Substituting from day to day makes me feel like I have split personalities, this may be more of a personality trait than a reaction to substituting, but I digress. My day is governed by so many factors; kids (32 different ones every 50 minutes), location, age, etc, the only constant I have is that I wake up at 6am, if I have a job and I get out of school, eventually, sometime during the daylight hours. Everything that happens in between is anyone's guess. Take my last 3 days for example, (no really);
School Site: THMS:
Subject: Math
I have substituted for this teacher multiple times, both back when I was more of a Nazi than a babysitter, and also during my more apathetic days, so I knew, more or less, how his class worked, and how his students felt about him/ treated him.
Monday
I was a little apprehensive to enter this class, I did not hear the name correctly, but I liked the school site so I accepted it anyway, and later found out it was a class I have had previous rough experiences with. I started this day expecting to write out a lot of detentions, send kids to the office, just the usual rigmarole that comes with 8th graders. What I got in return was this weird parallel universe where the kids were well behaved, most students were on task, and in general just a pleasantly surprising nice day.
The only thing to note was a kid with ADD who added "Your mom... " to everything that was being said. I gave him taste of his own medicine when he was commenting " how is this possible?" and I responded "You're mom is possible." This was met with a roar of "OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo" from the class, but I think the kid took it well, I haven't received any angry phone calls... yet. Yeah, we were real mature in there that day.
Tuesday
Apparently my nausea in the morning was my transition back into the real world because the little hellions were back! These are block classes, so I am held captive by the children of lord of the flies for 2 hours at a time. The first block of classes was ok, and then it rapidly went downhill from there.
The second block of classes want to listen to their ipods during class, so I gave them some incentive yesterday, if everyone finished their work I would let them listen to their ipods, which worked great yesterday, but if I had done that today I would be punishing those who were on task unnecessarily. The down side to this is the knuckleheads who "don't feel like doing work," (man I wish I had that option at my job), continue to do nothing but chat about their very important middle school lives (?) But hey, they are freshmen now, there isn't going to be a whole lot of hand holding in high school, better they realize the consequences now. I told this one girl I would tell her dad she was not working when I saw him at job #2, to which she whined and complained saying how uncool it was that I was threatening her just to get her to do work. I let her know this was a no threat, I am more than happy to let parents know how their kids are doing =D. She completed a total of one assignment, out of 2, in the two hours she was there, I do not consider this being productive, can't wait to see her dad next time.
The third block is usually a little more productive but as I mentioned different kids produce different results. There was a student here today who was not here yesterday, and he made all the difference. It started off with a pencil being given to him to which he replies to the girl " This smells funny, I know what you've been doing with this, that's gross," and then he proceeds to throw the pencil haphazardly behind him. I told him to pick it up three times, each time a little more sternly, to which he replies " it really does smell though..." so I wrote him down for a detention. He comes to me later and says " Hey I picked up the pencil can I get my name off of the list?" Um, No, how about doing it the first time and not giving me crap about it, and how about doing some work too, he says again "because it smelled..." He comes to me a second time " Hey I've been doing work, and I picked up that pencil... it really did smell..." as if I'm blind and have not seen him playing a game with other classmates the whole time. Then to top this off, I'm assuming on a dare, he rocks this kid in the nads, running start and everything. There is no altercation but don't touch another student like that in front of me! " Really dude? You expect me to take your name off of the list?" I call security and have him escorted out.
School site: BHS
Subject: Math
Wednesday
Today I am peacefully blogging in a Trig/Calc/ AVID class. A rowdy game of UNO, but no nut shots.
Humans are creatures of habit, I order the same thing every time I go to Lucille's, prisoner's feel more comfortable in prison because they have a routine much in the same way students need a schedule and some sort of pattern to their school day in order to progress academically. I don't feel that as a substitute I have achieved this pattern-like day for myself. I ran into someone today who was hired at the school site I am at, but finished the credential program at the same time I did. On the one hand I feel a little defeated, she has come out ahead partially because she chose Math and I chose History. On the other hand I am insanely happy for her and it gives me hope that I too will get to my own classroom. Her trials and tribulations have been equally as hard as my own because she started two months ago, at the end of the year, her students are low level, and she gotten comments like "I forget I need to go slower for you because you are an ELL," from her fellow colleagues. Despite all this it's encouraging to see that someone from my school made it, even if it's only temporary.
So, to go back where it all started, I feel like I have two personalities, regular, everyday, calm, blogging in the back Dr. Gabe, and Anxious, calling security, writing up referrals Mr. Sub. I still feel it will be an incredible relief to get a full time position, even if everything else is still chaotic, it will be nice to have that constant in my life.
It feels like I am still on the river while many of my friends have set up camp on the banks, lucky for me I've always viewed life from an Easter perspective and so I go with the flow. I'm still optimistic for my life though, and hey, if I didn't have such a crazy experiences, what would I write about?
