Sub-sistence

Wednesday was one of those specials days. That is, subbing for a gym teacher. But first, let me talk about the days before this one. Monday, I took a full day job at one of the furthest schools from me. It was a bit of a mixed bag as well as a slight disappointment. I knew this was an 8th grade teacher so I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that this was a half-day job that was mistakenly entered in as a full day, so I ended up only working half the day. Actually only a couple of hours. This allowed me time to seek a half-day elsewhere, but I didn’t find one. I did find a half day for Tuesday and took it knowing that a job would be hard to find that day since most school districts had off for Veteran’s Day, but not for Monday afternoon. The mixed bag for this day was the teacher taught both mat and science. When he came back, he taught social studies. Jack of all trades here, like an elementary teacher?

So next day I didn’t set my alarm as my half-day was in the afternoon. Just after six, r-i-n-g! Job assignment opened up for the morning. Cool. So after quickly eating breakfast and getting ready since I had to be there in an hour, I filled in for the special-ed reading teacher at a junior high. Unlike my two periods yesterday, I had to work four periods. Breaking even I suppose. These were actually two block classes so it didn’t seem like four periods anyway. Then I was off to my afternoon assignment. Arriving there forty minutes early (it was almost down the street with a start time an hour after my end time at the other school), I sat in the lounge and had an early lunch. This assignment was pretty much like my assignment last week for two days. I met with a couple of groups of kids in the teacher’s mini-room, typical of some special ed pullout teachers, and went to help in another room later on. Well, I tried anyway- it wound up being another pullout. The last students of the day didn’t need me, so I had an extra break at the end.

Back to Wednesday.  The gym teacher was still there when I arrived, so he explained what he wanted me to do with the kids.  They started off with laps around the gym then moved into kickball.  I had 5th grade at the start, and they of course knew what they were doing.  The second class had a lot of home runs because the teacher set the bar for home runs pretty low.  At least for the older kids.  I’m sure with the younger ones the zone is fine, but with so many 5th graders kicking home runs it really needed to be set higher.  This reminds me of playing kickball outdoors when the weather is nice.  It is really different.  No walls, no ceiling, no automatic home runs, no ground rule doubles when the ball hits the basketball backboard…  Anyway, back to the present.  The second half of the morning was Kindergarten.  After they did their five laps, we practiced basic motor skills like hopping, skipping, galloping, etc before going into kickball.  From 5th to 5- quite a difference.  Now I had to teach them kickball, but they can only take in so much at once.  The real teacher will have to reteach them I’m sure, adding rules I didn’t cover.  There were a few who had played before, but to most it was a new thing.  The afternoon was quite different.  There is a student teacher in this class who was out observing another student teacher in action at another school in the morning.  In the afternoon, they swapped positions and came to this school.  Kickball struck out and the new home run was dodgeball.  Bad baseball analogy aside, it wasn’t regular dodgeball, but a variation with two medics on scooters (those square things on four wheels sat on by gym students across the nation, not a Razor if you’re wondering) who can tag their teammates who are out to get them back in.  Additionally there are pins set up at the back of either side that can be knocked over.  If all of them get knocked over, the other team wins.  During the afternoon I of course took a back seat in all of this, but when the student teacher inserted himself into the game, I just had to join the other team.  :twisted:  Too bad I am terrible at most sports, dodgeball included, but it was a blast anyway.  I’ll have to join in more in the games on the weekends at church.

Today was 7th and 8th grade LA/Lit.  More on that tomorrow though since I will be doing the same thing.

People who know me know that my preference for teaching is about 3rd-7th grades. Stretch a year in either direction, and those are pretty much the jobs I gravitate toward when I have a choice. Of course specials are an exception; I do take those no problem though they may include kindergarten or 1st grade. Since you are an observant reader, you will have noticed the words when I have a choice. Well, I was unable to procure an assignment yesterday leaving me at the mercy of what’s available in the morning. First call came in at about 5:40 and was for kindergarten. I thought about it and foolishly chose not to do it. I figured I would take a chance and check the web since I was awake. I did find a couple of half-day jobs which I also skipped. Then came the full-day preschool assignment. I didn’t think I would see anything younger than the one I rejected, but here it was. Being about 5:50 I decided to gamble again and keep hoping for a better assignment to show up. Nope. Oddly enough though, no one was picking up this full-day assignment for some reason. Finally, the system called me for the assignment so I gave in and took it. At least it was a lot closer to me than the kindergarten job. Then I went back to sleep for an hour.

As it turns out, this district as far as I know does not offer normal preschool. It does however offer special education preschool for the “developmentally delayed.” The morning had eight of ten students there, and was actually kind of a breeze. This kind of classroom has teaching assistants (three!), and today the speech teacher actually came in to take over the class! I had absolutely no problem with this as this age is really out of my comfort zone anyway. I just acted as another T.A. The most I did teachingwise was running a center where they matched patterns and did a connect-the-dots worksheet. Other than that it was keeping kids focused and helping as needed.

The afternoon was a little different. There were slightly fewer students (seven), but this was a more challenging group. One was very autistic and needed special attention, and as a whole the group was lower than the morning group and like the one autistic boy, required more attention. The title of this post refers to me, but in actuality one of the part-time T.A.s in the afternoon was a guy! I would guess he really likes kids to do this, because he is a retired principal from the school I was at and retirement packages for top school administrators tend to be very generous. Either that or some bad investments, but his actions during the afternoon clearly showed the former. He was very good with the kids- unlike a T.A. from another school I worked with recently. That T.A. really yelled at the kids, sometimes for very minor things. To be fair, that school was a middle school, but I really felt for those kids. Aside from that she did a pretty good job, doing things for the students she didn’t have to. If not for this I would have thought she was in the wrong profession entirely.

I was somewhat relieved to go home a little early- preschool ends 15 minutes before the regular grades- partly due to the afternoon class and partly due to the relative inactivity of my job. This is one reason, aside from the very low pay, that I would not want to be a teaching assistant full time. The absolute wost times I have had subbing were as teaching assistants, particularly one-one-one assignments. Never again on those, though I would sub (at regular pay) for other types of teaching assistants, like those with multiple kids or general classroom helpers.