My First Substitute

Day was a scheduled School Improvement Day or SIP day. Students only came until 12 and then, the teachers get together and learn about how to be better teachers. This time, all "new" teachers were to get the special treatment and spend the whole day in meetings instead of just the morning. Consequently, I had to make sub plans and prepare for a sub. While I dreaded the entire process the whole time I was doing it, it actually forced me to create a sub folder and prepare for the off chance that I wake up puking my guts out someday and absolutely cannot go. Otherwise, I'm going to make it because I HATE making sub plans and I've only had to do it once for a 1/2 day. Perhaps it's just because I'm new at this and don't hardly trust myself with my plans let alone someone who is coming in blind. I've MADE the plans and most mornings I'm still turning in circles to figure out what I'm doing. Anyway, it worked out very well and there was more than enough stuff for the sub to do and only one behavior problem from someone I expected to have a behavior problem. This has also left me a little confused about what day it is because since I didn't see the students it didn't feel like a school day but it was because there are only two days left already this week.

While I was supposed to spend the entire day learning about the next reading strand, the literacy coach who planned the day ended up being sick. So, we had another person who knows everything about it and just wasn't prepared to give the presentation and we didn't get to have it all day. We ended up going back to our buildings and spending the rest of the day learning about how to use the PDAs. Depending on your perspective, we either got the shaft or the best of both worlds. Personally, I would have liked to spent a little more time working on the reading stuff because it's more complicated and a lot less self explanatory but this is the nature of working with kids. Plans change.

As for the first two days this week, it seems as if Mondays will typically be pretty good and Tuesday a little rough. For some reason, that's been the pattern and Tuesdays are always just a little bit crazier. Maybe it's because everything goes so well on Monday that I let my guard up but for some reason the kids get away with more and seemingly poke, push, jab, and talk more than usual. For crying out loud they all hate to be touched but can't . . . . stop . . . . . . . . touching. And I'm not even talking about each other. I mean they do that too with pushing and poking and pinching, but it's the constant need to have their hands doing something that just makes me shake my head and sigh. For example, cutting anything at all including but not limited to chairs, glue bottles, tables, pencils, napkins, hair, fingers, and every once in a while paper, holding pencils, rapping pencils on the desk, sorting pencils, hiding pencils, eating crayons, and my favorite chewing on the pencils. Maybe someday they'll figure it out someday or at least I hope so. Until then, I take the stuff away and ask them if they would like to go back to preschool because I used to work with preschoolers and they eat crayons and cut their own hair and I thought I was a kindergarten teacher but if all I had was preschoolers we can go right back. And, believe it or not, this actually works. Apparently, they actually do enjoy being in kindergarten. : )