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!

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.