The Thursday before last, I shot all of one car at two dealers- highly unusual, so on Monday that was more than made up for by having 18 cars to do between the same two dealers.  Normally this would make me quite happy, but not so much on a Monday following a snowfall.  For starters, I knew I couldn’t leave as early as normal because the dealers needed time to clean up their lots.  The first one was still doing it when I arrived.  Monday nights I have small group at my church, so it is the only night I need to finish on time so starting late and then finding I had so many cars to do, some of which would have to be brushed off, was less than thrilling.  I finished the second dealer a little before 7PM, then headed back.  It was dark and I was traveling 50MPH, so I can probably be excused for not seeing the massive pothole in the right lane.  I kept moving, but I feared it would cause my tire to go flat on the way home.  It didn’t and I was able to drive the car for the rest of the week, but when I brought the car into the shop Saturday because I needed a brake job, surprise!  A $500 repair bill.  Actually, it was higher but he gave me a break (on top of the four brakes 😛 ) because my mother and I were good customers.  $210 was for the brakes, $30 was for the oil change- that meant the rest was for the new axle and bearings on the potholed wheel.  Incidentally, I was an hour late for small group, partly because I stopped to eat on the way.

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Tuesday I found myself in supersized district to sub- a rare occurrence these days as I can find few jobs available there even the mornings of.  And sub I dd- in bilingual kindergarten.  Fortunately there was an assistant with me for both classes- a different one for each class.  The morning had Spanish-speakers who knew very little English.  The assistant ended up running most of the morning.  It was a struggle.  Oddly enough there was a boy who I’m told actually knows English and very little Spanish, yet he was required to do everything in Spanish like the rest of the class!  The afternoon was supposedly Polish-speakers (hence the different assistant) but all of them knew English so I was actually able to take charge of this group.  I felt I accomplished much more with this group.

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Wednesday I had only a half-day in, what do I call it again- next-door district?  It was for middle-school math.  The website said 7th grade, but when I got there I found out it was 8th grade.  Oh well, the system has been wrong before.  It was actually quite easy- most of the classes had tests, though I also went over homework answers.  This teacher actually teaches five different classes out of her six teaching periods- unusual for middle school.  Usually there are no more than three different classes, repeating the same lesson for more than one.  Her one repeated class was in the morning so I only had two different lessons, though I did start the 5th-period class which would have been my third different plan.  She arrived less than ten minutes in and took over.

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Totally forgetting Wednesday when I had that entire afternoon free that there was a dealer in Barrington with two cars, I could kick myself when I realized I had forgotten and would have to fit them in Thursday instead.  This is a small dealer that only has a couple of cars every few weeks.  At least I did remember.  Eventually.  So I started off the morning by going there.  Of course, there had been some more snow Wednesday night so I didn’t get there too early.  I did the cars and was on my way to the next dealer when- 25-min in I realized I still had a set of keys from the first place.  Oops.  I turned around, angry with myself once all over again.  The better part of an hour wasted.  So I finally arrived at the next place, their lot cleared of snow, and found I had another bunch of cars like Monday.  Two of them were too loaded with salt to do (hey, I just used three forms of a homophone/nym!), so I breathed a sigh of relief and headed to the final dealer with a good three hours of light to go, though it would be less by the time I got there.  I finished with some light to spare.  You are probably wondering about Monday right now.  Yes, I did run out of light Monday, but when there is pressure to get things done at the end of the day like that I get all the photos out of the way first before I do the options and print the stickers, which tends to be the bulk of my time spent.

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Friday I had only one dealer in the afternoon so I took a morning job in next-door district (still not sure if that’s the name I gave it).  It was for 3rd/4th grade.  When I arrived, I said who I was there for and was handed a folder for a classroom that turned out to be 1st and 2nd grade.  I looked at the name and it sounded right when I said it to myself, but while I didn’t quite remember the spelling of the name I knew it didn’t look right.  I asked another teacher if this teacher taught 3rd/4th grade last year as sometimes that info doesn’t get updated on the sub system (remember Wednesday).  She thought for a few seconds and then informed me there was another teacher upstairs with almost the same name!  I went back to the office to verify I was in the right class and found out that I was indeed given the wrong folder.  Both teachers were out this morning, probably both for the same meeting I knew at least the one was at.  I went upstairs to let the other sub know we had been duped.  She had almost the same story as me, knowing something wasn’t quite right with the room she was in.  We traded folders and I finally got a chance to look at the right plans.  The morning actually went quite well.  For the afternoon, instead of the usual two or three cars I had nine because for some reason the other photographer either didn’t go there the day before like he usually does, or they didn’t have any ready when he did which would have been strange considering nine were ready this time.  Well, more commission for me I guess- something I will need because of the car repair bill.  Sigh.

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Saturday I was supposed to go cross-country skiing with a few guys from church, but when I called around Friday I couldn’t find anyone who rented skis close by, and the one store that was recommended to me closed at 6PM Friday night, too early for me to go there.  Well, I hope the others had a good time.  Instead, I stayed home to receive that repair-bill shock…

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Well, that was my week.  How was yours?

My almost 17-month-old son has started using “tools”.  When we put up the Christmas decorations, he started pulling chairs away from the table, pushing them over to the bookcase to try to climb and get at the nativity.  Yesterday, he took down a wall hanging and began to use the hanger rod as a spoon for his mashed potatoes.  When I told my dad about this mischief, he said that this behavior seems pretty smart.  Yeah, I replied, smart like a chimpanzee!  I really don’t remember the girls doing so much climbing, tool-using, or just general sabotage!

And another thing about little boys – the parental chasing.  I always see moms chasing their little boys; running after them around the store, the zoo, wherever – and nine times out of ten, the kid being chased by the parent is a boy.  I had a little boy almost a year and a half ago, and I’ve been wondering when my turn would come.  Yesterday I got my answer.  While I was getting my little boy dressed, he said an emphatic “NO!”, then turned around and ran from me.  He dove under the dining room table, where I had to drag him out, kicking and screaming.  So yeah, the chasing of little boys by their parents begins shortly after they learn to walk.

Ah, the toddler days again – feels like it’s been awhile, probably because the toddler in our family before our son was Disney, who is an almost perfectly behaved child.  We often joke that Disney is D.A.R.Y.L. – remember that movie from the 80’s about a boy who is actually a robot?  And she is a quick learner!  We’ve been doing “sight words” with our Kindergartener Sammie, which are flash cards with words on them, like “orange”, “the”, “purple”, “my”, “I”, etc.  Disney, who just turned 3, has been picking up the sight words as we practice with Sammie!  She knows all the ones I listed above and is also starting to work on letter recognition – 3 years old is pretty early to start reading!  I just feel badly for Sammie, who has her own gifts but is also very competitive by nature – it might be difficult for her to see her little sister learning certain things faster than herself.

But the point is, Disney’s toddler stage was barely noticable, which is probably why her little brother seems like more than a handful – and I hate to tell myself this, but I think this is just the beginning!!

Seeing that today is the one month anniversary of my last blog post about my life, that is a valid question.  The filler is interesting, but what about my two jobs, one of which was once the emphasis of this blog?  This week was actually a milestone for my new job.  For the first time my commission exceeds the $50/day they have been paying me since the start of training last June.  It’s still not much, but the job promises to pay more eventually.  And what about the camera training the owners have asked me to take charge of?  One of them has plugged me as the national camera trainer to one of the clients after they noticed my pictures are pretty good.  Great- a standard to live up to! 😛 .I still wonder how much I will be paid for this training whenever it happens.

At the moment I am subbing, or trying to, for two full days a week plus mornings five days every two weeks (every other week I go to two places on Friday so I can’t sub that day).  I am signed up in three districts this year but so far have only worked in two.  What?  Yes I did say two before, but then the third sent me a welcome note without my having signed up again so I stuck with it.  Since they were the source of some of my jobs so far, it looks like I made the right choice there.  I have subbed for one (half) day of middle school so far- the rest have been in elementary schools.  I actually took a bilingual first grade job- something I try to avoid during the main part of the year.  I also just took a job for a kindergarten morning Monday at the very school I went to for K through most of 2.  Oddly enough, while I can remember the names of all my other elementary teachers, I can’t for this school.  I wonder if I will be in the same classroom I was in for my own kindergarten?  I wonder if I will even recognize anything at the school.  I am pretty sure I took no assignments there last year.

Let’s see what I can say about the jobs I’ve taken so far.  The first-grade bilingual class was a little rough as the plans the teacher left were not very detailed, often requiring me or one of the assistants who were in and out of the room throughout the day to find the required materials.  The kids were also not very good listeners, but whether that was because of limited English skills or other reasons I couldn’t say.  Another couple of days I was in a position where there were no plans.  These were for special-ed teachers who didn’t even have set schedules yet being the beginning of the year so I ended up helping out in different classrooms throughout the day.  I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I found out that they came in the next day and said, “I had a sub?”  I don’t think I was expected…  The junior high job was a teacher who had both 7th and 8th grade classes, and all I did was supervise as they used computers to work on projects.  I was worried when not just my classes, but others as well used the laptops throughout the morning with little time to charge them, but according to one teacher the batteries actually hold out for some six hours or so, something I have never heard of in laptops.  My own computer lasts for three or less, but with with its specs I am not surprised.

So why have I not been keeping up on my friend’s blogs even if I couldn’t be bothered to update my own?  I don’t know.  If you want refrain from posting commenting in return I will understand.

I actually ran out of room in my previous post to talk about my little ones, my non-schoolers, so it’s time for an update!

The baby, soon to be toddler, Christopher (we call him Beeber since that’s what his big sister used to call him) is getting so big and is now probably closer to toddler than baby 🙁
He walks while holding onto things, and climbs onto anything within reach!  He has recently learned where his tongue is, and if you ask to see it, he will stick it out – awww!  He still loves most kinds of fruits; his favorites are strawberries, peaches, pears, and oranges, but he really doesn’t like cantaloupe nor tomatoes.

Disney is just about the sweetest thing imaginable.  Of course, she is still 2, so occasionally she gets loud, whiny, and insistent.  But she is a very thoughtful little girl, and a very unselfish 2-year-old.  Case in point:  the other day, the girls made macaroni necklaces at our church carnival, and a piece broke off of Sammie’s after we got home.  Sammie was launching into a tantrum, when all of a sudden, Disney jumps off my lap and starts to take her own necklace off, saying, “Here Sammie, you can have my necklace.”  I can’t imagine any other 2-year-old capable of such sweetness!  Add that to her little pageboy Buster Brown – as Carol calls it 🙂 – back-to-school haircut, and she is a living doll!  Oh, and I forgot to mention, Disney is much admired by her older sisters for her ability to whistle!

Having the two of them together during the day is so fun!  A lot of busyness and some mild frustration, but only because of the many messes Beeber makes and the fact that they’re both still in diapers.  I really need to work on Disney’s potty-training.  She has her little potty and likes to go in it, but it’s not always a priority for her…  One of the secrets to harmony in a family with more than a couple of small children is divide and conquer.  My children are so much better behaved when they are broken into groups of two or sometimes even three.  It’s really neat to give each sister the chance the be the BIG sister, and Sammie the Kindergartner gets her chance with Disney in the morning before her afternoon Kindergarten, and Disney gets to be Beeber’s big sister while the two older girls at school.  Back to school time is so fun, and my oldest daughter is really excited about attending her first football game Friday night!  I was a little hesitant to let her go; especially after Wednesday evening when I hung out with a pack of 10 seventh grade girls (a new endeavor of ours – we will be leading youth groups on Wednesday nights!  More on that later; I’m still grasping the um, entirety of the situation).  Seeing that my daughter is only 3 years away from the ages of these boy-crazy, cellphone-obsessed, “like”-spewing, makeup-toting ‘tweens tempted me to buy the totally awesome house on the way to Fort Wayne and lock my 9-year-old daughter in the top of the turret!

But I love where I live and wouldn’t dream of leaving, no matter how cool that house is (or how far it would leave us in debt).  The bottom line is, my daughter is a great kid, and I have to learn to trust her to hold her own – she’s not going to be that type of kid!  She acts mature and logical most of the time; helping her little sisters and brother and she deserves to get away from all the little kid stuff in our household to step out with her friends.  Perhaps volunteering with this (insanely girly) group of girls (have you ever noticed that if you close your eyes, you can mistake a group of pre-pubescent girls for a gang of wild turkeys??) will prepare me for what’s ahead with my 4 home-grown tweens and teens.  At least that’s what I’m hoping…

(In case you’re wondering about the title of this blog post…  Poults = baby turkeys.  I have 3 daughters and one son.  Within a decade, my house will no doubt sound something like a turkey farm!)

Well, summer is officially over – school starts tomorrow!  I could be like everyone else and say “where did the summer go?”, but for me, it actually didn’t go as fast as I would have thought.  We were so busy; though it was good-busy; not like so-much-work-to-do-busy.  But much fun was had and I enjoyed every minute!  Last week was spent at school open houses and orientations, as well as a training event at our church to allow us to volunteer with our church’s student ministries.  That was an interesting evening – it began with us volunteers breaking off into groups of about 15 and making lines.  We were given a spoon tied to a string which was wound around a “spool” ie, an empty tube of toilet paper.  The first person in the line (me) was to put the spoon down their shirt and pants and give it to the next person who was supposed to put it up their pants and shirt, then to the next person who was supposed to put it down the shirt and pants, effectively “threading” the line of people together.  Kind of strange, I thought, but what’s going to happen once we’re all “wearing” the string???  It was a little scary, but luckily, the threading was the entire ice-breaking activity, and the rest of the evening was pleasantly spent listening to a guest speaker while munching on all kinds of orange snacks (orange was the theme for the evening – I never really thought about how many party snacks are orange before!).

Today we had so many activities and volunteering planned for church that we were on the go from 8:30 in the morning until about 3:30 in the afternoon.  Busy, but it was time well-spent, especially since we finished up the day with Kidstuff (a cute show with a wonderful message for the kids) and then a carnival with LOTS of treats and fun for the kids; they had a blast.  Good thing too – we need to get settled down early tonight in order to get our oldest to school by 7:30 in the morning!!!  She is starting middle school, and yes, to those of you who have asked – she will be switching classes, kind of like the “block” style they had when I was in middle school.  My daughter has a homeroom, but then she switches for language arts and math and perhaps other subjects as well.  And they do gym class strangely – there are 4 classes: gym, music, technology (typing, etc.), and art, and they take one of these 4 classes every day for 9 weeks and then switch to another.  That sounds pretty cool to me!  I would have LOVED it if I only had to worry about gym for 9 weeks of the year!  But, being in middle school also means that she has to change for gym class, poor thing – I remember that aspect of middle school making a lot of kids really nervous.  And at orientation last week, the principal gave us parents a talk about making sure we wash the gym clothes – the kids are getting to “that age”, she said, which prompted me to whisper to my friend nearby, “I’m not ready!”  But my daughter IS ready for middle school, and she seems to be making her way from tween to teen in no time –  UGH!  Poor thing got her first pimple just in time for the first day of middle school, but she doesn’t seem to mind too much, so we’re not making it a big deal.  It’s not like we’re publishing it on the internet for the entire world to read or anything…  But what are moms for?  She can thank me when she’s older and finds this through some sort of google search or something.

Our second oldest is starting Kindergarten.  This is our “difficult” child; our strong-willed one.  Samantha has a mind of her own, and some of the things she says leave us in stitches – others leave us shaking our heads, but we’ll stick to the positives here.  It seems that Samantha has the same Kindergarten  teacher that her sister had a few years ago, and my husband and I are chuckling to ourselves about the unintentional “joke” we’re about to play on our local school system.  We are wondering how many years it will take for word to spread amongst the teachers in town about how much of a…  well, difference there is  between Samantha and her big sister…  No need to go off about it here, like I said, we need to call it an early night, but it will suffice to say that any teacher of Taylor’s who gets Samantha 4 years later will probably be surprised 🙂

I was going to write about the younger two as well, but it’s bedtime already and this post is long enough – that’s what I get for not blogging regularly, I guess, an über-post!

Yes, it’s that time of year again.  The ISATs.  Illinois’s standardized test given to all kids to rate the schools (why?) and to see if they stand up to the rules of No Child Left Behind.  If not, then they have to know what to fix, so I suppose that’s a good enough reason for them even if rating the schools isn’t, in my opinion.  So what does this mean for a sub?  Less work to be had of course.  There are no meetings or workshops that would require a sub, and the teachers are supposed to be there giving the tests except in the most dire circumstances.  That leaves a much smaller pool of teachers who might need subs, fortunately through whom there is some hope.  Today for example I had a half-day for a literacy teacher, and since grades K-2 are generally unaffected by testing she could take the day off.  Yes, she is gone for the whole day but only required a half-day sub as she just canceled her afternoon obligations.  This position was one in which students are pulled out of their classes for extra reading help.  The four groups I had varied from kindergarten to second grade.  It should have been five actually, but due to a mixup two classes were out to recess when I went to pick up the kids so I had bonus planning time instead 😛 . Did I say K-2 are exempt from the testing?  Let me rephrase that.  I meant PreK-2.  What is the point of my bringing this up you ask?  Well, because a job I would ordinarily pass up opened up for Friday and I jumped on it instead- full day at-risk preschool for Friday.  I would pass because of the age and how far in the future the job is.  If it was 6AM and I was still looking for a job for the same day I would take anything of course, even the tough classrooms I’ve had in the past.  With three days notice I usually am able to pick something else up closer to my comfort zone, but for this month I have to treat any job as a blessing (and they all are) and just take it.  I have done preschool before, so I do know what to expect.  I remember at one school I would start thinking of the kindergarten kids as big kids.  Weird.

So here I am, sitting.  Using my internet connection to constantly look for openings.  Speaking of which, there is one district I haven’t seen an opening in for weeks now.  I should call and ask what’s up, but for this week at least I know they will just say it’s testing.  Funny, I seem to recall having this problem before with a different district.  I can’t find the post about it right now, oh well.  Maybe it was last school year.

Wednesday was one of those specials days. That is, subbing for a gym teacher. But first, let me talk about the days before this one. Monday, I took a full day job at one of the furthest schools from me. It was a bit of a mixed bag as well as a slight disappointment. I knew this was an 8th grade teacher so I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that this was a half-day job that was mistakenly entered in as a full day, so I ended up only working half the day. Actually only a couple of hours. This allowed me time to seek a half-day elsewhere, but I didn’t find one. I did find a half day for Tuesday and took it knowing that a job would be hard to find that day since most school districts had off for Veteran’s Day, but not for Monday afternoon. The mixed bag for this day was the teacher taught both mat and science. When he came back, he taught social studies. Jack of all trades here, like an elementary teacher? 😀

So next day I didn’t set my alarm as my half-day was in the afternoon. Just after six, r-i-n-g! Job assignment opened up for the morning. Cool. 8) So after quickly eating breakfast and getting ready since I had to be there in an hour, I filled in for the special-ed reading teacher at a junior high. Unlike my two periods yesterday, I had to work four periods. Breaking even I suppose. These were actually two block classes so it didn’t seem like four periods anyway. Then I was off to my afternoon assignment. Arriving there forty minutes early (it was almost down the street with a start time an hour after my end time at the other school), I sat in the lounge and had an early lunch. This assignment was pretty much like my assignment last week for two days. I met with a couple of groups of kids in the teacher’s mini-room, typical of some special ed pullout teachers, and went to help in another room later on. Well, I tried anyway- it wound up being another pullout. The last students of the day didn’t need me, so I had an extra break at the end. 🙂

Back to Wednesday.  The gym teacher was still there when I arrived, so he explained what he wanted me to do with the kids.  They started off with laps around the gym then moved into kickball.  I had 5th grade at the start, and they of course knew what they were doing.  The second class had a lot of home runs because the teacher set the bar for home runs pretty low.  At least for the older kids.  I’m sure with the younger ones the zone is fine, but with so many 5th graders kicking home runs it really needed to be set higher.  This reminds me of playing kickball outdoors when the weather is nice.  It is really different.  No walls, no ceiling, no automatic home runs, no ground rule doubles when the ball hits the basketball backboard…  Anyway, back to the present.  The second half of the morning was Kindergarten.  After they did their five laps, we practiced basic motor skills like hopping, skipping, galloping, etc before going into kickball.  From 5th to 5- quite a difference.  Now I had to teach them kickball, but they can only take in so much at once.  The real teacher will have to reteach them I’m sure, adding rules I didn’t cover.  There were a few who had played before, but to most it was a new thing.  The afternoon was quite different.  There is a student teacher in this class who was out observing another student teacher in action at another school in the morning.  In the afternoon, they swapped positions and came to this school.  Kickball struck out and the new home run was dodgeball.  Bad baseball analogy aside, it wasn’t regular dodgeball, but a variation with two medics on scooters (those square things on four wheels sat on by gym students across the nation, not a Razor if you’re wondering) who can tag their teammates who are out to get them back in.  Additionally there are pins set up at the back of either side that can be knocked over.  If all of them get knocked over, the other team wins.  During the afternoon I of course took a back seat in all of this, but when the student teacher inserted himself into the game, I just had to join the other team.  😈  Too bad I am terrible at most sports, dodgeball included, but it was a blast anyway.  I’ll have to join in more in the games on the weekends at church.

Today was 7th and 8th grade LA/Lit.  More on that tomorrow though since I will be doing the same thing.

You have spoken (or rather, not spoken- that is, no comments) and it seems that my links posts are not welcome.  Whether it be the links, retrogaming, or whatnot, I guess I need to stick to the teaching posts.  Right then.

Today I was a teaching assistant.  It’s okay- in the district I was in subs get paid the same whether it’s teaching or assisting, unlike the other three districts where assistant subs get paid far less.  In one district, in fact they get paid half the amount of teacher subs!  I was actually supposed to sub in a junior high, but they canceled so I got my choice of this position or a preschool teacher.  No choice at all…  Of course, when I got there I was in charge of three kindergarteners, so maybe not a win after all.  Well, it really wasn’t bad at all.  The three actually worked very well and I didn’t have to intervene a great deal.  This was a special education class, so I wouldn’t have expected that considering my experience in these rooms in the past.  Unlike the regular kindergarten students these three were there the entire day.  They were mainstreamed into the same classroom twice in one day which one would think would give them them the same instruction twice, but they must have worked out a schedule with the kindergarten teacher because while they were in there a total of almost three hours between morning and afternoon they did not repeat any instruction.

In the morning following announcements I brought them to the regular class where they worked on an assessment of their number and letter skills as well as their self-image, and then followed with science.  I feel I’m missing something, but it is so late I can’t think of what.  Anyway, they had to color and label the parts of a flower.  Oh yes, there was a worksheet that they completed and got checked off for as well.  Finally recess, then I brought them back for calendar and computer time where they typed up (with the help of the specialized software) the calendar info and practiced writing their addresses and phone numbers.  By coincidence, two of them had the exact same numerical address, though of course the street was different.  A teacher was supposed to be there to help, but she had observations to do and they were short a sub, so they pulled her sub somewhere else.  Probably because I’m a “certified” sub and could be with them without a regular teacher.  Anyway, as a teaching assistant I had to go with them to lunch and help where needed.  When they went out for lunch recess I finally got my lunch.

In the afternoon I went to a music class with a second-grade girl for a half-hour, then it was back to the three tykes.  In the afternoon K class they did reading and math.  Get this- they were given decks of cards and played war!  I guess number recognition was the key here, but after a couple games of mostly standard war they added the two numbers together instead, but then still won the cards or not by regular war rules.  Back to the self-contained class again, and back to the computers.  This time I had to watch them use the computers to make sure they went through the program the way they were supposed to.  Finally, the teacher came back, had them pack up, did a couple of dance songs (chicken dance and hokey-pokey) with them, and then finally they were ready to board the buses.  Whew.  Long day, and long post.  It is now past my bedtime for eight hours of sleep.  Goodnight.

People who know me know that my preference for teaching is about 3rd-7th grades. Stretch a year in either direction, and those are pretty much the jobs I gravitate toward when I have a choice. Of course specials are an exception; I do take those no problem though they may include kindergarten or 1st grade. Since you are an observant reader, you will have noticed the words when I have a choice. Well, I was unable to procure an assignment yesterday leaving me at the mercy of what’s available in the morning. First call came in at about 5:40 and was for kindergarten. I thought about it and foolishly chose not to do it. I figured I would take a chance and check the web since I was awake. I did find a couple of half-day jobs which I also skipped. Then came the full-day preschool assignment. I didn’t think I would see anything younger than the one I rejected, but here it was. Being about 5:50 I decided to gamble again and keep hoping for a better assignment to show up. Nope. Oddly enough though, no one was picking up this full-day assignment for some reason. Finally, the system called me for the assignment so I gave in and took it. At least it was a lot closer to me than the kindergarten job. Then I went back to sleep for an hour.

As it turns out, this district as far as I know does not offer normal preschool. It does however offer special education preschool for the “developmentally delayed.” The morning had eight of ten students there, and was actually kind of a breeze. This kind of classroom has teaching assistants (three!), and today the speech teacher actually came in to take over the class! I had absolutely no problem with this as this age is really out of my comfort zone anyway. I just acted as another T.A. The most I did teachingwise was running a center where they matched patterns and did a connect-the-dots worksheet. Other than that it was keeping kids focused and helping as needed.

The afternoon was a little different. There were slightly fewer students (seven), but this was a more challenging group. One was very autistic and needed special attention, and as a whole the group was lower than the morning group and like the one autistic boy, required more attention. The title of this post refers to me, but in actuality one of the part-time T.A.s in the afternoon was a guy! I would guess he really likes kids to do this, because he is a retired principal from the school I was at and retirement packages for top school administrators tend to be very generous. Either that or some bad investments, but his actions during the afternoon clearly showed the former. He was very good with the kids- unlike a T.A. from another school I worked with recently. That T.A. really yelled at the kids, sometimes for very minor things. To be fair, that school was a middle school, but I really felt for those kids. Aside from that she did a pretty good job, doing things for the students she didn’t have to. If not for this I would have thought she was in the wrong profession entirely.

I was somewhat relieved to go home a little early- preschool ends 15 minutes before the regular grades- partly due to the afternoon class and partly due to the relative inactivity of my job. This is one reason, aside from the very low pay, that I would not want to be a teaching assistant full time. The absolute wost times I have had subbing were as teaching assistants, particularly one-one-one assignments. Never again on those, though I would sub (at regular pay) for other types of teaching assistants, like those with multiple kids or general classroom helpers.

Our poor little 8-year-old daughter, Taylor, was born on the short side of the genetic crapshoot when it comes to teeth.  The poor kid has cavities, teeth that are fused together, and other dental problems.  They wanted to do so much dental work on her that our small town dentist referred us to the big city of Toledo to get it taken care of.  So, yesterday saw an all day excursion to Toledo so the poor kid could undergo some major dental work.  It actually went quite well; she handled everything like a trooper.  I’m sure the laughing gas and novacaine somewhat helped the pain, but when it was all said and done, she did freak out a little about all the blood.  After that whole ordeal, we wanted to make the day special for her, so we made a quick stop at the zoo between dental appointments.  We only had about an hour, so we didn’t get to see our favorite animals, but we did have time to check out the reptile house, which, crazily enough after all of our visits to the Toledo Zoo, we had never been in.  It was a typical reptile house, full of snakes, lizards, and frogs (even though they’re not reptiles, zoos always put them in the reptile house I’ve noticed), but what I really enjoyed was the crocodile.  I can’t tell you the last time I saw one of those, especially indoors.  It was huge, and unlike their cousins the alligators, crocodiles are not friendly nor docile.  They are very agressive animals, and you can almost see it on their faces.  The Toledo Zoo also has a Chinese alligator, and I was wondering if Chinese alligators are similair to American alligators in temperment.  I know the Chinese alligator is smaller and much more rare, but I wonder if that is where the differences end…  I’ll have to do some research.

After the second dental appointment, we made a stop at Chuck E. Cheese, gauze packed mouth and all.  The kids had a blast, although it wasn’t very crowded, so Chuck E. didn’t venture off the stage for a visit, much to my 3-year-old’s disappointment.  But I came to a realization that it was our youngest-for-now’s first visit to a Chuck E. Cheese, at least her first one where she was old enough to enjoy it.  Since we live in the boondocks, we just don’t find ourselves at Chuck E. Cheese nearly as often as when we lived in the Chicago suburbs like when our oldest was a toddler.  But that’s quite alright, the place is expensive, and going infrequently really teaches the kids to appreciate the times we do make it there.  Over the years, not much has changed there…  when I was a kid, they called it Show Biz Pizza, and I was able to find pics of the old characters for others my age who like nostalgia.

The main character for the chain, a bear named Billy Bob (top right picture), really scared me as a kid…  for some reason, he had long claws, which can be really scary for a kid.  In Kindergarten, we got to go on a field trip to Show Biz; they took us behind the scenes and “undressed” one of the robots and took us back into the room where they have all the control panels for everything.  Why they wanted to show a bunch of 6-year-olds that the characters were actually robots is still beyond me, but it was a very cool field trip and something I still remember.