I wanted to start chronicling substitute teaching adventures, and to date there have been plenty. There will probably a lot of back and forth to begin with, whenever possible I will attempt to remember some older, yet equally as impressionable days. I'm old, and my memory is patchy, so hang in there with me.
School site: BMS
Subject: Roving(am) PE(afternoon)
This is where I did my student teaching, so I love this school. I know a lot of the teachers, the students are not completely ghetto, and in general I have a decent experience when I go, there have been exceptions though.
The morning started off great, I was a roving sub for those teachers who needed to sit in on Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings. Cake! I subbed for one teacher in the computer lab for all of 20 minutes, just make sure the kids are not looking at porn and I'm golden! One student, a girl, asked to look up ring worm. Sure? The disgusted looks and consecutive "ewwwwwws" were hilarious. I told her, however, stop getting grossed out, please don't throw up in the class, and figure out what it is, what causes it. This is middle school, however, and, yeah that didn't happen, oh well.
From here I helped a class of really struggling english learners and kids with special needs. They were working on persuasive paragraph structure, something I constantly for granted. The break down was simple to me, "The school board planning on getting rid of are classes in your school, argue for or against this." They had to write a topic sentence, 2 supporting points with 4 examples each and then combine this, use your topic sentence and your key points to create your opening paragraph. This would probably be easy for them if they could focus, but like I said many of them have special needs, like ADD. "Mr. C what do I do ?" The book spells it out for you pretty well, what are your topics? " I don't know" … >.<. Saved by the bell, from there I only had to work with those who were really struggling with it, which was a small group, instead of a large class of blank faces, who were able to get their paragraphs going, but their grammar was atrocious, one step at a time I suppose.
After the special needs kids I just helped the teacher prep for her class by dividing math tiles equally to her group packets, this was fun and elementary. Each packet turned out to need 5 5X5 tiles 7 1X5 tiles and 15 1X1 tiles. Some packets had copious amounts of 1X1 tiles, and some had 5, but i eventually figured things out.
Lunch time, so I'm done "Yep have a good day Mr. Collu… Mr. C." Thanks! Byeee!
Lunch was uneventful, just listening to the teachers gossip in the teachers lounge, followed by catching up with my resident teacher, which is always nice. This also gave me time for a wardrobe change followed by P.E.
Oh goody! I usually love P.E. it's 50 uncontrollable monkeys, but they're on a field and for the most part the periods are just making sure no one is bleeding or passed out. Today, on the other hand, was Fucking Chaos!. The 2 out of 3 P.E. teachers went off to the softball game, which left the main P.E. teacher, myself and a regular teacher on their prep period. Instead of the field where kids could spread out, play soccer, walk do whatever, they shoved an average of 100 kids into a space the size of the Krikorian lobby, that's like sticking everyone in Disneyland just in Fantasy land, AHHHHHH!!!! I'm guessing the theory behind this was the teachers could keep a better eye on them in this confined space, what they failed to take into account was that there were a ton of basketballs and kids running around and not enough room for all of these activities.
Period 6: There was a group of about 20 students congealed on the far side of the courts, this is never a good situation, so I would periodically patrol by them, to which they would respond by covering up their actions audibly "shh teacher! So, about those fractions…," and moving this congealed group away from any teachers. There was no screaming or human sacrifice so there wasn't much I could do, students will be students.
There was a student who I was following all day, I was either helping him with his science test, making it clear I was not his buddy as he tried to showboat in English, and he just happened to come to P.E. too. IS, why is your shirt ripped? "Can you write me a referral?" What? just go to the office IS. Finally the other teacher, who was on her prep period intervened. "What are you doing here?" (with attitude) "I came from the office" "Where is your pass?" (more attitude) "The security guard walked me down, ask him!" "Student! there is no need for this attitude, come I will walk you to the office." A sad fact of teaching I get more respect from products of male chauvinistic house holds simply because I am a man.
Period 7: These kids were just wound up with a rubber band, "It's time to go home!!!!," you know, after 52 minutes of chaos.
No congealed masses of kids this period, these kids were either sitting on the side of pure bundles of energy moving the whole time. This included a group of students playing soccer, in this tiny confined space(?). You shouldn't play soccer in here, there isn't enough room, "They let us!" … the minute that hurts someone… "You get the ball." Why didn't I just take the ball right then and there? They did ok for most of the period, a few bumps to a couple of students heads, some students would duck out of the way of the on coming basketball, and then the inevitable happens. One of the tallest kids goes for a goal, the goal is on his right, the ball goes to his left, right into the bridge/nose of a young girl sitting on the side -_-. Shit! check for blood, no blood, she's not passed out, ok, she's good… ish. the bridge of her nose is swollen, and I'm sure her day is pretty much done, but the important part is I didn't lose a kid. Took the ball away, had her walked up the the nurse, who of course just gave her an ice pack, and she went home.
I can't be everywhere at once, but I should have known better, really that was just a recipe for disaster. The period ended, and no other students were hurt, thank goodness! Spoke with the other teacher who was doing nothing to pay attention to the hornets nest around her. Told her about my arthritis to which she responded, "Oh yeah I had high blood pressure when I finished my student teaching, it's fine now though." Oh good! I'm not the only one debilitated by the stress.
The period ended and as a parting gift the boys decided to yell, scream, smack the lockers, and in general just make as much noise as possible in that loud echoey locker room. Thanks, assholes.
I survived! A casual day turned to hell rather quickly, but that's how it goes, definitely took Friday off.
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