Subbing frenzy
It was a good week, job wise. I had three sub jobs, and an all day nanny job on Wednesday for cute 11-month-old twin boys. Not only were they cute and very good all day, I got paid a lot.Yesterday I ended up back the kindergarten class that I have been in before. Now, I can't remember the entire play-by-play, so many things happened, but I'll try to recall it as best as I can. The drama started when one boy walked in (we'll call him A) and was tired and laid his head down on his desk. Normally the students are finishing their "morning work" which is leftover, unfinished work from the days prior. He said he didn't want to do anything. Next walks in a little girl (B) who has tears in her eyes. I ask her what's wrong and she says she feels sick, but her mom made her come to school. I figured it was one of those false "I don't feel good" issues, and I usually agree with sending kids to school anyway.
Well, even still in morning work time, the assistant saw child B and decided she really didn't look good, so she began to take her down the hall when B promptly puked. I looked over at the attendance chart and saw about 5 or 6 kids' names who had not shown up to school that day.
At morning circle time, just during the "greet your neighbor song", child A puked. It was a good way to start off the morning, eh? Not to mention that during morning work several students said "I threw up last night..." Great. This was the beginning of a very chaotic day.
Well, after A threw up on the carpet, you can imagine the reaction of a class full of kindergarteners, and I got to have a fun little talk with them about a) how many of you have been sick before and b) can you control it when you have to throw up and c) to stay away from things and d) not to make the sick friend feel bad for being sick.
Throughout the rest of the day, we lost more students to illness. Because of all the sickness that was obviously going around, whenever a student said their stomach hurt, I sent them to the office. We did have one girl completely out in left field tell me that her ears hurt, and she consistently told me so throughout the morning. When I decided that she was too uncomfortable to be at school, I tried to send her to the office, but she had to wait because the chairs were all full. Finally her mom did come to get her and I got the pleasure of talking to her in Spanish because she didn't understand my English. That was THE highlight of my day.
Because, really, it was all downhill from morning work. There was disinfecting and a lot of handwashing and paranoia and the works. By lunchtime I had 12 (!!!) students, out of a class that I think is normally 26. Good times! After lunch the ESL kids leave, and I had 5 (!!!) non-ESL kids to read aloud to, and model the math assignment.
At the end of the day the students had to wait to leave because the office was preparing a paper to be sent home to the students. What did the paper say? That there is no school on Monday or Tuesday (Veteran's Day anyway), due to 60(!!!) students being gone from school due to illness. Who mandated that? The wonderful health department officials who came to inspect the school during the day.
By the end of the day, it felt like one of those apocalyptic movies wherein everyone gets sick and dies from some mysterious disease. It was a miracle I didn't run to my car in the parking lot.
The day ended on a much brighter note because I went to see one of my favorite bands, Copeland, play a show last night. I usually feel old at concerts just because I'm, you know, surrounded by high schoolers, but last night I felt old because my feet and back hurt by the end of the night (12:30am).
posted by Meghan @ 10:26 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home