Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Rockie Start to the Week

I feel like I need to begin this story yesterday so here goes. Yesterday I was assigned to sub in a 6-1-1 special education classroom (6 kids, 1 teacher, 1 para) for the 6th grade. I have been in this room before and it is a fairly good group of kids. The day progressed nicely until about 11am, at which time I heard quite the commotion down the hall. As it turns out there was another teacher absent yesterday. She taught 5th grade general education and has "quite the class." She is a larger and very intimidating woman who manages her classroom by yelling. This seems to work for her put from experience I can tell you that it does not work for substitutes. The poor girl who was placed in this 5th grade class yesterday looked like she was about to cry/vomit/passout all at the same time. If I didn't feel so bad for her it would have been funny. I came to find out that she graduated from college in December and this is only her second week subbing. I am quite sure that she will never come back to this school. Quiet sure. So as luck would have it when I arrived at work today, just as I had been dreading, Miss X is placed in the very same room to subjected to the very same torture, but unlike the poor sub yesterday I kicked out the worst early on and scared the rest with calling their houses. I then bribed the good kids with a movie in the afternoon. And voila... we have peace. The moral to the story is... pick out the instigator, get him/her somewhere else, scare the kids who are just being naughty because they think they can get away with it and ALWAYS thank your kids who are trying to do the right thing because if you don't they will stop trying. Hope everyone else's week is going better than mine!

Friday, January 15, 2010

An Explosive Morning

There is nothing quite like starting off your Friday with a bomb threat. It really kicks the weekend off right. So today at 10am myself and a very nice first grade class were standing out, in the snow enjoying the lovely 40 degree weather with no coats on. OK, I know that I joke around about my students a lot but these kids really were excellent. We were outside for 45 minutes until we made our way onto busses to warm up and there were out there being little troopers. Some of them were in tee-shirts yet they were playing head-shoulders-knees and toes and simon says. I rarely have nothing funny to say about a class but these guys were great. And despite the craziness seeing classes like this is what keeps me going to work. Them and all the drama! Hope everyone has a fun and SAFE weekend.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A Visit from Spiderman

Today I was in our school's In School Suspension room. Hilarity ensued. I was kinda bored all morning and spent the better part of the AM hours window shopping on the Internet and reading my book. Just as a side-note I am almost done with Inkdeath and will be starting another book soon but am always open to suggestions from readers! But, back to my story, so as the afternoon progressed so did the craziness. Most of the students who came down had been in fights in the lunchroom, which is pretty understandable because our cafeteria is crazy but we had a child who came down who had literally lost his mind in the classroom. He was hand delivered by a School Security Officer and was pulled into the room... all 200 lbs of him. When he entered the room he was trying to get out and was pulling on the door and starting a physical altercation with the 300 lbs man who run the counseling within our ISS room. The student managed to pry open the door about an inch, and proceeded to slam it on his finger. I have never tried so hard not to laugh in my whole life. He put on such a dramatic performance you would have thought that he had chopped his arm off. His finger was fine but good lord, tears, flailing around on the floor, it was like a bad SNL skit. Once he recovered from his massive injury he decided that he would pull his red hat over his face and run around the room. His behavior was reminiscent of a mix between Fat Albert and Spiderman (he had a blue shirt on) either way it was excellent. Who can say I don't love my job? No one. Oh... also, they did offer me that side-job. Wonderful.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Job Interview

Yesterday I had a non-school job interview. Just to preface this- I am not leaving the teaching profession but I have a very serious need to shop so to facilitate my need to shop I was thinking perhaps I should get another job. I was sitting in the interview, being asked by a 20 year old recreation director, who just grew his first facial hair, if I had ever experienced stress. I found this question so amusing that I accidentally laughed in his face. I asked him if a child suggesting to his classmate that he strangle me with my keys counted as stressful. His jaw hit his desk and he asked the golden question "Are you serious?" Yes, indeed I am. Think I got the job? Keep checking for updates, and I will let you know!

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Tuesday, January 5, 2010

My Winter break was...

As a writing assignment I asked a Second Grade class to finish the sentence "My Winter break was..." Most of the kids talked about toys, games, going out with family or parties. One student raised his hand to share his response and it went something like this... "Over Winter break I played PSP and went to a New Year party with my parents. It was so fun, they let me drink champagne." Wow, this is the epitome if wonderful parenting. When I tried to suggest that perhaps this 7 year old drank sparkling grape juice he very proudly proclaimed "No, no, it was the real stuff, that can get you drunk. My Mom was drinking it too." Nothing like AA in Second grade, this is turning into a delightful week. Keep popping in for updates.

Monday, January 4, 2010

First Day Back and An Excellent Old Story

Today was the first day back from vacation and it went really well, odd for a change in routine for the kids. Being that this was a good day I feel like I should tell you about one of my first days at my school...

There is a student at my school who is in first grade and is known only by his first name. If you teach at a school with over 1,000 kids you know that only a truly notorious child will be known in grades k-6 by his first name. We can call him Ed and say that he is a very special child. As a substitute I had my fingers crossed that he would be alright and on this particular day he was behaving himself nicely all morning. I was really impressed so I suggested to his other teacher, they team teach in this class, that we go outside and let the kids play before they went to Art. Taking into account the beautiful fall weather we thought that this was a great idea, ahh how wrong innocent ideas can go. The whole class ventured outside and played for about 15 minutes. When it is time to go inside Eddie is NOT having it. He flatly refused to go inside and told me in no uncertain terms to f-off.

When I persisted with my best classroom management and my strongest teacher voice he decided that this was unpleasant and he wanted to leave, and not just leave the playground, but why not go for broke and go stand on the sidewalk. Needless to say I was a bit freaked out at this point. Imagine, you are a teacher now staring at a child who is not only running away from you but who is now venturing off school property and into the actual non-school world. Clearly now I am prepping for a heart attack and all that I have learned in college is coming up alarmingly short. I have told one of the kids to go get the other teacher and have her call an administrator while I as inconspicuously as possible, try to follow Eddie who is now venturing down the street. Oh yes, down the street in my "very urban" school district at one o'clock in the afternoon. Great. Here comes Miss X down the road in her wedges, hiding like Jane Bond at every door way and trying to outsmart a six year old. Can you say "Four years of college for this?" It wasn't comical at the time but it is pretty amusing now. As it turns out I ended up chasing Eddie into someones backyard at which time a police officer, my administrator, and two support staff members returned the child to school kicking and screaming, literally. This was by no means my last interaction with the student who you too will get to know and love. Hope my story was good for a laugh and that you keep checking in for more updates!

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Hello! This is my first post so I will take a quick second to introduce myself. My name is Miss X (no that's not my real name but for this purpose it is) and I am a substitute teacher in a very urban area. Through my experiences within my district I have been exposed to some very funny, very sad and just outright strange behavior. When I tell some of these stories to family and friends the most common response I get it disbelief so just to make it clear, everything that I write about is true. The names of the people involved will be different but otherwise it did in fact happen. With that taken care of I just want to say thanks for checking out my blog and I hope you get some insight into urban education and a lot of laughs out of my stories.