Friday, December 05, 2008

Some Good, Some Bad

It has to happen sometime, I guess. Most days I happen to sub, I leave at the end of the day thinking that it was all pretty good and that I'm really getting a hang of this subbing business. Then there are days like yesterday. Maybe it all just has to even out somehow. The law of averages? Sure.

Wednesday I had a full day sub job for a teacher who had been gone the two previous days. Her poor kids had already had two different subs, and I was the third to come along. They missed their teacher, and they weren't afraid to say so. They didn't proclaim this in a mean way toward me, but as a general statement that they missed their teacher. They were a great class, and I had no big problems with them. A good day.

I was called back to the same school yesterday, except in a third grade classroom. I only did the afternoon, so I met the teacher midday, who gave me instructions, introduced me to the class, and the led the kids to the lunchroom. When they had come in from their PE class, they had done so orderly, quietly, and very respectfully. I thought it was going to be a good afternoon. Wrong.

I don't know how it moved so quickly into chaos, but it did. We did a brainstorming session on winter/Christmas themes and words, and I could not get them to stop chatting. It was just utter disrespect and although I was using the reward/consequence system that the teacher had in place, the kids were not responding to it.

The most difficult thing for me was that I had an older teacher (an assistant of some sort) who was in the classroom during this time. It is just about the most embarrassing thing that can happen to me, in or out of the classroom, to have another, older teacher watch me completely fumble and lose a class's attention.

Needless to say, I was happy when the kids left. I probably just have to have one of these days every once in a while to remind me to be thankful for the good ones.

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