Combining Jobs

School Site: CHS
Subject: Spanish

My 3 hours of sleep was abruptly interrupted by the Imperial March, my ringtone, at 5:30am today. The nice automated lady came on asking for my password, she's so rude, she never does formalities. I listen to the assignment, and instead of pressing '2' to hear the assignment again, I press '1', sealing my fate for the day. Every ounce of my grumpy sleep deprived body tells me to go online and cancel the assignment, except for the ounce that needs money, and ultimately that wins out.


Mi Espanol es bien en los areas que lo usan mucho, en mi trabajo por ejemplo.  But to teach spanish the whole day, to spanish speakers? This task seemed much more daughting. I arrived on time, unfortunately the other teacher who was supposed to give me the assignment arrives 10 minutes before the start of school. By the time his computer has loaded up and he has translated the email from the teacher I'm subbing for, I'm left with the following instructions.

"Ask the students where they are in the book, and have them do the next assignment."

Yeah, ok, unfortunately students can't remember what they had for lunch, let alone what they did before their vacation. Never fear though because I am a war veteran by now, and I know how to dance.

Period 1: 

This was English 1, I did not feel they would be advanced enough for a writing assignment, so I did assigned them something out of the book, I survived without consequence.

Periods 3-6: Spanish for Spanish Speaker

 I had a blast improving a lesson today. During my prep period, which was second period, I decided to do a writing assignment based on video games. I am, afterall," The GameStop Guy," might as well embrace it.

I explained to the students that I work at GameStop in Colton and that I get a lot of Spanish speaking customers, my vocabulary is unfortunately limited so I had them help me out. I had them help me translate words pertaining to the games I was trying to sell, and then I tried to sell the game to the class in Spanish.  

The resulting assignment looked a little like this.

Halo 4	1 Space   2 Aliens 3 FPS 4 Online 5 Coma 6 Extra Online Content	1 Espacio 2 Extra Tereste 3 Primer Persona 4 Enlina 5 Coma 6. Extra cosas avancadas
Call Of Duty Black Ops II	1 War 2 Futuristic 3 Robots 4 Zombies 5 Co- Op	1 Guerra 2 En El Futuro 3 Robo 4 Zombies 5 Equipo De Dos or Mas
Assassins Creed III	1 Civil War 2 Native Americans 3 Graphics 4 Assassin 5 Hack and Slash 6 Open World	1 Guerra Civil 2 Nativo Americano 3 Buena Graficos 4 Assesino 5 Contrar y Trajar 6 Mundo Abierto

After each set of words I would try to sell the one game, then move on to the next game, translate some more words, and try to make my explanation better. At the end I had them try to sell me something, anything, on their own paper, in Spanish, and within a minimum of 5 sentences.

The result was a lot of fun, even if a lot of the girls were not wholey interested in the subject matter, they were very engaged with translating the words. I felt pretty accomplished with this assignment. The kids were engaged, I snuck in some learning, and it killed 1/2 hour of an otherwise loud and long babysitting gig. I cannot say that it had wholey renewed my vigor to teach, but I certainly found that feeling that first drew me to teaching, I thought it was long gone, turns out it's a drug for me, unfortunately I need stronger doses to keep the buzz going.

The Drifter

School site: CHS
Subject: Where ever the heck they put me.

The holidays wiped me out. Retail is absolutely brutal that way, the funniest part is the majority of the stress came from our lack of trained staff. They were trained enough to preform their jobs, but certainly not psychologically prepared for what they would encounter. This of course is a post for different blog, so on to today's, insanity(?)

I've mentioned once or twice how impersonal substituting is. The mentality I receive most days is " you're not my real teacher..." which is followed promptly by bout of apathy regarding the person conducting the class. Don't get me wrong some classes are great, but this is often brought about by great teachers who have set a calm atmosphere for the class, a routine, and ultimately have some kind of personal connection to their students. This is what they taught us in our credential program, and it is evident in some classes, but if I had great classes everyday this would be a very boring blog.

I don't think I have found a less personal experience than being a roving sub. My assignment this week was to watch some classes while the teachers went to discuss a student's Individual Education Plan or IEP. These are for students who have been identified as having trouble in their classes. This student could have special needs ranging from bad vision to an auditory processing problem. Basically if the student needs specialized attention for a learning disability that has been -identified- if will be in this IEP and all teachers who have student will have to adhere to these guidelines.

So basically the teacher is out for a period, at the most, and many teachers do not have a sub plan written out for this occasion, I mean it's only one class. So I have encountered classes where I just sat and watched them goof off the whole time, to classes where they had a PowerPoint set up for the students to take notes on. This kind of amused me because before they left they did not really go over much of the content of the PowerPoint, but rather teaching me how to run the PowerPoint. I was polite because they obviously do not know my background, but seriously? I am well aware of how to run a PowerPoint. These were very simplistic explanations too, I mean

" So, just press the arrow forward to go forward, and press it back if you need to go to the previous slide, remember there are different things going on during the slides so press the 'forward' or 'back' arrow"

"Yeah, got it... "

The structure brought on by the teacher I'm subbing for is what I often rely on to have a decent day, but in these cases I only have an hour to really get accustomed to this structure. On a normal day I only see the students for an hour anyway, but I'm able to get a feel for the impact the teacher has made on their students. Do the students hate them? Are there pieces of  " I love (teacher)" art everywhere? Does the teacher's desk look like a tornado hit it? These are all indicators of the kind of day I'm going to have. I can also get a feel for the type of students I'm going to encounter based on the first couple of periods, there are of course exceptions to this rule. The schools social network is also a buzz "Hey there is a sub in so and so's class" " Oh yeah he's cool!" or "Aww I hate that guy, I'm going to ditch." In the end I leave a pretty detailed note of how the day went and let the teacher really deal with anyone who was disrespectful or went against the rules of the class.

I don't get these kind of experiences being a roving sub, I literally show up, sit with the kids, or conduct whichever activity they were in the middle of, and 30 to 59 minutes later I'm out of there. In some respects it's like a band aid *poof* it's gone. On the other hand I need to work hard to find the flow to my day as a rover, which truly helps me set the teachings of my Sensei into perspective, "Your movements must be fluid, ever changing, both pulling and pushing, like the Yin Yang"

Would I do it again? Heck yes, I have definitely been in worse situations, block classes and alternative schools to name a few, I think the biggest downfall I see to roving is that I really am trying to progress in my career, and this feels more like I am filling space rather than "Teaching." You could literally stick anyone in that classroom for those 30 minutes, with the obvious exceptions, Herbert the Pervert, or a serial killer, and the students would be fine.

I was wiped out from the holidays, and not looking forward to dealing with more rude kids after retail hell, but subbing for a friend and roving this week has brought back the gluten in me, it has instilled some confidence in me, "Hey I'm still capable of handling myself in a classroom," and I think I'm ready for more abuse. This is of course once more jobs become available, the beginning of the quarter is usually very light, but you can see the semester wear down the teachers, and progressively more jobs are available midway through the semester.
Substitute teaching is an experience

In the land where I don't exist.

School site: CHS

Subject: Business Ed(?)

Sometimes it's a bit futile, but I do -try- to be a good sub, unfortunately today is one of those futile days.

I'm clicking through the assignments and I find "Business education," ooo a computer lab! I think to myself, this could be fun. In a way I guess it has been a pretty relaxed day, in fact I'm blogging from the class, this was however, after a sharp downward spike in caring.

Periods 1&2 : Sports Marketing

Wait, what? a class on "sports marketing?" There is a curriculum for this?  Sure enough there is a book, and everything, it has a band on the front with the title "Sports and Entertainment Marketing 2e," this book is from 2005 and I still haven't found a real academic value to it. Whoever sold this book to this program was a marketing genius themselves.

I always think electives are going to be calmer because I assume the students want to be there, sadly I underestimate the power of the all mighty apathy. The lesson plan seemed pretty straight forward, answer questions turn them in. Unfortunately the assignment only took most students 10 minutes. I tried to get students to stay off games and the Internet the first 2 periods, and was only successful for about 10 minutes of the period. Despite their lack of enthusiasm there were actually some people who turned some stuff in.

Periods: the rest of the day : Microsoft Word

Really? A class on Microsoft Word? I hope this is only a semester long class, I couldn't imagine the curriculum stretching much further than this. When I took this class it was "Microsoft office" i.e.; Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, not just Word. The students in this class are about as lack luster as my enthusiasm is for a curriculum weak class like Word. By this point I had given up on being a patrolling games Nazi, and so I hear the agonizing sounds of getting fragged on Unreal tournament all period, how this was installed on the network I'm not sure, but in my day is was Wolfinstein, Unreal actually seems kind of dated. Others played "shell shock live," it looked interesting, it was a multi player 8 bit game of angles and artillery, kind of like a head to head missile command. The premise was to erode the other players platform, it looked fun, and the students were having a good time facing off against each other.

Computer classes have not changed much since I was in them, I remember my computer teacher being a lot more strict, I can tell this teacher is a lot more relaxed because there are students walking in and out, the place is trashed!, and generally no one really listens. The gaming has not changed much, in fact I have spent a lot of this post describing them, there is still network gaming, as the much preferred alternative to school work. Social networking is more prevalent, lots of tweeters, not too many facebookers though, I'm assuming because it might be blocked. I was just basically here for restroom passes and to make sure no one killed themselves, each other, or the equipment.

I would think computer classes might have evolved, I figure kids already have a base knowledge of computers at home, so they shouldn't need a "basic computing class" or "Microsoft Word," so maybe the class is dated, or I'm just out of touch with society.  I suppose if I ever want to catch up on my blogging I will take this class once again, but it has been an enlightening flashback kind of day.