(Big Nate ©Lincoln Peirce)

This past week I could be found in a middle school every day.  In fact, I was in one school for three days for two teachers.  I started the week in near-city district at the school that was closed for a few days a couple of weeks ago due to swine H1N1 flu.  Yes, I’m still fine, thanks for wondering 😉 ..  The class was IT, though in actuality he only had four classes (I believe I mentioned before that at this school 6th grade doesn’t take this class).  To make up for it, he had a tutorial, something usually only the core teachers have, and lunch detention.  It is my understanding that under normal circumstances lunch detention has only ten or less students.  Monday had 23 😯 ..  Most didn’t have passes though as was supposedly required.  Huh.  So as typical in this class which doesn’t have an assistant like in hometown district, students didn’t work on IT projects.  Instead, students had to read a packet then do three worksheets based on it.  Yeah, kind of a blah day for the kids.  The packet only covered about half the chapter that the worksheets had questions on I discovered later in the day.  So naturally I informed the students of this… hey, are you kidding??  Like they needed an excuse to be lazy and not do it.  “Hey, I didn’t find the answer in two seconds so it must be in the half I didn’t get to read so I’ll just skip the question.”  My lips were sealed about this little discovery 😈 ..

Tuesday and Wednesday I subbed for sixth-grade math.  Not that I taught any, nope.  Still in near-city district, I was at their other middle school and the teacher left plans just having students work on problems out of their books.  This is the sort of assignment in which one hears about subs falling asleep…  They were generally well-behaved, at least in my book.  The resource teacher however, who came in for a couple of periods, didn’t think so as she was very…not friendly.  My highlights were going over the warmups (not listed in the plans, but I did it anyway just to have something to do) in each of the math classes, but for her one social studies class I just suffered in silence as I babysat.

Thursday I was in hometown district, so I didn’t have to drive as far.  This time I was with 7th grade language arts.  They had a spelling test, afterwhich they worked on a persuasive writing packet for the rest of the time.  You may be thinking, “Spelling test? But it’s only Thursday!”  Well yes, but this district had an institute day Friday making it a four-day weekend instead of three (Memorial Day ya know).  Near-city district on the other hand was supposed to have a four-day weekend, though Tuesday instead of Friday being the off day, however for them Tuesday was a buffer day that got changed due to the winter’s snow days.

Speaking of near-city district, as you already surmised from my opening paragraph I was back at Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s schools as a 6th grade resource teacher.  No, not that one, but the one for the other team.  I’ll tell you, her first period was very busy.  Do this, then this, then this, then this…  Fortunately she gave me time constraints, otherwise it would have turned into a do this, then this, then leave a note on how we ran out of time for the rest period.  Out of the rest of the day, team teaching with another teacher followed by a tutorial period, two of the periods were quite interesting as there were two subs in the room- a lot of teachers were out- could Memorial weekend have anything to it I wonder..? Come to think of it, there were a lot out on Thursday too in hometown district…  Anyway, there was a little more restlessness in these students than the ones earlier in the week which I fully understand since it was a holiday weekend coming up after all.

So that was my week at work.  I do hope I get a chance to fill this week, all four days of school, but I suspect I won’t have four full days.

Well, I have been on the early shift for the last couple of days and I just have to say that that, coupled with my tendency to not sleep through the night, makes for one tired teacher.  Yesterday I had it easy.  I left to a temperature outside over 40º colder than it was the night before, and on icy roads thanks to the rain the day and night before, on a slow trip all the way to middle school science.  The teacher did not expect to be out again and so another teacher set me up with a couple of videos.  One was a left-leaning news special titled Who Killed the Electric Car? True, it is a really good question as we could use them these days as I would expect the gas prices to go up significantly again.  Well, unleaded prices anyway as diesel hasn’t actually dropped all that much since the summer in comparison.  I say left-leaning as when it got to talking about government as a suspect (battery technology, consumers, oil companies, car companies, and others were also suspects) it pretty much painted Republican presidents like Reagan and Bush Jr. as evil, signing environmentally unfriendly bills into law, and praises Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton on their policies.  Again, this doesn’t erase the question about electric cars though- we really should be seeing more of them than we are.  A lot more actually since according to the video GM’s EV-1 cars were all destroyed back in 2004.  The closest thing we have at the moment I believe are hybrids like the Toyota Prius.  The entire video was 90 minutes so I only got to see a portion of it, four times of course…  Two classes saw a Bill Nye video on the atmosphere.  Oddly enough, this teacher teaches both 7th and 8th grades, a bit unusual for middle school.

Today I went to the other side of the brain to language arts.  It was an even easier day.  Two of the classes (four periods) were team taught, so I was reduced to helper status for these periods.  The other two periods were really small groups- one with six students and one with three.  The one with three was the most challenging as one of the students was in a very goofy mood.  Where the title of this post comes into play is in the book a teacher read aloud in one of the classes.  As the class started she was reading about Marley so I thought this was going to be about another story, play actually, the classes had also been working on fitting for this time of year.  Of course I mean Charles Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol.  However I soon realized this was another story entirely- the middle school version of the book Marley & Me.  This movie is coming out Christmas Day and after today’s excerpt I can confidently say I will be skipping it.  The chapter started out talking about John taking Marley to Dog Beach (I think that was the name), but no dog ever messed on the beach so Marley would have to take care of business beforehand, which he did in a colorful description depicting the act.  While at the beach, Marley was playing in the water and drinking quantities of the salty liquid while running around, refusing the offered fresh water.  As a result, the dog upchucked and there was another lovely description of this event.  Naturally it didn’t stop there as the salt water also caused loose bowels.  Thankfully the teacher stopped before describing this event.  Now I realize this will likely take up only seconds on the screen, and knowing Hollywood those scenes will be there, but I have to ask myself if the author was willing to gross readers out by going into detail on these scenes, then what else is in this book?  I think I do not wish to find out.  Thanks for saving me $10 plus refreshments.

My three day assignment that was cancelled earlier this week would have been at the school I wound up at today.  You can say it turned into a one day assignment I suppose.  Oddly enough, the teacher I would have subbed for was the “team teacher” in two of the classes.  In those classes I of course acted as an assistant, but I did get to teach four classes.  I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by and I mentioned the three day assignment to her and she told me she just rescheduled because she didn’t like taking days off in October.  I didn’t ask why, but conferences are around this time I think so that’s a possibility.

So the four classes were run pretty much the same way though they were actually two different levels.  The regular math classes were working on percent markups and discounts.  Given a cost and a percentage, they had to determine the final price.  The other two classes were algebra.  They were working on graphing equations and determining solutions from the graphs.  I actually got a high complement in one of these classes.  One of the students told me I taught this better than the regular teacher.  I didn’t know what else to say but to just thank him.  So…  Besides the last class having a couple of characters in it (I expected it, being a class of just eight students, and one of the regular classes as opposed to algebra) it was another pretty good day.  First period was one of the two “team teaching” period, so Just watching for the one period and seeing things not in the plans definitely helped here in keeping with the routine though I suppose being eighth grade they wouldn’t have had a tough time adjusting to a different routine if necessary.

It is now the start of a three-day weekend and time to get some rest…

When they say the average American is stuck in traffic (i.e. not moving or moving slowly, not the total commute) commuting to work 38 hours per year (nearly double that if you hail from L.A.) it is nice to have a short trip.  In fact, this is a trip that I could easily walk if not for the heavy bag I carry.  I suppose I could stick my stuff in a backpack, but that really wouldn’t look very professional.  In any event, coincidence gave me two half-day jobs- for two team teachers!  From my understanding they did not coordinate this, but had to take off half-days for two different reasons.  I literally walked through the wall to get to the other class.  Okay, it was a collapsible wall that was partly open, but still.  Both teachers taught 3rd/4th grade multiage and so I even saw some of the same students both morning and afternoon due to switching classes- they switched for spelling and math.  It was a pretty pleasant day overall, in the top 15-20% of all my workdays.  I just had to look around, because this is exactly the sort of thing I will see in June if I get to do camp again.  What I mean is, combined 3rd/4th grades just graduated to 4th/5th.  I would put up a video here of last year, but since I am not their parent I don’t think I can since I’m sure more than my friends read this even if they don’t post (hint, hint!).  Perhaps I can be persuaded to give a private viewing if asked though.  Of course it’s possible I already showed a couple of you the video last year, but not all.  What, still with me?  Go on, leave a comment already! 🙂

I am having some motivation problems with this blog- lately I just don’t feel like writing about work.  It seems like the things I go through are either just too uninteresting to write about when I think about it, or it is similar to something I already wrote.  Sometimes I just don’t get around to it and am too tired by the time I think about it.  These past few days have really all been similar.  I really only got to teach math for the last three days, and today we didn’t even do that so I didn’t do much of anything except help out like a teaching assistant.  Not that there’s really anything wrong with that but it is rather unexciting to write about.  The most tedious part I think was during the morning today, and again at the start of the afternoon when the third graders just played educational games on their laptops (only 4th-6th did testing today, and the other half of the multiage rooms were fourth grade).  I of course had to walk around and make sure they were playing only educational games.  They are not as devious as middle-schoolers, but fun will still win out over education if left unwatched, even with third graders.

Today was actually a very easy teaching day overall, even for the other teacher.  In fact, the only subject actually taught/worked on was reading.  The rest of the day was spend on laptops, read-alouds, silent reading, down-time packets, and classroom games.  Sub + already messed up schedules due to testing = even even worse schedules.  From the last four days, I would say the teacher I was subbing for really owes the other teacher big time for getting sick and leaving her pretty much all of the planning work and team teaching.

Hmm… This was actually going to be very short due to my lack of motivation, but turned out to be quite reasonable in length.  Goes to show that once one gets started, the writing can just keep going.

When one thinks of 8th grade, it is often associated with hormonally-challenged, impossible to control young adolescents, and indeed I have found this to be the case in several classrooms.  Add learning, or especially behavioral disabilities to the mix and… well, I’ll leave it to the imagination.  There is one school where I just refused to take any more positions last year for the older kids (7th and 8th in fact, this year just 8th so far at that school).  The school district I was in today I consider to be the best of the local districts I work in.  Besides the money spent on education from a funds-not-so-challenged village, the kids tend to be far better behaved than in other districts.  I would place the reasons at better family life.  In many areas there are low-income families which causes family struggles due to not enough money and parents who are always working and have no time for their kids and so pretty much leave the raising of the kids to the schools.  This town really doesn’t have any low-income families (it costs too much to live here!).  Of course there are other factors influencing family life and behavior, but this I think is number one.  In any event, these 8th graders were not so bad to deal with at all.  Well, the fact that I always had an assistant helped more than a little as well.  As with other special ed teacher situations in a middle school, I had many of the same students all day.  I taught two language arts classes (4-6 students in each!) and watched over two tutorial (study hall) periods.  Additionally I had two science “co-teaching” classes.  Like one time last week, one of these “co-teach” classes had two subs!  Fortunately the main teacher left the other sub clear plans.

Interestingly enough, the regular teachers for myself and the other teacher I mentioned were actually in the building, just in meetings all day.  Something that it somewhat common with special education actually.  The teachers have many meetings throughout the year, so it is only logical that some of those meetings would be in the school rather than an administration building.

One of the neat things to see was one of the science classes created electric quiz machines- the type where you use a wire to complete a circuit with a correct answer (multiple choice or true/false) and light up a bulb.  The quality and size of these quiz games greatly varied, and some were even quite creative.  One student took a shortcut and used an Operation game as a starting point, but most did theirs from scratch.  Some used one wire (true/false and multiple guess) and some used two (matching).  One boy used a motor instead of a light bulb that would shoot up a spinning helicopter-disc.  They were very interesting to try out.  Actually, the class didn’t get to try them out as other classes apparently did due to poor treatment of a substitute teacher yesterday.  Yes, I got to watch the aftermath of a bad substitute report.  Apparently they lost out on playing a review game yesterday as well as not getting to try each other’s quiz games.  Hey, just because it’s a good town doesn’t mean the kids are always good.  I guess maybe I just lucked out today, but what I said about this district generally holds true.

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.

One problem that comes with subbing is scheduling errors and cancellations with little to no notice. There was one day last year when I signed up to sub for a social worker only to find out when I arrived that the social worker is a position that doesn’t get a sub. Okay, you might say to yourself, “how obvious,” but in that same district earlier I had subbed for a speech/language pathologist. Obviously a sub can’t really fill in for that position either, but as it turned out there was a student teacher so they needed a sub just to have a certified person in the room so I just figured this would be the case again. Well, at least they paid me for half a day’s (non)work.

Anyway, today there was another error, only it wasn’t an error. I was called in for a full day, but when I got there the plans were only for a half day. I checked with the office and it was indeed a full day they scheduled. Fortunately they had another teacher that would need me in the afternoon so they could keep me the full day. But wait, it wasn’t over. The team partner of the one I subbed for then told me shortly after that she wouldn’t be there in the afternoon and was wondering about her sub. I had to go to the office anyway about a small problem with the arrangement to work for the afternoon teacher, so I said I would ask about her sub while I was there. Well, it turned out there was no sub arranged for her. To make a long story short (yes, I know…) apparently the original teacher had requested a full day sub to cover for the two of them and her partner either wasn’t told or forgot, so they changed the arrangement again and so I wound up actually subbing for three teachers throughout the day like a floater. As you can see, the classrooms themselves aren’t the only source of drama.