Sub-sistence

Monday: 5th grade.  Location: my hometown, same school as last week’s PE assignment.  This wasn’t my favorite fifth grade assignment, but it was still a good day.  The day started with specials.  As I subbed for PE last week, I knew a little bit of the schedule so I expected this.  It’s always nice to have extra time to go over the lesson plans, particularly in elementary school when there are so many different things going on.  Spelling pretest went well, but I thought there were some challenging words on that list.  It didn’t stop three students from making the challenge list though with three or less incorrect, to the disappointment of one of them.  They tell me the challenge list is much harder so they don’t like to do it.  One student mentioned purposely spelling some wrong to avoid this list.  I hope he wasn’t serious.  Note to self: make challenge list more fun too so students actually want to succeed.  Math was next, and being the advanced group I started out with my usual routine of putting up some high school or college problems on the board and asking them to solve them, saying, “This is the advanced class, right?”  Yes, ha ha.  So the real lesson was kind of a review for them I’m told, so the teaching part was kind of short.  Toward the end a student came back it asking for his homework for the rest of the day.  I asked him to wait a minute while I addressed a problem with the math group, but he just left.  I found out later he had a migrane so I can excuse his impatience.  I ended up sending his work home with another student.

The afternoon was reading and writing, followed by social studies.  There was a whole group and small group lesson.  Then we went over the reading test they took last week, the one the teacher still had with him.  Oops.  He asked me to make fresh copies for the kids, but since they were only going to look at them and nothing else, the teaching assistant gave me an alternative by making transparencies instead and saving a tree.  The social studies was finishing up a packet, and studying for their quiz on Tuesday.  I wish I had seen the packet ahead of time.  There were so many questions on the first page it would have been easier to go over a whole class example before they started.

So that was Monday in a nutshell.  Today I was at another school for the first time, another one close to home.  I picked up on it right away though.  It was a low-level reading program.  In fact, I subbed in a class like this just last week.  It was another district, but it seems they use the same program, just as many districts use the same U of I math program.  It was mostly small group work with 7th and 8th grade classes.  There was some whole group instruction, but it was just introducing the small group lesson.  It wasn’t a bad day, though I’ve had far worse.  Some of the students were ELL, and regular readers know about some of my experiences with ELL students.  Speaking of ELL, I had an opportunity to sub for 1st grade ELL today but I decided to take a pass.  One thing worse than those bad experiences in middle school ELL was in the primary ELL department, where there are many students who know very little English and are therefore that much more difficult to teach.

So, tomorrow I will be in yet another school I’ve never been in.  3rd grade.  Until then.

We all know what that date represents.  Well, most of us do.  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago I worked will ELL students today.  One student actually didn’t know about what happened seven years ago as he just came to this country less than a year ago.  I suspect there were others as well.  Needless to say, he had a little trouble answering the journal question, “What happened on September 11, 2001?”

Believe it or not, I have been subbing for a few years but this is the first year that the school I was at had a big thing going for September 11.  The morning started with the entire school crowding around the flagpole.  No, it wasn’t a “see you at the pole” event, though I would wish it would get these kinds of crowds.  If more kids were followers of Jesus there would be so much less trouble at our schools.  Back to the topic, the principal called out everyone to observe the all-too-recent holiday remembering what happened those seven years ago.  There was the flag raising of course, a speech by the principal, and some students read poems they wrote.  The principal made himself heard, but they really needed some amplification for the kids- I wasn’t able to understand, or in some cases even hear a single poem.

After that, everyone went in and first period started (late).  The 9/11 theme continued with the aforementioned journal question, and then we saw an interactive CDROM.  Apparently the Chicago Tribune gave away these CDs back in 2002 commemorating the one-year anniversary.  It provided archival footage of ten days of the Tribune headlines following the destruction with some commentary and a Flash intro to start.  I was hoping to provide a download link for this, but I guess after six years it’s either off the map or I didn’t look hard enough.  Actually, I did find a torrent (peer-to-peer download) with the title (When Evil Struck America) but there didn’t appear to be any seeds, meaning it couldn’t be downloaded.  I’ll check Usenet in a bit, but I’m not holding my breath.  To the students’ credit, they really were engaged and asking questions.  A few periods later I was helping in the 7th grade social studies classroom, and the teacher did his own presentation on 9/11.  He chose some really thought-provoking pictures, including one building closeup where people could be seen to the side falling because they had jumped from the towers, perhaps hoping for a better outcome than death by fire or smoke inhalation.

These were the only periods I had dealing with this topic, but it seemed like half the day.  The rest of the day had typical lessons.  I either taught, helped out, or led a review.  I could say more on that, but I think I will leave this post focusing more on 9/11.  Until tomorrow.

EDIT:  I may not be able to give you the Tribune CD, but the History Channel has it’s own interactive media: 102 Minutes that Changed America

(Not my picture.  For more pictures like this, CLICK HERE)

Not sure what to write tonight. I was at one of the few schools one district ever calls me for- I am not sure what’s going on with that district. I guess it helps that this school is the largest in the district at over 900 students 6th-8th grades. At first when I saw the acronym ELS when I looked up the teacher online, a practice I often do when I’m not told what subject or grade I’m teaching, I confused it with ELL, or English language learners. Middle school ELL as I’ve posted before can be, well just add an h in front of it and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Oh, joy. But I should have remembered from another district that ELS stands for (something) life skills. I am not sure what the E stands for, but in short this refers to mentally impaired students, whether it be autism, down syndrome, or what-have-you.

So I arrived and found out about the class, confirmed by the lessons on the plans, and the students arrived one by one. Announcements, attendance, then off some went while others came in- a bit unusual for a middle school where the students start in their first class except for a few schools that have homeroom scheduled at the beginning of the day. So the first class was all the lowest students who could barely read even at a first grade level. Mostly, they repeated what I or the assistant read but some could read a little bit without the help. Second period was quite the opposite. I had the higher level ELS students, and we discussed ancient China and their inventions. Yes, gunpowder was one of them along with paper money, ship rudders, and porcelain. Then there was math. Most students worked out of packets while I worked with some of the lower-level students again, practicing counting to twenty (well, I did say low-level). Actually, before math I had to relieve another teacher who had a meeting with a parent. That class just colored. Anyway, following math the kids did “vocational education,” which today was putting together Hawaiian leis (those flowery things that go around the neck) using construction paper flowers, cut up colored straws, and yarn. The teacher who prepared these actually cut the yarn too short so they wound up more like strange headbands. Oh, well.

Following lunch I got the higher level class again and we worked on list poems. An example similar to one we did together is:

What I like about summer
Swimming at the local pool,
Playing baseball at the park,
Hanging out with friends all day,
Chasing down the ice cream truck,
Sleeping in until late morning.

The last period (not counting my off-period) was kind of a laid back period. Some students played a game, others used the computers, and one did some reading. Anyway, that was it. Not exciting, but different.

And I just picked up my job for tomorrow. It looks like I will be back at middle school I was at Monday for… PE again! If that isn’t strange enough, it is for a third PE teacher out of the five there. Two to go…

When I got home from small group last night, I did a check again for jobs, and came up with one district that had two postings.  One was closer, one was one of the furthest schools from me.  People who know me know my love for driving, or rather how much I love to not have to drive much in traffic.  So the choice was obvious of course- I took the second one.  Say what?  You’re thinking, “Didn’t he just get through saying…?”  Well, yes, but I mentioned in one of my comments a couple of days ago that there is a position I vowed never to take again.  This was for one of those teachers.  ELL at that one middle school is a nightmare I wish never to repeat, err, again.  I actually subbed for these teachers (two ELL teachers on the team) a few times but I finally had enough last year.  My theory is that discipline is far more strict in Mexico (these were primarily Hispanic kids) and so when they come to the US and enter our education system, we are far more limited on what we can do for punishment and so it’s like a cake-walk to them.  Our worst is no problem to them as long as they only break rules and not laws in which case they finally have justice meted toward them.  In any event, coupled with typical low-income for this area they are very difficult to work with.  There is another middle school in the district, but oddly enough I have never actively chosen to not sub for ELL there.  Maybe the difference is the grades are separated over there but all combined at the first school.  6th-graders learn how to play the system sooner from the 8th-graders since they spend a lot of time in the same room.  In any event, as possible proof of this theory one of the days a student actually threw his binder at another student’s head (in retribution).  In front of me while I started to deal with the initial problem.  Besides this, there was just a constant lack of respect overall.

Never again.

So of course that same position just showed up for tomorrow, but no alternative assignment.  I am still looking for something for tomorrow…

Of course there are even worse positions.  A nearby district actually has a lot of gang activity at their middle schools, though it is really not as bad as what I hear of from the city.  I no longer sub in that district.