Sub-sistence

Well, I have been on the early shift for the last couple of days and I just have to say that that, coupled with my tendency to not sleep through the night, makes for one tired teacher.  Yesterday I had it easy.  I left to a temperature outside over 40º colder than it was the night before, and on icy roads thanks to the rain the day and night before, on a slow trip all the way to middle school science.  The teacher did not expect to be out again and so another teacher set me up with a couple of videos.  One was a left-leaning news special titled Who Killed the Electric Car? True, it is a really good question as we could use them these days as I would expect the gas prices to go up significantly again.  Well, unleaded prices anyway as diesel hasn’t actually dropped all that much since the summer in comparison.  I say left-leaning as when it got to talking about government as a suspect (battery technology, consumers, oil companies, car companies, and others were also suspects) it pretty much painted Republican presidents like Reagan and Bush Jr. as evil, signing environmentally unfriendly bills into law, and praises Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton on their policies.  Again, this doesn’t erase the question about electric cars though- we really should be seeing more of them than we are.  A lot more actually since according to the video GM’s EV-1 cars were all destroyed back in 2004.  The closest thing we have at the moment I believe are hybrids like the Toyota Prius.  The entire video was 90 minutes so I only got to see a portion of it, four times of course…  Two classes saw a Bill Nye video on the atmosphere.  Oddly enough, this teacher teaches both 7th and 8th grades, a bit unusual for middle school.

Today I went to the other side of the brain to language arts.  It was an even easier day.  Two of the classes (four periods) were team taught, so I was reduced to helper status for these periods.  The other two periods were really small groups- one with six students and one with three.  The one with three was the most challenging as one of the students was in a very goofy mood.  Where the title of this post comes into play is in the book a teacher read aloud in one of the classes.  As the class started she was reading about Marley so I thought this was going to be about another story, play actually, the classes had also been working on fitting for this time of year.  Of course I mean Charles Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol.  However I soon realized this was another story entirely- the middle school version of the book Marley & Me.  This movie is coming out Christmas Day and after today’s excerpt I can confidently say I will be skipping it.  The chapter started out talking about John taking Marley to Dog Beach (I think that was the name), but no dog ever messed on the beach so Marley would have to take care of business beforehand, which he did in a colorful description depicting the act.  While at the beach, Marley was playing in the water and drinking quantities of the salty liquid while running around, refusing the offered fresh water.  As a result, the dog upchucked and there was another lovely description of this event.  Naturally it didn’t stop there as the salt water also caused loose bowels.  Thankfully the teacher stopped before describing this event.  Now I realize this will likely take up only seconds on the screen, and knowing Hollywood those scenes will be there, but I have to ask myself if the author was willing to gross readers out by going into detail on these scenes, then what else is in this book?  I think I do not wish to find out.  Thanks for saving me $10 plus refreshments.

The first job I selected for the fourth district I am now in may still be coming, but the second job was a two-day job for 8th grade language arts.  It was at the school where I know a few of the kids from my church.  As it turns out the school is only about a half mile from my church too.  I noticed on the map that this school was comprised of two buildings: an elementary and a junior high school.  As such, I did not expect to run into them since they are in elementary.  As it turns out, the schools were connected and there is some shared space such as the cafeteria.  I still didn’t run into them on the first day though.  It was actually the second day when I was entering the building that I saw two of them.  They were early because they were doing broadcasting, which is becoming increasingly common in schools these days.  At this school I would guess the elementary and junior high sides share this as well, with the elementary using it in the morning and the junior high in the afternoon during their homeroom.

This day was divided into two-period blocks again, another common thing in junior high/middle school that I did not have when I was in junior high.  Reading and other english classes were separate.  Would you believe I had a dedicated spelling class in 6th grade?  “What class do you have next- math?  Gym?  Social studies?”  “No, I have spelling.”  I don’t even recall what we did all week outside of the pre- and post-tests.  I do remember some of the tests were verbal though, and not a fun game like sparkle either.  There was one time they gave me the word “anxiety” and I mumbled something like “angziety” but when asked to repeat myself louder I changed my answer and got it right- total luck.

The first two blocks were 8th grade as the job description promised.  On Thursday they had a test which followed the daily “caught ya”  sentence correction.  Easy enough for me.  Following that we started an Edger Allan Poe story in their books.  Rather than reading it together there was a CD recording.  Unfortunately this was so soft the room had to be absolutely silent in order to hear the reader.  We only got through a few pages of this.  I tried to play it on the DVD player and see if it came out any louder through the TV than the portable CD player, but oddly enough the DVD player didn’t recognize the CD.  Did it only play DVDs?  First time I’ve ever encountered a DVD player that didn’t play CDs, unless it was just this one for some reason.

The last block was 7th grade.  They started the same way, with a daily sentence and a test.  The same test in fact as eighth grade.  Huh?  She gives the same lesson to both grades?  Well, not in every case as it turns out.  Following the test we did vocabulary and were supposed to do a worksheet on symbolism in poetry afterward, though we ran out of time before finishing the vocabulary.

Between these blocks was the 4th period lunch, starting at 10:07.  I guess I should really say breakfast.  Remember I mentioned the two schools sharing some space?  Well this early lunch was a consequence of that.  I am pleased to say I didn’t truly get a chance to eat until 1:30.  The teacher I was subbing for only had the first and last periods of (not counting homeroom, which follows the last period).  She apparently has lunch duty during 4th.  As the general rule goes, if the teacher has a job (s)he gets paid extra for, the sub doesn’t do it.  If it’s part of the regular duties, the sub has to do it too.  Some schools pay a stipend for lunch duty, some don’t.  This one does, so even though I didn’t get to eat until late I was quite happy because this school is an exception to the rule and gives subs a chance to earn stipend pay in cases like this, so I did!

The last ten minutes of the day was homeroom.  That’s right, ten minutes.  Well, they had to fit in the broadcast announcements some time, and elementary uses the room at the start of the day, so enter homeroom period.  There is not enough time to work on homework in the last few minutes following announcements, so the kids get to chat.

Friday was similar to Thursday, except the plans were different.  8th grade watched a video, again on Edgar Allan Poe, and 7th grade finally got to work on POEtry (sorry, my bad attempt at a pun) once they finished vocabulary.  Following homeroom, I got a surprise: another student from my church.  He’s in 7th grade now, but when he was in 4th grade I had him on the weekends.  He should have been with me for 5th grade too, except he was allowed to start going to the church’s junior high program for some reason I never fathomed.  Ironic, considering as far as school is concerned this district doesn’t start junior high until 7th grade.  I was going to mention this to his dad since I volunteer with him, but he wasn’t there this weekend.

So, how was your week?

Construction- gotta love it.  Construction on the roads, construction of buildings, and so on.  Just yesteday when I went to vote- nice short lines by the way, a far cry from the two-hour wait I expected- one of the volunteers there noticed where I live and mentioned she lives down the street in a two-story house.  Of course I was thinking, “This is a ranch neighborhood, except for…”  Then she completed my thought by adding that they had just added a second story.  Construction.  Just a few years ago it seemed like every fifth house was being made into a McMansion, a topic proudly taken on and condemned by the King of the HIll crew just last weekend by the way.  If there can be one good thing said about this economic downturn it means less of these teardowns.

Today I can add construction in classrooms to the list of construction to deal with.  I subbed in music today and the music room was under construction, so I had to hold class elsewhere.  The other music/drama teacher gave up her space to me and decided to hold her classes in the regular classrooms so it didn’t bother me.  We didn’t do much.  It was a last-minute illness so the teacher just set me up with videos for lesson plans.  For the morning she left two alternatives- a Beethoven movie titled “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” and a movie titled “Bach to Rock.”  Well, Beethoven wasn’t in the building let alone upstairs, so we watched the other one.  Ironically when I went to the library after work the Beethoven movie was on the rack with recently returned movies.

There was one more class before noon where I read a book to the kids and then in the afternoon I travelled to another school.  Fortunately the road construction that had been going on a couple of weeks before in front of that school was finished.  I had stupidly left the lesson plans at the other school so I upset the secretary at the afternoon school by having the morning school fax it over.  Apparently the fax machine was in a room where only the secretary could retrieve it and she was very busy.  That drama over, the afternoon classes were, well, drama so naturally we watched sing-a-long videos.

Well, that was my day today.  Monday as I previously mentioned was 8th grade math.  No teaching, just worksheets.  And a practice ISAT extended response problem for the Algebra classes.  The only interesting thing to write about was homeroom at the end of the day.  I may have blogged about a boy recently from Italy a couple of weeks ago when I did ELL.  Well, that boy was in my homeroom.  Actually, the homerooms in this district have two teachers and here is where it gets interesting.  The other teacher is the Italian teacher.  That’s right, this school has an Italian class.  I subbed for her last year incidentally.  I wonder why they chose to put this boy in this particular homeroom…

And mostly due to my laziness I am subbing once again, and that is good news for this blog.  I have been on hiatus from this for too long.  I still intend to have some posts of my life outside of teaching, but for a while I have just been turned off from writing during the best time those post would have fit.  Well, to tell the truth my life outside of teaching really hasn’t been too exciting.  Remember back in June when I went to camp?  Well, I am finally making the DVD I have done for my cabin for the last few years.  I have two slideshows and a video finished, along with a video I borrowed from my DVD two years ago in which I just had to modify the end to fit my more recent cabin.  I have been using Ulead VideoStudio which I got free with this computer.  It really is a nice program, and not ridiculously high-priced like some packages out there.  Last year I used a 30-day demo of a $250 DVD authoring package which was nice, but not worth that price in my opinion.  Maybe $100 like this one, but not $250.  I also used a slightly buggy freeware program to do one of the slideshows, and maybe another one.  I haven’t decided yet what to do about this last one to make it different enough from the first two.  Well, I still have a week to put the DVD together before the next church time.  This weekend is the last one of the month, so 4th and 5th grades don’t meet.

As for subbing, I was actually able to get three half days during this first full week of many districts.  Apparently the special ed meetings started right away.  I could have had a fourth, but they called me after 8:00 to arrive there at 8:30.  Well, I might have been able to do that if I was ready to go when they called, but since it was 25 minutes away and in fact I was woken up by the phone call, that wasn’t going to happen.  Besides, I had to take my car in that morning for a new muffler.  Anyway, the three days I did have were pretty similar.  They were all at different Junior Highs (that district doesn’t call them middle schools) and were 8th grade, or a 7th/8th mix.  Two of them were 7:15 AM jobs (too early!) but fortunately I got to sleep in for the last which was an “afternoon,” starting at 10:45 AM.  I didn’t have to leave notes for two of them either, which is always nice, since the teachers came back.  Surprisingly one of these times was the “afternoon” job.  I guess she came back from her special ed meeting for the weekly school meeting.  Since school started last Thursday in this district and the meetings are on Wednesdays after school, this may have been the first one which would probably make it important to attend.  As for the other morning job, that teacher only teaches there in the morning, so I she wouldn’t have come back.  I would presume she teaches somewhere else in the afternoon.

All in all the three half-days went well.  Hopefully I will have more work next week even if there is one day off for labor day.  I am signed up again in three of the districts I worked in last year.  The last was still on the hired subcaller system and barely called me so I switched them for another district that is computer-based so I have more of a chance for work.  That is, I am still working on being signed up there, but that is for a rant in another post…