a teacher-grade job, but the duties were more or less the exact same as the prior week’s teaching assistant job!  The difference must be behind the scenes.  The job was itinerant (traveling) but I didn’t know that until I showed up at the wrong school Thursday morning.  A phone call later to verify where I was supposed to start, I was on my way to the other school.  Got there, got started.  Detailed plans- good.  Start off in 4th grade where there is a student who appears to be autistic.  They’re still working on his diagnosis.  I helped where I could and then I was off to another 4th grade class to help other students with writing.  I edited the papers of a couple of students who were on the teacher edit stage and then it was time to go back to the first class.  I pulled a couple of students and worked with them outside of the room for a while, and then it was intervention time- something that was skipped last week at my assistant job because I had no plans for it.  Half a dozen third-graders came in and we did a reading lesson about visualization and bugs.  That ended and it was time to go to the other school.  Only a half hour before I was scheduled to be in another class so no time to stop for lunch.

So now I was at the school I had initially gone to in the morning.  Went to her desk and- no plans.  After the detailed plans of the morning (which only included the morning!) there were no plans here?  Say what?  Okay, she had a schedule, so I just went to the rooms in question and followed whatever the teacher had for me.  Lunch was 45 minutes after my start at this school (and I did bring a lunch by the way- I just like to stop for lunch instead when I travel, in which case I would save the lunch I brought for another day), and that’s when I learned that the teacher I subbed for was not expecting an afternoon sub.  Nice.  In fact, she initially expected no sub at all- she was apparently told that her position doesn’t get a sub (this is her first year there by the way).  Interesting considering I have subbed for many teachers in this district with her job title.  Somehow that changed and she expected one for the morning only.  Well, I continued to follow her schedule for the afternoon, which included two 5th grade classes and a 2nd grade class.  The second grade class had a student who was in a way the equivalent of the 4th grader I mentioned in the morning.  No intervention group this afternoon, but I did notice she had one tomorrow.  I was getting a little worried about that.

After the last class I returned to her office, and surprise- the teacher I was subbing for was there, due into a meeting after school.  That would solve the plans problem for tomorrow, including the intervention class. Whew.  She explained to me more about the miscommunication and that she would be sure to have plans for me the next day.

Friday went much the same as Thursday, with only a slight variation.  Same classrooms, same kids.  Today I gave spelling tests to a few of the kids who had special lists.  I did this for a few kids each in the 4th grade classes.  For 3rd grade intervention I finished the lesson from the day before and let them read silently for the rest of the time.  Since I knew I had an extra 15 minutes today for travel I had time to pick up a Wendy’s lunch and scarf it down before 5th grade intervention.  This class just had a writing assignment so no big problems there.  Like the morning, the rest of the time was spent in the same classrooms as yesterday.  A few written notes later I was on my way out for a nice weekend.  Next up: drama.

Sigh. If there is one thing that is deficient it is the software that one of the districts I’m in uses. No teacher comments on jobs, and no way to change the school in the case of a traveling teacher. So, it is up to the teacher to contact the sub and let that sub know when a position doesn’t start where the system says it does. Needless to say, today I was that sub. Last time I took a social studies position the teacher called me to let me know where I would need to be. Not this time. While I was aware it was likely to be an itinerant position again, I just figured since no one contacted me I would be going right where the system said I would. Silly me. I went there and, you got it “Oh, she doesn’t come in until the afternoon. You have to go to this other school…” I was pretty POed when I was told this. Someone has the responsibility of letting me know, whether it be the teacher or the office. At the other school I actually ran into the teacher in question. She was doing an observation so that was why she needed the sub. I didn’t want to be rude played it calm and apologized for not being on time because the system said I was to go to the other school. Whether or not she got the hint I don’t know as all she said was it was no problem since I didn’t start teaching for another hour.

I’ll have to say she did prepare thoroughly for me with all the materials separated by class, detailed plans, and whatnot. Meaning of course that I couldn’t blame her if things went wrong. 😀 Okay, I wouldn’t anyway, and nothing did go wrong. It was a rather pleasant day. Between the two schools I had four first-grade classes, one second, and three third. The lesson plans unfortunately were not quite the same for each class of the same grade so I was kept on my toes. The one thing I really didn’t like having to do was pick one student from each class to get an award for behavior. While I would like to say I was completely objective on the selection I really couldn’t keep a constant eye on each student to determine who best earned it. It was inevitably more like picking three or four students to watch who seemed to be behaving themselves and look for reasons to disqualify them, then still winding up picking between two or three at the end, completely subjectively. Oh, well.

Yesterday I was at a local middle school as the industrial tech sub. Tomorrow I will have a half day (oh why do I take these? At least I will get to sleep in!) for IT at another school. I already know what to expect there, so I could write up a comparison of the two, but I will save it for tomorrow anyway, just because I can. 😛

Erm… Running into what?? It sounds like I mixed up two topics here… Well as to the second, since it’s the least interesting, the position I wound up subbing for was art. After patting myself on the back for actually arriving a little early for once I ashamedly dragged my tail out the door and over to the school I was supposed to go to. Okay, though that scene has actually happened before, this one wasn’t my fault. Really. You see, many of the specials positions in this district are itinerant, or traveling jobs. That is, the teacher works out of two schools. Having been burned before I meticulously checked, and rechecked both the message (“special instructions”) the teacher left and the online system so I would really know where I was going. Real– okay, enough of that word. Anyway, the message told me all about how there was a student teacher and I would leave the teaching to her… yada yada. Been there, done that. No school mentioned. Check. Over to the online system, looked at the school, check. Go to the school, sign in, drop my lunch off, pass over the store-bought bagels someone brought in, go to the art room, and… another teacher is there who says she has the room Friday mornings. Check in with the office, and sure enough all my careful detective work is shattered when they (now) inform me the teacher I am subbing for works out of a different school on Fridays. Oops… Sign out, collect my lunch, pass over the bagels again, travel to the other school which is fortunately only five minutes away hoping all the while it wasn’t one of those schools that closes their parking lot when the buses start to arrive (seriously), fortunately again find out it is not, check in, put my lunch away, pass over… wait- Panera bagels? Grab bagel, go to art room, carefully verify with student teacher that I am indeed in the correct place this time, then finally take my coat off and plop down with relief. Hey, at least someone brought good bagels over here. 🙂

So, it turned out there were eight classes to teach: four 5th/6th, and four 3rd/4th. Apparently all classes except kindergarten are multiage at this school. Well, the 5th/6th classes were in the middle of a project involving Crayola®-clay animal pots and acrylic paints. Yes, they looked better than that just sounded (most of them…). I of course assured them that yes, the olive green and yellow plaid shirt I was wearing was on purpose because I hate it and don’t care if it got messed up in art. Through all four periods unfortunately it didn’t. I guess with three wins (“fortunatelies?”) I was bound to lose one.

The 3rd/4th grade classes started a new unit on movement. No, this wasn’t PE or performing arts. Movement as portrayed on the canvas. They even got to draw a little, well, er, two of the classes did. Such a crime- art class and some didn’t even get to do art! Well, that’s unit introductions for you.

Okay then, until next post.

Wait, I’m forgetting something aren’t I? Yes, really (didn’t I ban this word earlier?). “Running into” doesn’t actually refer to the movement, as they weren’t allowed to draw people today anyway, only objects. Drawing people and showing their movement is apparently for more advanced students, more advanced than 8-10 years anyway. And besides, I had to have added the church category for this post for some reason.

In this case “running into” refers to me running into someone I actually knew from church. No, not really (that word again!) running into him, adults don’t run in school rooms now, do they? So anyway, It had been a couple of years, and memory for names and faces isn’t exactly one of my strengths, or even neutral features (you know where I’m going with this…). Apparently his memory was only slightly better as I just “looked familiar” like maybe someone from camp. I one upped him and said “church camp?” still not recognizing him. Then he one upped and gave the name of the camp and his name. I of course pretended to recognize him before he said his name (secretly grateful he said it, reall- truly recognizing him only after he said it). As it turned out, he was the one student from my cabin I spent a week with (yes I truly am pathetic…) and never saw again after that summer. There were two like that the following summer, but at least I knew I wouldn’t see them again when they told me that the one was from another church and the other was a friend he invited to come with him. Anyway, since you have suffered through this entire post I will provide an obligatory picture of my cabin from that year, but you will have to just guess which one he is. All I’ll tell you is he isn’t the one on the right (that would have been a really (sigh) big 5th grader). The one on the right was actually my junior counselor (I was the adult counselor). I of course am behind the camera, so no picture of me- sorry! 😛

Note: The thumbnail picture is not so good, so click on it to see it in it’s full glory!