Well, I didn't win the lottery but I did earn some money
It took until Wed, but I got my AESOP account straightened out so I actually *could* accept sub jobs. (AESOP is the online and phone system by which teachers list their upcoming absences and subs can accept those posts.) And then I kind of got cold feet, so it was kind of an act of bravery which prompted me to accept a job at the kids' middle school yesterday. It was for 6th grade, but not on Two's academic team. I didn't know what the subject would be until I got there - turned out to be Social Studies and some time with academic support for reading, using Scholastic's Read 180 program.
I had Social Studies for the first three periods. The first class of the day was the best one, in terms of behavior and time management, and each class got a little rougher after that, but nobody was particularly awful. There were a lot of bathroom requests, but I don't know if that was particularly for my benefit or not. In Social Studies, they're studying Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent; yesterday's lesson was about farming techniques, with some discussion. Then they had to read a worksheet and answer questions on the back about Mesopotamian/Sumerian inventions - apparently they were the ones who decided to divide the sky into 12, and divide time into the 60/60/24 units we're familiar with today. Among other things. And then there was a vocab activity that became homework if they didn't finish it in class. First period almost uniformly DID finish it. After that, most kids had it for homework.
I knew a LOT of kids from: our elementary school, PREP, TKD (one kid) and marching band/bandfront. In every class I knew about a third of the kids straight away. Kind of cool. And several kids, upon entering and seeing my face, said, "You're our sub today? Cool!" I don't know if that meant they thought they could get away with more, if they liked me from other exposures and were happy to see me again or, as MiniPlu pointed out, they were just so happy NOT to have this one sub that everyone hates.
Fourth period is 6th grade lunch, so I ate then, too. I was surprised to see that, at the middle school level, almost nobody eats in the teacher's lounge. It was me and one other guy I didn't recognize, and who didn't talk to me at all. (It was at this point that I was reading a friend's email and learned about Alan Rickman. Wah.) Everyone else came in, grabbed a soda from the machine, heated up their lunch in the microwave, and left again. So, I won't bother to hang out there in the future, either.
Fifth period was when we switched to the Read 180 kids (same classroom, though). Read 180 is a program developed by Scholastic, which uses various rotations: reading independently, working on a computer, and receiving small-group instruction in reading techniques. Each class also starts off with a whole-group lesson, which the neighboring teacher - the learning support teacher - did. (She gave me the option, but I figured she knew better what she was doing, so I let her handle it. She also came in during my 2nd-period Social Studies to help those learning support kids in class, and then took them over to her classroom for the reading worksheet activity, in case they needed help with the reading part.) Once the whole-group instruction was over and they broke into their rotations, I took the station with kids who had finished their books and answered written questions about them and were ready to present what they knew. It was my job to judge their written answers against a rubric for completeness, ask them verbal questions about the book (the questions and answers were specified in the teacher's text - I didn't have to know the story beforehand) and judge those on the rubric, then look at their "stickies" - post-it notes they're supposed to put into the story whenever they have a comment, draw a conclusion, connect to the text with their own lives, etc - and judge those. That score gets totaled up and then the kids go to the computer to take a test on the book that way. (Other kids on the computer are working on spelling exercises.) And I did the same for 8th period, too. (The last period of the day.)
6th-7th periods are the Related Arts rotations for 6th grade: gym, art (or home ec, shop, computers, music, etc), foreign language. (Gym and language alternate; art is daily.) For those kids who need extra help, they get Support class instead of a foreign language. Again, this is what Two gets. There was absolutely nothing they needed me for, for this - this would normally have been my prep time, had I been a proper teacher. However, as a sub, I didn't need to prep for anything, so on the advice of the support teacher, I went down to the office to see if I could help somewhere else. Turns out the office needed some help, so I spent that time filing kids' attendance notes: late slips, sick excuse notes, permissions to leave early, vacation slips, and truancy notices. Which was good because Two's (and, presumably, MiniPlu's, but I didn't get that far) vacation slip and permission to leave early right before Christmas were in there, and I discovered the one spot where his name hadn't been changed yet - they'd made all the file folders over the summer, before we got his paperwork to the school. The secretary knows exactly what's going on there, and was very apologetic when I politely asked her to re-do it.
Anyway, overall the day went pretty well, and I was pleased.
Today I subbed for the elementary librarian, which we had pre-arranged; she's taking her boyfriend to visit her parents in Fla over the long weekend. Fridays are one class shorter, but only in the morning - the afternoon is just as full as usual (and that's when the most classes come in this year, anyway). I spent the morning processing new books and making sure I had reviewed all the lesson plans. This time at least I got to hang out with some of the other teachers at lunch. One class in the afternoon behaved really badly, but I don't think that was personally about me being a sub; I got the impression their behavior has been pretty cruddy lately. Everyone else was at least pretty decently behaved overall. One of the other volunteers was there, and it was definitely weird to have her supporting ME, rather than me doing the supporting, or our working together.
I was definitely tired once I got home, though! Apparently one workday was fine, but after the second one - oof. Definitely need to get used to this again. The kids had managed to get a ride home with Two's BFF's older sister, so MiniPlu was curled on the sofa with the puppy (who had been apparently very needy after being crated two days running), while Two was at his BFF's house a block away. I changed and hauled myself out to take the dogs to the dog park, stopped for gas and picked up MiniPlu's friend on the way home, then made dinner. Both kids' friends are staying the night for an impromptu slumber party, and I am now more than ready for bed at 10:20pm. *yawn*
Weekend plans: Two's birthday, Two's birthday, Two's birthday. (And
thistlerose's birthday. :D)
I had Social Studies for the first three periods. The first class of the day was the best one, in terms of behavior and time management, and each class got a little rougher after that, but nobody was particularly awful. There were a lot of bathroom requests, but I don't know if that was particularly for my benefit or not. In Social Studies, they're studying Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent; yesterday's lesson was about farming techniques, with some discussion. Then they had to read a worksheet and answer questions on the back about Mesopotamian/Sumerian inventions - apparently they were the ones who decided to divide the sky into 12, and divide time into the 60/60/24 units we're familiar with today. Among other things. And then there was a vocab activity that became homework if they didn't finish it in class. First period almost uniformly DID finish it. After that, most kids had it for homework.
I knew a LOT of kids from: our elementary school, PREP, TKD (one kid) and marching band/bandfront. In every class I knew about a third of the kids straight away. Kind of cool. And several kids, upon entering and seeing my face, said, "You're our sub today? Cool!" I don't know if that meant they thought they could get away with more, if they liked me from other exposures and were happy to see me again or, as MiniPlu pointed out, they were just so happy NOT to have this one sub that everyone hates.
Fourth period is 6th grade lunch, so I ate then, too. I was surprised to see that, at the middle school level, almost nobody eats in the teacher's lounge. It was me and one other guy I didn't recognize, and who didn't talk to me at all. (It was at this point that I was reading a friend's email and learned about Alan Rickman. Wah.) Everyone else came in, grabbed a soda from the machine, heated up their lunch in the microwave, and left again. So, I won't bother to hang out there in the future, either.
Fifth period was when we switched to the Read 180 kids (same classroom, though). Read 180 is a program developed by Scholastic, which uses various rotations: reading independently, working on a computer, and receiving small-group instruction in reading techniques. Each class also starts off with a whole-group lesson, which the neighboring teacher - the learning support teacher - did. (She gave me the option, but I figured she knew better what she was doing, so I let her handle it. She also came in during my 2nd-period Social Studies to help those learning support kids in class, and then took them over to her classroom for the reading worksheet activity, in case they needed help with the reading part.) Once the whole-group instruction was over and they broke into their rotations, I took the station with kids who had finished their books and answered written questions about them and were ready to present what they knew. It was my job to judge their written answers against a rubric for completeness, ask them verbal questions about the book (the questions and answers were specified in the teacher's text - I didn't have to know the story beforehand) and judge those on the rubric, then look at their "stickies" - post-it notes they're supposed to put into the story whenever they have a comment, draw a conclusion, connect to the text with their own lives, etc - and judge those. That score gets totaled up and then the kids go to the computer to take a test on the book that way. (Other kids on the computer are working on spelling exercises.) And I did the same for 8th period, too. (The last period of the day.)
6th-7th periods are the Related Arts rotations for 6th grade: gym, art (or home ec, shop, computers, music, etc), foreign language. (Gym and language alternate; art is daily.) For those kids who need extra help, they get Support class instead of a foreign language. Again, this is what Two gets. There was absolutely nothing they needed me for, for this - this would normally have been my prep time, had I been a proper teacher. However, as a sub, I didn't need to prep for anything, so on the advice of the support teacher, I went down to the office to see if I could help somewhere else. Turns out the office needed some help, so I spent that time filing kids' attendance notes: late slips, sick excuse notes, permissions to leave early, vacation slips, and truancy notices. Which was good because Two's (and, presumably, MiniPlu's, but I didn't get that far) vacation slip and permission to leave early right before Christmas were in there, and I discovered the one spot where his name hadn't been changed yet - they'd made all the file folders over the summer, before we got his paperwork to the school. The secretary knows exactly what's going on there, and was very apologetic when I politely asked her to re-do it.
Anyway, overall the day went pretty well, and I was pleased.
Today I subbed for the elementary librarian, which we had pre-arranged; she's taking her boyfriend to visit her parents in Fla over the long weekend. Fridays are one class shorter, but only in the morning - the afternoon is just as full as usual (and that's when the most classes come in this year, anyway). I spent the morning processing new books and making sure I had reviewed all the lesson plans. This time at least I got to hang out with some of the other teachers at lunch. One class in the afternoon behaved really badly, but I don't think that was personally about me being a sub; I got the impression their behavior has been pretty cruddy lately. Everyone else was at least pretty decently behaved overall. One of the other volunteers was there, and it was definitely weird to have her supporting ME, rather than me doing the supporting, or our working together.
I was definitely tired once I got home, though! Apparently one workday was fine, but after the second one - oof. Definitely need to get used to this again. The kids had managed to get a ride home with Two's BFF's older sister, so MiniPlu was curled on the sofa with the puppy (who had been apparently very needy after being crated two days running), while Two was at his BFF's house a block away. I changed and hauled myself out to take the dogs to the dog park, stopped for gas and picked up MiniPlu's friend on the way home, then made dinner. Both kids' friends are staying the night for an impromptu slumber party, and I am now more than ready for bed at 10:20pm. *yawn*
Weekend plans: Two's birthday, Two's birthday, Two's birthday. (And
thistlerose's birthday. :D)