Learning to Teach

Excused Absense

2011-05-05T16:45:00.002-05:00

So, those new glasses I got back in March actually made my vision feel worse over time and computers were not something I cared to look at. I have been busy subbing, but not able to sit down and look at a computer long enough to say anything about it.
I got new lenses and my vision still feels kind of goofy, so I will slowly and surely be filling in the post-dated gaps...

Day Twenty Nine

2011-03-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Today was the first of my last days with these kids.

All my morning classes were cut short in awkward ways by a super cool concert by the Minnesota Sinfonia. They started out with a performance with the after-school choir. It was super sweet and hilarious to watch the tiniest kindergarten girl standing in the front row with her arms crossed all the way up to her neck and pouting. Then the Sinfonia performed Peter and the Wolf. The kids were SO into it. It gave me little Art Educator Goosebumps all over.

One class had only 10 minutes of work time with me after the performance, so I threw some paper and colored pencils at them and had them make a Peter and the Wolf drawings. They were super funny and the one instance where I didn't cringe at how to handle a kid drawing a gun. One sweet girl with an unmistakably Russian name declared "I'm from Russian too!"
One kid just drew a leprechaun cat.

Day Twenty Eight

2011-03-11T16:33:00.002-06:00

Subject: Art
Grades: K-4

Joke of the week:
What Beatles song did one Octopus sing to the other?
I Want to Hold Your Hand Hand Hand Hand Hand Hand Hand Hand

All week I had been teaching a lesson on monochromatic colors showing a painting of a snowy evening with many shades of blue. I asked the students what color snow was and what other colors it could look like (I was going for blue like the painting) and it wasn't until Friday that someone shouted out "Yellow!" I should have seen that one coming.

At the end of the day I was really wishing for a cupcake and then two birthday kids came around with just what I needed.

Day Twenty Seven: Learning to Soap Box

2011-03-10T19:32:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

I miss out on a lot going to bed at 9:30 to wake up at 5:15. I've been following what's happening in Wisconsin pretty closely as I happen to be moving to Madison this summer to go to a state university to get my second teaching degree. When I went to bed, things were still as they had been for the past three weeks. In the morning, the radio filled me in on what had happened in the night. The 2004 election was perhaps the last time I felt so directly bummed out by politics.

I spent the whole morning bus ride thinking about how laws should restore rights, not take them away and dreaming about making every politician who gets to make choices about education sub in a public school for just one day. A few friends had posted a Daily Show clip showing conservative pundits defending the Wall Street bailouts and then scolding teachers for being greedy. I clicked on it because I wanted to laugh about it all, but the clips bad mouthing teachers just made me angry. The "they only work 9 months a year" argument drives me nuts. Fine then, fund year round school, I'll be there. Nobody is going to want to be a teacher anymore, which makes my odds better when I re-enter the job hunt, but it stinks for kids. At the end of that same episode was this interview that filled me with hope to know that there is a legitimate expert out there who is making all my points for me. I can't embed the video, but seriously, click on that link.

If you want good teachers, pay them well. Obviously I'm not going into teaching for the killer salary and awesome benefits. I don't dream of owning jet skis and getting my teeth professionally whitened, I just want to be able to pay off my loans and get new glasses more than once every five years.

With all this happening, it might seem kind of silly to be giving all my money to Wisconsin for more teacher school, but me not going there isn't going to change anything. Me moving there, getting involved and voting, will.

Day Twenty Six: Emo

2011-03-09T18:31:00.004-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: k-4

The lesson in the book for first graders was about portraits and the kids were supposed to get dressed up and then draw each other. I couldn't find any dress up clothes but I found some mirrors instead and thought self portraits would be a bit more meaningful, not to mention that the results are usually tear inducingly adorable at this age and I will post some when all the classes are done.

Unfortunately, there were quite a bit of the sad kind of tears in the first grade class today. One girl was having a really hard time getting the shape of her face to her liking and after exhausting both sides of her paper and scribbling over the results on one, she was given one last piece of paper and that was to be it. She got frustrated again and I sat with her and showed her on some scratch paper how I would draw the shape of her face so she could work from that. She did a great job but you could still see the erasings from her old attempts and she started to cry a little and said "It looks like an ice cream cone. I don't like it" I asked her what parts she didn't like and then we fixed them and I went off to help other students. A few minutes later, she was in full tears, which was not common for her, so I sat down again and asked "what part don't you like" so we could fix it again, she just said "They're going to laugh at me." I asked who (she sits at a table of super supportive kids) and then she told me that the kids on the bus make fun of her hair. She is one of two African American girls in her class and wears her hair in rows. She's having major self image issues and here I am making her stare at a mirror. I asked her if she had told any other grown ups yet and she said "no". She sees the social worker once a week, but I wrote a note for her to take with her for both the teacher and social worker to see. I sort of went into Mama Bear mode and ignored the fact that it was time to clean up while I wrote the note. At most of the schools where I work the majority of the kids are black and I don't have to deal with this. It's not just about hair, it's about race. I know I posted this before, but I wish I could show her this:

Today's kindergarten class has a crier. Other days I would deal with it and take time away from other kids to make sure she was ok, today I spent some time ignoring it and she stopped.

During free drawing time, I saw a 4th grade girl writing things like "Why did you leave? You hurt my feelings." on the back of her paper and then ripping them up into tiny pieces and throwing them away.

So many things going on in so many lives.

Day Twenty Five: "My Brain Hurts"

2011-03-08T18:08:00.004-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

There is this one really funny little first grade girl with a very fitting character trait for a first name. She has this really quiet way about her but she's always coming up to me telling me what ails her. One day it was "My nose hurts inside" I told her to blow it and she came back two minutes later saying that it still hurt, I told her to blow it again. Today she said "my brain hurts" I told her to have a seat on the rug by herself for a while. Two minutes later she told me "my back is itchy." I told her to try laying down on the rug and then it got too busy to deal with any more ailments.

Today I got to work with the kindergarten autism group again. I found some patterned sponge rollers in a cupboard in the back of the room, and I remembered how much one boy liked to make the brayers go like race cars when we were doing printmaking, so I did another color mixing lesson with rolling the primary colors around on the paper. The race car fan wasn't even there today and we got through the lesson in about 7 minutes, leaving 23 for other things. I brought out the playdoh, which kept them engaged for a while. The highest functioning boy had been in the bathroom for a little too long, so one of the two S.E.As went to go check on him and I scooted over to take her spot next to the lowest functioning student. He's non-verbal and requires some hand-over-hand assistance with the projects. He loves to tap things to make noises. I caught him bringing a wad of playdoh up to his ear and tapping it to see what kind of noise it would make, which was pretty funny to me for some reason. At one point he looked over at me and just stared at my eyes. I stared back and smiled and then he grabbed my glasses right off my face. He wasn't the first to try this trick and certainly won't be the last.

After we exhausted playdoh and viewfinder time, we all sat on the rug and looked at this book on colors and animals. The boy who grabbed my glasses earlier was having a squirrely time sitting in the S.E.A's lap and she kept trying to restrain him as he wiggled away but she eventually let him go and he crawled over to me and plopped right down in my lap and was still.

In Minnesota, special ed licensure is K-12, in Wisconsin where I will be getting my special ed license, you need to choose between elementary and secondary. I want my license to work in Minnesota so that I can come back when I'm done, so I checked both elementary and secondary on my grad school application. Getting the extra licensure adds a good semester or two and I was contemplating just getting a secondary license, but working with these guys keeps reminding me of how much I like to work with elementary kids as well.

Day Twenty Four: Two More Weeks

2011-03-07T20:45:00.005-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

It is strange to think that I am only going to see today's classes one more time. It has been nice being at the same school every day and actually getting to know some really amazing kids. At the same time, I miss working at my favorite special ed school, and not having to grade projects or actually use prep time to prepare. This teacher had asked me to be her maternity leave sub, but I turned her down because I don't want to lose my mind and I want to ride my bike to school. This might be my last year subbing, and I want to still like it when I'm done.

I was too far away to have any sort of conversation about it, but I overheard the same first grade girl who talked about Mr. Handsome "making out" with girls last week call a bunch of things sexy today.

While the 4^th graders were cleaning up, one of the sassier girls came up to me in a real quiet tattle and said “um, they're talking about puberty and stuff”. I chose different words, but I basically said “So what?” the more they talk about it the less weird it becomes and if I make a big deal out of it, it becomes a bigger deal than it already is to them.

Day Twenty Three: Must Be The Colors and The Kids That Keep Me Alive

2011-03-04T20:27:00.001-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Joke of The Week:
What is a special kind of bar for apes?
Monkey Bars.

At one point, I asked the whole group of 3^rd graders if they had any questions (about the project) and the same girl who asked where my scarf was last week asked “Is that sweater cashmere?” So acrylic. They are making landscape paintings of a specific season and time of day of their choosing. I was trying to get them to think of different ways they could use tints in their paintings. For an example, I had been asking “Is snow always totally white? What other colors can it be?” and all other classes gave me answers I was looking for like “blueish in the morning time”, somehow it wasn't until Friday that someone shouted out “Yellow!” I guess I had that one coming.

During the last two classes, I was really wishing for a kid to have a birthday and bring me a cupcake. I have received no less than a dozen cupcakes from kids whose names I can't remember, but I just smile and say “Thanks! How old are you turning? What are you doing for your birthday?” and then I don't feel so guilty taking their cupcakes. During the middle of my last class, one of my little 2^nd grade buddies came through with a knock at the door and a polka dot cupcake just for me.

After school, I got to clean out the weeks worth of paint trays that I was so proud of using over and over again as I didn't think that placemat trick would work over the weekend. A while back I realized that I can just plug my MP3 player right into her speakers, which makes cleaning and grading so much more enjoyable. It may be kind of cheesy, but Cat Power's "Colors and the Kids" is totally my art teacher ballad-jam and listening to it on repeat while washing all those colors down the sink was more perfect than I can say.

It was the chatty busdriver's last day on the route, so I sat up front to talk one last time. A few blocks from the school, one of my kids got on the bus and did a double take “You're my ART TEACHER!” the older gentlemen riding with him asked the driver how much he had to pay for the little guy. The driver asked how old he was and said that “usually you have to pay for 7 year olds, but since his teacher is on the bus, today he's free” The man told his little buddy “alright now we can get another hamburger!” It was really sweet. Whenever I looked back, he was just grinning at me, I turned to say goodbye when I got off the bus, but he was fast asleep.

Day Twenty Two: The Short Con

2011-03-03T18:54:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

We're using tempera paint in the first two classes. Each table gets a half dozen sized muffin tin with primary colors, and since we're making tints this week, white as well. I stress the importance of cleaning paintbrushes between color mixings, as I need to use the same paint for the class that comes in the minute the first one leaves. Of course, these are 8 year olds and though some try, there is always one kid at a table who doesn't get it. I am able to cover the pans with a plastic placemat of sorts and then use them the next day. I discovered that if I simply mix all the paint together in a seemingly contaminated yellow, that dark spot goes away and it turns into a different shade of yellow and they're none the wiser. Even though I feel like a total con artist doing this, it's super satisfying because it saves so much paint and so much time from not having to clean out the paint trays after every class.

I'm not sure why, but I've had more kids lose their teeth in my classroom at this school than any other. I told the first kid to go get a drink of water and put the tooth somewhere safe. After the second one, I learned that they get a crazy tooth holding ring if I send them to the nurse. I've sent three or four her way now.

I have bus duty after school on Thursdays which means I stand outside and remind kids not to run and stuff. One of the best parts about having every single kid in the school is that I can smile and say "Hi" to every single kid and it's not creepy. I still feel bad for not remembering all 650 of their names, but I've learned quite a few.

Day Twenty One: 97%

2011-03-02T20:39:00.005-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

We're doing painting in the first three classes of the day, which makes things kind of crazy when there is not even a minute between classes. After all that I get my lunch and prep hour back to back and then I only have two more classes left. It's sort of the best schedule ever.

Thanks to my own 8 year old nephew, I knew what the heck a kid was talking about when he told me he was painting a giant Beyblade. The girl next to him didn't even know what one was, but I knew he was painting a glorified spinning top that battles other tops and has its own cartoon and reminded him that we were making landscapes.

Thanks to my own dorky upbringing, I knew what the kid drawing a phone booth was up to before he wrote "Dr. Who Ruleeees" above it. I told him I liked it and he spent the next five minutes talking to me about Dr. Who.

When I was cleaning up paint trays after school, there was an announcement that all staff were to go to a "briefing" upstairs. I wasn't sure what that meant but I figured I should be there in case there was some big thing I needed to know about. When I got to the room, there were some snack trays, a bag of Doritos and a cake that said "Congratulations Kindergarten Team!" The kids were at 97% passing on the big state tests. At the beginning of the year they were at 12%. All the other grade levels went up by about 10% as well. I'd say that deserves some cake alright.

Day Twenty: Want Purple

2011-03-01T19:48:00.004-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

For some reason I remember Tuesday's names the best. I really like the simplicity of having the same classes on the same day every week. A lot of schools try to do an alternating cycle or have "A" and "B"days or "Blue Days" or "Day Six" and nobody ever seems to know what day it is, when we could just go along with the day everybody in the world already agreed on.

Apparently they make Ghost Hunters t-shirts for 8 year olds, because one of the squirrelier boys in one of today's 2nd grade classes was wearing one. I asked him about it and he said he and his mom really liked the show. I've seen this kid's attention span at carpet time, I don't know how he makes it through an episode of that show. I held the door open as his class filed out, he was last in line and he turned to me and said "I like you as a teacher."

At the end of the day I got to teach the kindergarten autism class. There are only five boys ranging in ability between the one who wouldn't stop talking about Mega Mind and is physically capable of doing all parts of the projects, but just needs some reminders to follow through to the one who is non-verbal and needs hand over hand assistance. The regular art teacher gave me the go-ahead to create my own lessons with this group, so today we made sun catcher type things with primary colored transparencies that overlapped to create secondary colors. There is one boy who is either laughing or pouting most of the time. He has some verbal skills but limited to a word or two at a time. I think I've heard him say "race car" more than anything else. He held a piece of blue up to his eyes and then a yellow one on top of it and said "GREEN!". He was getting help to glue his pieces down and he said "want purple" so the S.E.A helped him put a blue shape on top of a red shape. This was easily the best part of my day.

Day Nineteen: Handsome

2011-02-28T20:53:00.005-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Today's classes are probably the ones that I know the least. They didn't have school last Monday and the one before that was cut in half by the Martin Luther King Jr assembly. They're behind the other classes, which actually makes Mondays pretty smooth because I don't have to teach any new lessons and I've worked all the kinks out of the old lessons.

I'm not sure why, but it seems like a lot of the classes today were extra rowdy. I had to be crabby and have an arms crossed standing in the front of the room waiting for everyone to be quiet stand-off with the 4th graders when all I wanted to do was talk to that one kid about UHF. Now his friends keep asking me if I've seen other movies like Poltergeist and Enter the Dragon. I did get to hang out with a handful of 4th graders who get to the room before the rest of their class arrives. They showed me their "drawing war" where they try to defeat the other person's character with the next picture. It was awesome. On the top of one page was a bunch of math problems, I asked "What's that up there for?" and was informed "oh that's to bore them to death"

The kindergarteners were actually the mellowest group today, it might have had something to do with the part where they were all wearing their pajamas for some reason.

I like to go around to the tables and ask the kids what their names are in the vain hope that I will someday remember them. At one first grade table, sat a boy with a very common name for caucasian males born around the turn of the 21st century. There are two in the class and when I asked him what his last name was, he said Hansen and the girl across from him said "but you can call him ____ Handsome instead, because he makes out with girls."

I wonder what she thinks "making out" means.

Day Eighteen

2011-02-25T20:02:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

On Friday's, I have breakfast duty.
This means that I stand around and direct the students to their tables in the order that they come. I was told that the principal really wants it to be this way. So, regardless of where their friends are sitting, kids need to sit down next to whoever was in front of them in line. At first, I imagined that she had read the book "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria" and was trying to do something about it. The thing is that these kids come in from the buses and they sit next to who they ride the bus with. It wasn't until today that I noticed that 3/4 of the black kids in the cafeteria sit together because they live in the same neighborhood and ride the same bus in to school.

I need to do laundry very badly.
When these days roll around, I end up wearing more skirts and looking dressier than if I just had a pair of clean pants to wear. So, I wore one of my more stereotypical "teacher outfits" wool skirt, cable knit tights, collared shirt, cardigan, a scarf and the same mary janes that I wear every day. These kids, especially the girls, notice everything. I kept getting compliments, including quite a few on the scarf that I probably wear every other day. As I came down the hallway from the office, a third grade girl I had taught earlier that day smiled and stared as I walked by and after I was past, she said "Hey! Where's your scarf?" I told her I got too hot for it. The thing is, I sort of envy some of their outfits sometimes. I wish I could wear firefighter rainboots, stripey tights and a jumper dress to school too.

Joke of the Week:
What do you call a cow that's a villain?
Udderly Evil

Day Seventeen: Explosions In The Hall

2011-02-24T19:35:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

I get a little bit of down time in the morning before my first classes arrive. It's a nice time to get everything in order and enjoy a quiet room for a little bit. The kids are usually pretty docile when they get to school in the morning, but today there was some kind of extra commotion out in the hall, so I poked my head out the door. The smell hit me first, and then two third grade boys came running up to me. One had what looked like wheat paste all over his hands and they both had specks of white in their hair. They said "It just EXPLODED!" but they weren't quite sure what to do with themselves, so I stated the obvious and told them to go wash up in the bathroom that was two feet away from them. Then I saw the source of all the excitement on the ground. A Toy Story thermal water bottle that had apparently held milk at one point a long time ago but had since been building pressure and turning into something else entirely. The thing is that minus the explosion part, the exact same thing may or may not have happened to me in the first grade. A smell I still remember.

With the first graders, we're doing wet on wet watercolor techniques. There is a document camera in the room, so I get to do demonstrations and they get projected onto a big screen. Their reaction when the paint first explodes in a water puddle is sort of the best thing ever. We learned about abstract paintings and I asked them not to use words or smiley faces or peace signs in them, but I encouraged them to make up their own shapes instead. Some of note were the "Derectangle" and the "Circlefly"

Last hour we were talking about color and a 4th grade boy jumped out of his seat and said "HEY! You're wearing Black and Yellow!" and proceeded to sing the song. I miss knowing about the latest urban kid music. So many kids here just listen to Weird Al, but I sort of love that too.

Day Sixteen: Rough.

2011-02-23T19:00:00.001-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: k-4

I feel like the roughest section of each grade happens on Wednesday. My first day was a Wednesday and the teacher I am filling in for called me after school and mentioned that the worst was over for the week. I'm coming to understand what she meant.

Today I made about five kindergarteners cry.
In kindergarten, half of the lesson is about art and half of the lesson is about following directions. This particular class is not so good at the latter. The assignment was to make a construction paper house with shutters and a door that open. It required following along with me step by step, which did not happen at all. Some kids came right up to me to ask for help, others sat quietly growing upset at their seats while I was too crazy helping other kids to notice. My usual technique to get a crier to stop is to crouch down to their level and ask them to take a BIG deep breath and do it with them and then tell them to take three more and ask what the trouble is. I did this honestly five times with five different kids in the course of 55 minutes. The worst part was that there was another grown up in the room observing a student and she had to stop what she was doing to step in and help kids cut things.

The first graders had a sub and if it weren't for the part where I was losing my voice and my mind, it was almost comical just how completely and entirely they did not follow each direction that I gave.

Day Fifteen: Shints

2011-02-22T15:55:00.007-06:00

Subject: Art
Grades: K-4

Everyone was extra squirrely today on account of the return from the 4 day weekend. For the first class of the day, I taught 3rd graders about shades and tints. At one point after repeating the words so many times, I combined the two and said "shints" instead. I just kept talking like nothing happened, but two girls in the front started whispering and then one of the more obnoxious kids raised his hand and said "um, you just cussed" I explained that actually, I had just combined the two words on accident and that "shints" wasn't even a word let alone a swear word. I told them that chintz was a kind of fabric and one of the more rowdy boys raised his hand and said "yeah! like on lamps and dresses!" whoah.

The second graders were learning about perspective and I explained how in a picture, things that are closer to us seem bigger than things that are far away. I used an airplane as an example "When you're standing right in front of an airplane, it's so big you can't see the whole thing, but when it's up in the sky, it's so small you can crush it between your fingers." Which resulted in a room full of kids pretending to crush things with their fingers and I couldn't keep the words "I'm crushing your head" from falling out of my mouth and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of a room of 30 pint-sized head crushers. I hid my face behind the book I was holding up so they wouldn't see how hard I was laughing.

At the end of that same class, a boy came up to me as it was time to clean up and asked "What does 'conclusion' mean?" I told him it was the end of a story or an answer and he said "Oh, because they told me that it meant 'chunky butt'" then ran off to share the truth.

The last class of the day was the kindergarten Autism group. With the last two weeks starting on Monday, I used that day to solidify what I was going to be doing with this group on Tuesday. But today's "Monday" was Tuesday. The classroom teacher has a book of art lessons for 2-5 year olds, which is totally age appropriate for this group, but the lessons border on the bad kind of craft with no real art objective in place. I spent my entire prep hour trying to decide what to do with them as I didn't have the materials for some of the lessons in the book, and I sort of didn't want to do them anyway. During the last ten minutes of prep, I figured out a way to make some crude monoprints to experiment with color mixing. It worked so well! I'm sure they won't remember how to mix secondary colors next week, but they still learned something today.

Day Fourteen: Thank You Presidents

2011-02-21T17:38:00.001-06:00

I'm pretty sure I got paid to sleep in and clean my apartment today.
I just might stop whining about not getting paid for those snow days.

Day Thirteen: Conference Day

2011-02-18T16:33:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: k-4

Today was conferences. I got paid to be there, but not a single parent stopped by, which is just what I was expecting. I had a great big list of things I was going to get done with this big chunk of time. The biggest was going to be grading. I spent the majority of the day doing this and I'm still not done. Did I mention there are 650 kids I see each week?

There is a really straight forward scale of 1-4 with really specific explanations for each, which makes grading hundreds of adorable kid drawings a bit more objective. And it's nice to have something to back me up when I give a kid a 2 for just drawing really funny stick figures when the assignment was on color and landscapes.

It was going pretty smoothly until I hit the kindergarten classes. Seriously, have you ever sat down and tried to decipher the handwriting of 100 six year olds? It was rough and even through process of elimination, there were some that just didn't have the vowels necessary to constitute a first or last name.

First graders did cool and warm color drawings with oil pastels. The subject matter was pretty wide open, there were lots of underwater pictures and adorable rip offs of Monet's Waterlillies, but this one sort of blew me away.

I was really into this one at first because I saw it as a really cool looking dog, but then I remembered that this kid asked me if he could draw a map to some video game and I said "sure"

Day Twelve: Playing Fair

2011-02-17T17:03:00.001-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Today not one, but two kids came to me with birthday cupcakes during the last class of the day .
I couldn't accept a treat from one student and not the other.
I thought I could find someone after school to share the other one with, but nobody came, so I ate them both.

Day Eleven: Get Excited pt. 2 Electric Boogaloo

2011-02-16T19:42:00.003-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

So, I'm writing a lot of these posts after the fact, and all I can remember about this day anymore, is the part where I was totally exhausted and then I checked the status of my grad school application after school and I found out that I got accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Special Education graduate program.

I'm excited and nervous but try to focus on the excited part. My plan was to apply for both Madison and the University of Minnesota, but the more research I did, the more I realized that Madison was the better fit for me to focus on working with older students in a transition setting. I decided that if I didn't hear back from Madison by the end of the week, I would go ahead and get all my junk together to apply for The U of M as well, but Madison came through with two days to spare. Now I don't have to give The U of M 55 of my dollars when I know I'm going to Madison. I can also maintain my tradition of applying to one school and then going there.

When I got on the bus after school, I was the only person and the driver asked me if I was a teacher. He said "Yeah, teachers, they've got a certain look, and you got it." I'm pretty sure I was wearing a dress with Sorels. I sat up front and we talked the whole 15 minute bus ride. He is an African American man, about my father's age. He told me about how he went to my hometown once in 1980 for a job interview at the post office and the cops pulled him over and asked him what he was doing there then proceeded to follow him to the city limits. I told him I didn't doubt that.

Day Ten: Get Excited

2011-02-15T19:16:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Things are melting!
I know it won't last, but it's still so exciting! At the spot where I wait for my second bus, there is this fist sized piece of metal that has been sticking out of a snowbank, only today did I realize that it is actually the corner of a park bench. When I first started this job, it was pitch black when I left my house and still dark when I got to school, now I get to see the sky doing all sorts of exciting things when the sun shows up.

When the students finish their work early, they can free draw or read from her piles of cool books. There is also a basket full of viewfinder type things. They were put together by some local architecture firm or something because they are just pictures of modern Twin City buildings. They like to pretend they are cameras and play paparazzi, and they also like to show me certain pictures, as if I hadn't seen them before. Every time I pretend like it's as cool as they think it is, except when it's the drop off lane at the airport, then my excitement is entirely genuine and I say "Oooh, I want to go there!"

So today, after school and before the community ed class came in to make cardboard dream catchers, I bought a ticket to visit my family in New York for spring break. I was in a rush to catch a bus, so I was nervous that I clicked some wrong button, but the tickets are real and now I can stop feeling jealous when all the kids start shouting out the cool places they're going every time I mention that I'll be there until spring break.

Day Nine: Valentine

2011-02-14T18:45:00.003-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Today was not only Valentine's Day, but also "Parent Involvement Day" or, at most other schools in the district "African American Parent Involvement Day" for Black History Month, but the parents at this school are so into being involved that they dropped the "African American" part to make it more inclusive. There was a cool presentation on the life of Martin Luther King Jr, that split each of my three morning classes in half. Monday's classes are already behind the other groups as Monday is a common day to not have school, so I decided to forge ahead with speedy condensed lessons instead of coming up with a shorter project. It felt a little crazy, but things got done.

Valentine's day in an elementary school is usually pretty awesome. It's more about candy and construction paper hearts than the crappy drama that seems to start in middle school. My middle school had this fundraiser where you could get a carnation delivered to someone in class, it was always heart wrenching when they'd come around to make deliveries and the popular girls would end up with a great big pile and carry them around with them the entire day. My mom worked in my middle school and I'm pretty sure she got me one once. Thanks, Mom.

Kids kept coming in delivering valentines for the regular art teacher, I started a pile and eventually had to upgrade to a brown paper lunch bag because there were just so many. At the beginning of the day, they were all for her, and it felt a little like middle school again, but when I was in the hallway two girls handed me this totally adorable hand made glitter heart and said it was for me, it was way better than all the perforated cardboard ones with bug eyed kitties sitting in that paper bag. One super goofy girl brought in a Fun Dip with the other teacher's name on it, but told me I could have it instead because it would probably go bad by the time the teacher came back. One boy brought one for both me and the other teacher, which was super sweet.

Last hour was 4th graders, and they came directly from their great big sugar party. They were completely insane. Constant motion, constant talking and eventually one kid curled up in the fetal position under the counter. My ears were still ringing when I got home.

After school, the principal came in and asked me how things were going and to tell me to read more books to the kids.
I also had my nails done for the first time since 2003, which totally impressed my students.

Day eight: Ten Year Olds

2011-02-11T17:50:00.008-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

It was a colder morning than I had anticipated. On the radio, they kept talking about how warm it was going to get but forgot to mention how cold it was right then. I have worked out the kinks of the bus ride so it's now much more bearable.

In the morning I discovered that I can get off at an earlier stop and have the luxury of a transit shelter between buses, which cuts down on that windchill and creates a private zone where I can dance for warmth or sing along with my headphones to block out the awful "exotic world music techno jamz" the building next to me thinks it needs to play at 6:30 am.

The last group of the day was one of the giant 4th grade classes. One kid asked me how old I was and as I usually do, I made them guess. There were both high and low estimates, and when one finally guessed 26 and I confirmed, one girl yelled out "Hey! My mom is 27!" I can not imagine having a ten year old right now.

One boy came back from the bathroom and told me "um, there's a little kid in the bathroom and he pooped his pants and he needs help, maybe you should call an engineer (janitor) to bring some more toilet paper or something" The bathroom was right across the hall, so I poked my head out the door and there were two grown ups already out there who said they were dealing with it. I don't know how it was possible, but that one little kid made the entire hallway smell like an outhouse in August. About half the student body goes through that hallway at the end of the day. It was rough, these are k-4th graders, mature is not what they are.

Joke of The Week:
What kind of pet does the sun have?
A hot dog.

Day Seven: I Am Not Getting Sick.

2011-02-10T19:32:00.007-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

I do this thing when I get sick where I pretend it's not happening and pump myself full of water and tea and vitamins and naps and hope for the best. I may or may not be in the middle of one of those times right now. I'm not sure what happens if I need a sick day, I have a hunch I'd lose my long-term pay, so I'm doing my best to keep from finding out. The one thing I can't deny is the part where I'm losing my voice, which is kind of a big deal.

There is this tower speaker in the back of the room and a headset that I can wear that broadcasts out of it. The regular teacher only uses this for the giant rowdy 4th grade classes, but I found myself using it for about half the day. Today's 4th graders were awesome and actually so quiet I had to turn the radio on to keep things from getting awkward.

"Miss Johnson if you're nasty."

Today's 2nd graders had to leave 15 minutes early for their art museum field trip. I learned this when they arrived five minutes late. I took a deep breath and skipped the whole art history part of the lesson and sped through the demonstration on water color techniques. During work time, I heard a girl say "She made it look so easy, they picked her to teach us because she's really good at art." Which totally made up for a day full of being handed Valentines addressed to the regular art teacher.

Day Six: Having a Field Day

2011-02-09T17:52:00.009-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

One of the best things about subbing is the part where you don't have to get involved with drama or school politics since you're only there for one day. Unfortunately, I've lost that luxury for the next six weeks. When I met with the teacher I'd be filling in for, she told me about how all the 2nd-4th grade classes would be going to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with their classroom teachers during my second week. She explained that there was one teacher with some mobility issues and that she often goes in her place and asked if I'd be willing to do the same. Duh. Field trips are the best, why wouldn't I?

Dumb story short: My prep hour was during the field trip and I needed the teacher I was going on the field trip for to switch prep hours with me (teach an extra one of my classes), so I could get that much needed prep hour and she would not end up with two.

When I proposed the prep-swap, her smile melted to a scowl and after she let me finish, she said "Well, just so you know, when you go on a field trip, you typically don't get a prep, or a lunch, or anything." then a few more passive aggressive comments. Well, I hadn't signed up for that part, I was trying to do her a favor, so I just played cheerful the whole time. In the end I compromised by introducing the lesson, then keeping myself busy in the back of the room feeling good about not feeling like a doormat while she wandered around letting kids make a mess.

When all that was over with, I got to go to the M.I.A with a bunch of 3rd graders, so it was alright. There were a couple of pretty rowdy boys in my group, which was a little stressful, but other than that it was great. I've gotten to spend quite a bit of time helping out in other art museums and I get really excited to see how different places do things. The students had already seen reproductions and talked about a collection of works back in the classroom and now they got to see them for real in the museum.

My heart got a little jumpy when we came to this painting:
When I was about the age of the girl in the black dress, my parents took me and my three older brothers to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. They were having some sort of family day that included a scavenger hunt. I was so into it, a certain middle brother, not so much. My mom and I pretty much took off on our own, she had been a "Picture Person" for my brother's class, so she knew all kinds of extra things about a lot of pieces and filled me in as we went along. This painting was sort of the main focus of the day. I loved it and was totally blown away when I heard the story about all the little animals and how everything meant something. I don't want to sound too mushy, but it sort of changed the way I looked at art for the rest of my life. The prize for finishing the scavenger hunt was a poster of that girl's face. It hung on my wall for years.

Day Five: 650 Names

2011-02-08T20:27:00.002-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

I have now at least met all 650 students that I will be teaching for the next 6 weeks. I often surprise myself with how good I can be with names, but it almost seems futile to even try. Typically, I will remember the names of the naughty kids first, which might not be fair, but it sure is handy.

After I explained for the 23rd time that their regular art teacher would be gone until after spring break and that my name is Ms. Johnson, but I'm not related to the other Ms. Johnson, or your brother's friend who is also a Johnson, I asked if there were any other questions or comments and one girl raised her hand and said "I have a compliment, I like your glasses." I remembered her name.

The last class of the day was the kindergarten Autism class I've been waiting for all week. The lesson book she uses is craft projects for 2-4 year olds. Even though it might be age appropriate for them, the projects are pretty cheesy and I'm excited to come up with some more meaningful ones now that I have met them and know where their abilities lie. There are five sweet and very active boys with two SEAs and one of the Awesome Mom Volunteers is still around during that class too, so I think we could have some fun.

Day Four: "Today, we're teaching poodles how to fly"

2011-02-07T21:28:00.001-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: k-4

First hour, I heard a 3rd grader sing Weird Al's "Eat It"

Fifth hour, I remembered about Wonderground Radio on the internet and just stood back and with a big goofy grin on my face watching a room full of kindergarteners cleaning up and reading books on the floor to The Replacements "I'll Be You"

Sixth hour, I heard some kid asking his friends if they'd seen UHF (they hadn't) and I jumped in on the conversation and got some sort of weird cool points for dropping some quotes. He was really in to Weird Al who is apparently still making music.

After school I got some promising grad school news.

In two minutes, I should be sleeping.

Day Three: Sweet Teeth

2011-02-04T16:55:00.003-06:00

Subject: art
Grade: K-4

Every Friday, I will have breakfast duty in the cafeteria. I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I just sort of stood around waiting for kids to need help opening their milk cartons until the music teacher found me and filled me in. Half of the room is dedicated for kids to eat breakfast with their parents, there were more than a dozen present. She told me to be careful not to yell at kids for anything because the parents complain. Yikes. It's such a different dynamic here.

There had been an announcement on my way to breakfast duty that there were treats in the teacher's lounge, so I made my way there after. There were entire cheesecakes. I just took a muffin and a cookie for later. When I was almost back to my room, a girl told me "there are ANTS all over back there" Someone dropped some sort of food item outside my door and the ants were making quick work of it. At some point yesterday, somebody had dropped a hard candy on the floor in my room and the next hour it was covered in ants. I've heard of other schools having the same problem this year. I ate that cookie right away, just to be safe.

During the morning announcements, they listed off all the birthdays that week and shared the "Joke of the Week" which was pretty stale:
Q:What do you call cheese that's not yours?
A:Nacho Cheese.
I hope they get better.

Today was the first day of "Green Team".
The schedule has some glitch in it where one class each semester is scheduled to come to art twice a week. Instead of doing art twice and getting too far ahead of the other groups, they do something completely different. The two awesome Mom volunteers come to lead this, so I just sort of help them out. The main activity is to go around and collect the recycling bins from all the classrooms. I remember how all that environmental consciousness stuff first made its way into the public schools when I was an elementary student. We were supposed to save the planet. An environmentalist came to talk to our class and told us we'd all be wearing gas masks by the year 2000. At least we're not afraid of acid rain anymore.

During prep, a boy came in with a tray of birthday cupcakes with one for me. I could get used to this. As the first graders were leaving, one funny girl turned to me and said "You're getting a Valentine." When you're single, spending Valentine's Day in an elementary school, is sort of the best thing ever.

At the end of the day, I got to talk about my favorite Star Wars movie - "Ewoks Battle for Endor" with 4th graders.

Day Two

2011-02-03T17:04:00.007-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

Today not one, but two students, completely unprovoked said "Thanks for teaching me today." I've received some gratitude from kids while working in museums and art centers but never in such a direct way in a public school.

There is a bit of diversity at this school (certainly more than at the elementary school I attended), but the majority of the students are white, which is no longer something I'm used to. In another first, during clean up time, a second grader who was himself a minority being the only Latino student in the room, came up to me and said "that black boy over there hit me" I stopped and starred at him for a second, unsure that I had just heard him correctly. I just said "pick a different way to describe him, he has a name."

One girl in that same class was really smiley and sweet. Super bright during group time and really excited about art. When the class was lining up, she came up to me and out of nowhere in the most matter-of-fact way said "My mom died on my 8th Birthday." I told her I was very sorry to hear that and asked how old she was now and if her mom had been sick "Nope, I'm 8, it happened on November 2nd when I came home from school with a friend" The weird thing was that she was smiling through the whole story, almost proud. She had something that made her different, strong. I've met a few kids who still carry around funeral programs from when a parent died years ago. I never really know how to handle that one.

When I was still in college hypothesizing about where I'd end up getting my first real teaching job and my mother would suggest trying the suburbs I would sneer and say something about wanting to help kids with greater needs and she'd always try to remind me that sad stories happen everywhere.

Day One

2011-02-02T18:29:00.010-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: K-4

One day down, 32 to go.

I don't think I'll be blogging about every day, as I'm sure it would get boring, because these kids do their work and clean up after themselves and they're kind to each other and I don't think I heard a swear word all day. They even have these amazing parent volunteers who help me do things. I have my prep hour right next to my lunch break, so I can eat at 10:35 if I feel like it, which I sure did today after eating breakfast before 6 this morning. I get to leave my shoes and my water bottle at school instead of lugging them back and forth to a different school every day. I hope all this doesn't make me too soft. I'll be subbing right up until spring break and then I'm going to take my extra $1.88 an hour and go be somewhere else for a bit.

The only down fall so far is the fact that every class has at least 30 students in it, which is a lot for any room, but especially for a room of this size. The class I'm most excited about is a small group from the kindergarten Autism class; I get to have my dream job for a half an hour a week!

The teacher I'm filling in for is really great and super organized and I've already learned some new tricks just from one day in her room without her even there. I don't normally tell students why their teacher is gone because it's none of my beeswax and none of theirs either. But she'll be gone for a long time and she had already shared with them that she was getting her hip replaced. In the second grade class, one kid asked where the regular teacher was and before I could answer a girl shouted out “She's getting a NEW WAIST!”

There are six weeks worth of lessons marked in the curriculum books for me. I was relieved to find that most of my first lessons would be about color mixing and making color wheels, a subject I could very well teach in my sleep. Not to toot my own horn, but I became somewhat of a color mixing expert after a year of teaching young printmakers at Highpoint. One kid even called me a magician once for explaining how to make maroon and gold for his Gophers monoprint.

The biggest downside is how dumb the bus situation is to get there and back. Now, I'm not complaining, it's just nice to look back sometimes and say "I can't believe I did that every day, I suppose I could do anything." I have to be out my door by 6:20 am, I have a 10 minute lay over between buses, today the bus was 5 minutes late. I think the windchill was somewhere around -18. I had to almost leap in front of the bus before the driver stopped. The bus was completely empty and remained that way for the duration of my 16 minute ride. I sort of get the impression that the bus driver wishes I wasn't there. After school is even dumber, I have a few options, today I went with the shortest one, which included another 5 minute late bus, which meant I was standing on the corner of Franklin and Chicago for 15 minutes. If you don't know my city, I will tell you that I have seen drug deals happen pretty much every time I've waited at this stop in the afternoon. Tomorrow, I will take three buses home instead. I'm really looking forward to bike season.

I'm now taking any recommendations for short (10 minute-ish) podcasts for in between bus rides, preferably ones that make me smarter and/or happier.

Scraps

2011-02-01T18:10:00.001-06:00

I was feeling sort of under the weather and crazy in my brain yesterday, and I can't get sick for this long term thing, so I decided to take a day off to reconfigure things before starting this 6 week placement. By reconfigure, I mean drink hot cocoa in bed and watch Mr. Show, but it was just what I needed.

Before I start the next thing, here are a few scraps from the last few weeks.

~ I sign every sub note with “Please let me know if you have any questions or if you need me to sub for you again” and then I leave my contact info. I've gotten calls about subbing again, but never the “questions” part. The science teacher that the kids didn't really like called me to see if I knew where his manila folder clearly labeled “Answer Keys” had gone. I never saw such a thing and I also never called him back...whoops.

~There was an extra sub filling in for a special ed assistant in the room where I was subbing for the teacher. When I opened the door he was just sitting there, hands folded, starring blankly forward, he told me “they just said to sit in here and wait”. We started swapping subbing stories, it was only his first year, so his weren't as bad as he thought. I said something about how kids are always late at a certain high school and he said “oh, I just give them the Sub Five” and kept using that phrase like it was a real thing not just a term he made up for letting kids get off the hook for being late. Thanks for undermining every effort I've made to keep young adults accountable for themselves, guy. He was actually really good with the students and a pretty good dude.

~ During some downtime in the room I shared with another Special Ed Resource Teacher, one of her 1^st grade boys was wandering around digging in another teacher's cupboards and refused to leave when she asked him to go to the behavior room, so I stepped in to help him find his way. He left the room and walked into another empty classroom where the teacher was having her prep hour. She asked him to leave as well and when she got up from her desk to come talk to us he growled with such venom “Get away from me WHITE WOMAN!” which I guess he meant that as an insult, because he followed it up with a middle finger.

Sorels and Pearls

2011-01-31T09:51:00.002-06:00

Subject: English
Grade: 9-12

This is my third winter subbing, my third winter taking the bus to school climbing over snowbanks in my Sorels and carrying my teacher shoes along with me to change into once I get to school. This was the first time I forgot said teacher shoes at home. When I sub in a high school, I try to dress a bit more on the professional side so that I won't get mistaken for a student. Today I wore a shirt that needs a hanger, a cardigan, my college graduation pearls, and a pair of "teacher pants" I got for student teaching in 2007 which were tucked into my Sorels. I looked like sort of a dufus, but I knew so many students would be too hung up on their own insecurities to care what their sub was wearing.

First hour sounds like a really cool class for a high school "Literature and Film", they watched the middle portion of "A Lesson Before Dying". The rest of the day was the same English 2 class four times in a row. They were starting to read the play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" by August Wilson. The Guthrie is putting it on and they're going to go see it in a few weeks. I had never read the play before and I'm sure it would not be welcome in the high school I attended. The "Goddamn"s and "Christ!"s would have been enough to keep it out of my conservative small town school, but it got much racier than that.

The story is set in a recording studio in Chicago in 1927. The part we read included quite a bit of banter between four male studio blues musicians. In addition to the "shit" and "bullshit" there were plenty of N-words. Students volunteered to read different characters out loud as a group. Many enjoyed the chance to say "bullshit" with such gusto in class. This is one of the few schools that I work in where the majority of students are white. During the first class, nobody even paused before dropping the N-word. I warned the next classes before they volunteered that there were swears and one racial word with a complex usage that they didn't have to say if they didn't feel comfortable. In the third class, a preppy white girl played the first character to say it. She chose to say "boy" instead and everyone else followed her lead. This class was the first to get to the part where the character she read tries to get "a reefer" from his band mate by saying they went back so far "they sucked on the same titty". She just sort of slurred over that part and those who were following along reacted as you'd expect.

Apparently, the teacher I was subbing for was a 70 year old woman.

P-I-Z-Z-A

2011-01-28T08:58:00.000-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade: 12+

It was sort of bitter sweet knowing that this would be my last day working in my favorite building until after my upcoming 6.5 week placement. I really do love working in this school and I hope to find a job in one just like it when I get that pesky special ed license.

I got to see a lot of my favorite students from other programs in the hallway, but today was my first day in a new room. It was the same program as last Friday, with students with Developmental Cognitive Disorders who were lower functioning. There was one young man who was non-verbal with no voluntary motion, from my interactions with him, he seemed to be completely unresponsive. Last week, I remember hearing another teacher say that he got that way from choking on a hot dog at a birthday party when he was five. Rough.

Today I got to go to the Downtown Sky Way Pizza Party that I missed out on last week because of the cold. It was a regular length bus with some empty space in the middle to accommodate a few wheelchairs, but I don't know why the regular seats where a good eight inches shorter than normal. I kept falling out of the seat I was sharing with a very skinny double jointed young lady who kept calling me mom and putting her arm around me.

At the end of the day we got to watch "The Red Balloon"

I could do this every day.

Taking a Break

2011-01-27T20:42:00.001-06:00

Subject: Special Ed Resource Teacher (SERT)
Grade: 4/5

Special Ed Resource Teachers typically don't have their own classroom, they just pull students from their mainstream classes to work on subjects they need extra help with.

The 4th graders were doing state testing today, so I had a lot of downtime in a room shared with several other SERTs. On one side of the room was a super crabby woman and on the other was one of the most positive teachers I've ever heard. It was sort of uncomfortable being in the space between the two, reading the internet news and waiting for something to do.

At one point I was to go" help out" in a testing room. It was a computer lab full of 4th graders wearing silent headphones and swinging their legs wildly in chairs too big while answering multiple choice questions on the screen. I just walked around and smiled real big at my kids when they looked stuck. The teacher promised them a pizza party if everyone improved by at least 2 points. This testing thing is so stressful and even though their numbers might not be up to state standards, I've never seen a prouder student than the girl who came over beaming "I got FOURTEEN more points!"

The last part of the day was spent in some weird little room off from the media center, I think it was originally intended for storage. I only had about five students, so it was alright. We were to answer questions about a chapter they read the day before. There were four sassy girls and one totally quiet boy.

At one point a girl broke her pencil and another threw a new one at her, this resulted in the old pencil being thrown back at her and the original thrower then took the fist full that was in front of her and chucked them in the other girl's direction. I told her to "take a break" which meant sitting over in the corner. She shouted "Well, she's gotta take one too." I told her she was right and asked the other girl to take a break in the other corner. I asked the original girl again and she said "no" and didn't budge. I told her I would have to write her up if she didn't change her mind, she then proceeded to push all the objects in front of her on to the floor and declare one more time that she wasn't going. I went to call the office, but there was no phone in this stupid room. I poked my head out into the hallway and flagged down a teacher, the girl walked out the door, I asked her where she was going and she said "home". The teacher knew her and stopped to talk to her and told her that she couldn't go anywhere without that referral in hand, so she came back and said some really heated and confused things about how this was unfair and something about taking it to court or something and then she took the teacher's clipboard full of blank referrals and started writing one up for the other girl who had gone to her time out without a fight. I tried to remind her that she had refused to take a break and that was why she was getting a referral. She refused to leave unless the other girl got an equal punishment. I checked out in the hallway again and found the middle school behavior person and she called for the elementary behavior person and in the end it took 3 behavior specialists and an administrator to get her out of there.

After that we played addition/subtraction bingo and everyone was happy.

8 years ago I was 18

2011-01-26T19:55:00.000-06:00

From the time I got home around 4:30 yesterday until 10:30 at night I waited around for a job to happen. I used to go to sleep without a job all the time and just get up at 5 to look for one, but I've learned new tricks and I haven't had to do that yet this year. I was tired and ready to call it a night, I had the computer right by my bed, but then around 10:40 it dinged and I got a job for the next day and fell asleep feeling much less crabby. Although I sometimes feel overwhelmed by this upcoming long term job, I will not miss these nights of uncertainty.

The teacher left some piles of worksheets and instructions scrawled on the board. Every class but one was to do the worksheets, but the schedule wasn't very clear and I ended up giving the worksheet to every class instead. Whoops. First hour had 36 students in it, 4 were on time and the rest of them didn't really seem to care.

5^th hour had some sassy pants in it. One boy just helped himself to a sharpie out of the teacher's desk because his pen wasn't working well enough to deface a glossy magazine picture of Drake. I told him to put it back and stay out of there. Some girls brought Dairy Queen into the room with them and it was right after lunch, so I let it happen. I asked them to please pick the ketchup packets off the floor before they got stepped on, but it was already too late. The guilty party was a gentleman who I already had to talk to about the chunks of bread he left on my chair for me to sit on. He cleaned up the bread no problem but when there was still some ketchup left after two rounds of paper towels and I asked him to do a third round, he refused. I threatened a call to the office and he said “If I'm getting written up, I'm leaving” and he did, so I did. After the class had left, I noticed the old junior high “TAL” written diagonally on the desk of the boy who stole the sharpie. Good grief.

Last hour was super mellow and I was thankful. They expressed their frustration with the teacher, which I am always careful not to fuel. However, kids with awesome teachers tend to act a lot better when they're not around.

I think I'm always subconsciously looking for students that remind me of me and my friends at their age and today I totally met one. She and her friends sang "I'm Sorry Ms. Johnson" to me and I laughed when I saw the KMFDM patch on her backpack. I waited until the end of class to tell her how I saw them on my 18^th birthday. She stared at me for a moment then said “You are a cool sub.” and excitedly asked me how old I was now. She also told me that she had learned more today than when the classroom teacher is present. I listened to some surprisingly good music for a kid in a town of 5,600 but I also listened to some crap. I'm still not entirely sure why I saw KMFDM on my 18^th birthday, I wasn't super into them and it makes me laugh like a crazy person every time I remember that's how I spent one of those landmark birthdays. I used to listen to a much broader range of music back then and thinking about it made me feel like such an old fuddy duddy for spending another sleepy morning bus ride with Sparklehorse in my headphones. I rode the bus home with at least five of that day's students on one of those double long buses with the super cushy padded seats and all I wanted to hear was this song like I was 18 again.

That's what she said

2011-01-25T20:10:00.003-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD)
Grade: 9-12

There weren't really any lesson plans, but there was a piece of paper that had the objectives for the day written on it, so I just made copies of those worksheets and hoped for the best.

First they did a little grammar pre-test where they had to choose the right word between two options. All my Grammar Friends out there will be happy to know that we got to have a good discussion about proper apostrophe use.

After that they started on a new reading packet. These are students who need help with reading, so unpacked my old Radio Voice and read the 30 minute passage from N. Scott Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain" while they followed along or fell asleep. At least they were quiet, but after four classes, my voice was over it.

Last hour was a very small "Study Skills" class, but it was the first day of a new semester, so nobody really had any work to do. One kid walked in with a white v-neck t shirt that had the word "fuck" written across the front in black sharpie. I talked to him about it and he said he had been wearing it all day and other teachers had talked to him about it but nobody really did anything about it. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything being in this small class for the last hour of the day, and ignoring it for the most part would put a damper on him getting anymore attention for it. He went on to make paper airplanes out of any paper he could find and then wrapped tape around his kneecap where there was a hole in his pants, he also kept turning the tv on to America's Funniest Home Videos and making "That's what she said" jokes. He was sort of out of control, but there wasn't anything that he was really supposed to be doing. I had nothing to hold him accountable for. I'm sure on a different day I might have been more proactive and called behavior support to remove him, but the day was almost done and everyone else in the room seemed pretty used to it.

After school, I walked through a mob of students outside the front door and he saw me and shouted "There's the sub I was giving a hard time to today" and patted me on the back, I just walked on shaking my head.

Different Days Ahead

2011-01-24T19:04:00.002-06:00

There was no school for students today, but it was a record keeping day for teachers. I'm sure Friday's optional attendance put a wrench in so many grading plans.

I was offered a 6.5 week assignment in a K-4 art room in a school where I've never worked, and I accepted it. Today I went in to meet with the teacher I'd be subbing for so I could figure out where everything was. It wasn't an ideal way to spend a day off, but I let myself stay up late being a young person the night before, so I was ok with it.

The only other time I did a long term assignment was my first year, there were no lesson plans or class lists, nothing. I didn't meet the principal until after I'd been working in her building for more than a week. I had to interview with the principal for this job. There are more than 600 students here and I will be teaching almost all of them. The principal told me that only 17% of their students are on free or reduced lunch and they only have 6 English Language Learners and a very active group of parent volunteers. At my last long term assignment, 85% of the students were on free or reduced lunch and they had entire buses dedicated to getting kids to and from homeless shelters. It's sort of what I've become used to. After one particularly rough day, the behavior guy told me that if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere. And I did.

Even though I grew up in an environment more similar to the one where I'll soon be subbing, I'm not used to teaching in that setting. I'm not sure I'll know what to do with myself, but I'll figure it out.

Optional Day

2011-01-21T13:00:00.001-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade: 12+

When I left my apartment, the air was -15 degrees. I wore 3 pairs of pants, two shirts, two sweaters, a hat with flaps, a scarf and a dickie, two pairs of mittens and socks. I had to wait ten minutes between buses, but I was totally fine. I had intended to take this day off to hang out with my visiting Godmother, but when my favorite school emailed me, I couldn't turn them down.

I checked on the district's website, I checked my school email account, I had the radio on all morning, there was no word about school closings or delays because of the extreme cold going on. When I got to school I was informed that the day was "optional" for students. I've never heard of this happening, but they lose funding if they cancel school too much, so it was just sort of an excused absence for kids. Apparently a robot called all the parents to tell them. It was the last day of the semester, so I'm sure there were some awfully relieved kids out there. But that doesn't matter so much at this school. It did however mean that all community outings were canceled, which is my favorite part about subbing here.

I was just an extra sub for the building and I came in handy in a room with lower functioning DCD (Developmental Cognitive Disorders) students where there were normally three Special Ed Assistants, but today there were none. They don't hire subs for S.E.As here which is completely ridiculous. In a special ed room, the S.E.As are just as important as the teacher and without them some students can not navigate through the day. There was one other extra staff person in the building, so we made it work.

Only one student stayed home, which made it a little easier to manage with one less set of hands in the room. There were four students in all, that might not sound like much but we kept busy with a young woman who throws things and another that screams, one gentleman who drools a lot and another raspberry-er. We sort of tag teamed between them. The screamer was the only one who was verbal in the whole bunch, and when you got her calm enough to speak at a regular volume, she sounded a lot like a Muppet. I liked her. There was a nice keyboard in the room that one young man with limited mobility chose for his free time. He needed some hand over hand to make it go, but he loved to hear those beats. For some reason it had "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" on it, which I heard more times than I can say. I had one of those moments when I remembered how much I love my job when "96 Tears" came on the oldies station and I got to dance with the tiniest young lady with limited vision who spent the rest of the day trying to throw anything she could see.

Teach us something

2011-01-20T12:23:00.000-06:00

Subject: Social Studies/MN History
Grade: 6

I was back for the same teacher as this day.
A lot of students seemed to remember me from that day all the way back in September. When I reached into the pocket of this short sleeved sweater that I don't wear very often because short sleeves on a sweater are pretty dumb, I found a little "good behavior ticket" from the very teacher I was subbing for. I do this thing where I take a photo booth picture with and without me in it at every school that I can. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I looked back to my last day here and I definitely wore the same outfit, which I'm sure helped to jog their memory a little bit.

They were to take a vocabulary test and then they were supposed to look up and define the next unit's vocab words. One funny little guy who made origami the whole time I was talking walked up to me during independent work time and said "um, aren't you supposed to like, teach us something?" I told him that today he was learning how to teach himself and that was just as important, but I felt a little hypocritical as that's how I felt so many times during my own education.

Then we got to have a cool discussion to get them warmed up for the next unit. She has a microphone now, so I went around during the discussion and let the kids take the mic and share their contribution. It felt a little like a talk show, which got the kids more eager to share.
The questions were:
"What things do individuals own, what things belong to everyone?"
"Have you ever lost, sold or traded something that was important to you?"
"Have you ever met someone who doesn't speak your language, what was that like?"
"What do you know about treaties between the US and the Dakota and Ojibwe people?"

To break the ice, I shared the story of the time my brother was going to sell the Nintendo to buy a Sega Genesis and after he sold all our good games, he figured out a different way to pay for the Genesis so now he didn't have any good games for the Nintendo anymore.

They were all totally impressed that I had a Nintendo "You mean, like the grey box one? Yeah I saw one of those once" but none of them had a clue what a Genesis was.

Baked Potato Day

2011-01-19T16:33:00.005-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade: 9-12

The teacher was actually here today, just cloistered in her office getting caught up on all the paperwork special ed teachers have to do. She also team teaches for most of the day, so instructionally, it was a pretty mellow day.

I went out to the buses in the morning to meet a student in a wheelchair and assist her as she needed through the stupid snowbanks. Growing up, my two closest neighbor buddies were brothers with Spina Bifida, I remember how much winter sucked for them and their chairs. As this girl told me almost immediately after "hello", she has Spina Bifida as well. I told her of my old friends and she later asked me to help her with a Powerpoint on the subject since she decided that I was an expert. It's really interesting working with older special ed students as they become more self actualized.

During prep, the students were in band, I had to go and find one of them because she was supposed to be somewhere else. When I got there, I found about 7 students on the stage, all playing different instruments. When I got back, I told the teacher how great that is that they have a band just for her students. She told me it was actually a mainstreamed class, but there was only one regular ed student in there. So that student gets free private lessons and her kids get free music therapy. I guess there are some advantages to having such a tiny student population.

Today was an "advisory day" I don't know what it means for boys, but it means Girls in Action for the ladies. It's such a cool program it makes my heart go all fuzzy. They talked about being leaders and I learned that Coretta Scott King has been a vegan for 10 years.

At lunchtime, they sell baked potatoes that they prepped in the morning to the staff to raise funds for their bowling team. I missed a bowling field trip by one day.

The students were working on "Food Journals" after lunch and one girl claimed she hadn't eaten a thing all day, she also got really crabby at me anytime I talked in her general direction, so I just stopped. Somehow the conversation turned a little more casual and one boy told us about how his 14 year old brother got his 14 year old girlfriend pregnant.

In the afternoon, the teacher I was subbing for had her door shut all the way for the first time all day, I later found out that she spent a large portion of her paperwork catch up day dealing with the suspension of a student who had inappropriately touched the girl who was so crabby at me. Apparently the mother was a DCD student herself as well as his teenage sister and her young child as well. Rough.

Real Time

2011-01-18T21:06:00.005-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD)
Grade: 6-8

Hey, these things happened today and I'm blogging about them today!
2011: Be A Better Blogger

I did a long term sub gig at this school my first year, so it's always fun to see some of these kids 2 years older and every once in a while a bit wiser.

The classes were small groups that come for math or reading from their mainstream classes. For one hour, I went to help in a mainstream math class. One boy was being kind of a stinker and after he threw a pencil across the room to try to make a basket in the garbage can and missed I told him in my very stern teacher voice "you walk over there and pick that up and throw it away." He told me I was better than their regular teacher because I have "attitude" at this school, I'll take that as a compliment.

One hour, the kids kept singing this awful new Soulja Boy song. I follow what my kids listen to and I even like some of it. But Souja Boy drives me nuts. Most of his songs are about having the best material posessions and so many of my students can't afford the most basic necessities.

The last hour was "Social Skills" with two boys who wanted to fight each other the whole time, so I let one of them go see his social worker while I taught the other one how to play dominoes with the one kid who was on task the whole time.

Dropping names in 2010

2011-01-17T21:25:00.004-06:00

I have a new banner!
Thanks to the lovely and talented Melissa Mobley Copon for making my blog dreams come true.

Since I've been subbing twice as much this year, my list of names is twice as long, so here's a holiday bonus edition of students that I taught in 2010:

Meridian

Justice
Liberty (same class as Justice)
Velicity
Aaron Carter (born questionably close to the singer's rise to fame)
Maira (which isn't that weird, except it's how I tend to misspell my own name when typing too fast)
J'vonce (Jay Vonce)

R'reeah (Aria)

Starshay
D-rra (Dee-Are-A)
Devandra (I told him about Mr. Banhart and he was really excited to hear that he had dated Natalie Portman)

Major

Natisha
Elvis

Boomer

Unique

Macarena
Muhamad Ali
Cleevon (who acknowledged that his name was "ghetto" and didn't come from anywhere)
Dolphin
Icy White
Star
Mirage
Sparkle
Queen Nefertiti
Lady

Kyuntay (pronounced like a nice Chianti)

also, there were two brothers at one school whose hyphenated last name is the same as the intersection where I live.

If you're new around here, see also 2008/2009's list and 2009/2010

Catch Up

2011-01-17T20:46:00.000-06:00

So, even though it looks like I posted every day on time for the last month, I actually wrote most of them on Martin Luther King Jr Day and post dated them for my own darn reference.
I finished up my first big graduate school application, so now I can get back to writing on here instead of trying to explain to strangers why I am just supposed to be a special ed teacher.

Here are a few left overs from my drafts folder:

~ One day I was working in a high school special ed learning disability study hall kind of situation and I was helping a student with a geography worksheet. It had a list of things you might need to pack for a vacation and you had to decide what you would need for certain geographical climates. Logical things like, boots for the North Pole or an umbrella for London. One of the items was sunscreen and this student was having a really hard time figuring out where he would need such a thing. His skin was as dark as mine is pale. He'd never even touched the stuff in his life, I don't think he'd need to pack it for a vacation.

~ In a middle school classroom a kid said something was "retarded" I told him to pick a different word, he thought for a second and said "fine then, lethargic." I reminded him what lethargic meant and he continued to use it as an insult for the rest of the hour

~There was this one 6th grader who told me he really wanted to see "Waiting for Superman" and also "Jackass 3"

~At the post high school special ed school that I love so much, every student is over 18. This means that it is perfectly legal for them to smoke. It was weird to see one student sitting in the corner trying to fix a broken cigarette. The classroom teacher was in the room then and asked him over and said "what is that?" (her concern was to make sure it was tobacco) he told her "It's just a cigarette" and that was that.

~Some memorable google searches: "new emo love", "hot emo guy anime charater" and the one kid who was really into looking up swords.

Cool like that

2011-01-14T19:56:00.004-06:00

I forgot to notice my 100th blog post, but apparently, this is my 150th.

There was a posting on the subbing website for a long term art sub at an elementary school. I had inquired about it and it sounded like a sure thing, but there was still one other candidate, so they wanted me to come in for an interview. The duty day there starts at 7 am and it was just down the road from my favorite special ed school where I didn't have to be until 8 am. So I got up at 5:30 and got myself there and then I subbed a full day at my favorite place.

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade: 12+

Fridays at this school are the best because that always means a field trip. I was really excited when I walked into the room to see "Ikea field trip" on the chalkboard with my name under it. In the morning it was art class and the teacher knew that was my specialty and also didn't know she was going to be interviewing 14 people for a job I almost applied for, so she just let me make something up. She said they had been drawing a lot and trying to get into portraiture. I had them take photo booth pictures on the computer which we then printed off and they used them for reference to draw self portraits. I am kicking myself for not taking photos of some of these awesome results.

When I got on the bus, I was excitedly greeted by one of my favorite students in this program - The Justin Bieber/Canada fan that got to spend the Barnes and Noble field trip with. She shouted out "You were in my dream, Maria! Come sit by me!" I haven't seen her since well before break so it was weird to be in her subconscious. She told me that Justin Bieber was at I.H.O.P and I came in with my Canadian friend and he smelled her and knew that she was Canadian, so they started speaking French while the Bieber fan was so scared to meet him that she hid under a blanket but the Canadians were really nice and tried to talk her out from under it. Then she asked me about Tim Hortons.

When it was time to split into groups at Ikea, she and her friend physically grabbed on to me and away we went. There is another grown up S.E.A that tagged along with us also and the girls were super embarrassed and kept trying to ditch her. As if having a Canadian friend didn't make me cool enough, we got to visit my good friend who works in the kid zone there and under her breath, I heard one of the girls say "Oooh, she has PINK hair!"

When it was time to go, one student was missing. The thing about this school is that they are legal adults and in this program, quite capable ones at that. If they know when we're leaving and they're not there, they can take a city bus home. We almost left one boy there, but he had another kid's cellphone and there was going to be drama if that happened. So one of the S.E.As ran in to go find him but then the student came back in the mean time so we had to wait for the S.E.A to come back and it all worked out just fine and we still made it back to school with plenty of time for them to play games on the computer until the end of the day.

When I got home I decided to "lay down for a little bit" around 5:30 and I didn't wake up until 3 am. Uff da

The C Word

2011-01-13T19:20:00.001-06:00

Subject: English
Grade: 8

Did you guys have History Day? I wish my school had History Day. It's sort of like a science fair, only instead of doing a science project, you become an expert on some event/person in history. I still say that I learned more about history from reading American Girl Doll books and sitting at the dinner table with my father than my bonehead high school history teacher ever taught me, so I get excited when kids are learning about this stuff so thoroughly at their age.

Each class met down in the media center to do research or catch up on late work. For the most part, they were doing topics related to the Civil War. Although one boy told me he was doing his on Hitler and I chose to believe him and he was right. The media specialist knew that 5th hour's group was really tough, so we decided to split up the girls and the boys. I got the smaller boy group in the back computer lab. That's where this boy kept talking about how "Hitler was my boy" I told him that Hitler would have killed him because he didn't look like him. He said "Nah, we'd be tight." While actually doing his work, he announced in a very sincere tone "Aw, that's so sad, Hitler's mama died from titty cancer."

At some point, some boy called something gay and we had to have that talk where I tell them that every time they use that word as an insult it's putting down millions of people and that's not ok. Since it was a smaller group of off task boys, we got to take the conversation a little further. I reminded them that "gay" itself isn't a bad word when used respectfully. After that statement a kid asked "Well, what about 'faggot' then." Oh boy. I made the "F-word" to "N-word" analogy, which usually makes something click. I explained how they are both words with ugly histories that I don't feel comfortable using, but people who used to be called that word have chosen to reclaim them. I don't expect these little chats to change any minds, but at least it makes them think about it for one minute one time. He then asked me, "so where did the C-word come from?" I paused and said "you mean the female anatomy?" He looked at me and said "Nah, you twisted, Ms. Johnson, I meant c-r-a-c-k-e-r."

And Now I'm Trapped in This Building

2011-01-12T18:50:00.001-06:00

Subject: Dance/Theatre
Grade: 9-12

I can now say that I have subbed at every high school in the Minneapolis district.
This school has a reputation for being kind of rough, while that hadn't kept me away, it was just the fact that it was so rare that a posting for this school came into the system. There just aren't that many teachers here.

Granted, I was subbing in kind of a weird subject that would normally have small class sizes. There was one hour with only one student on the roster. It was for International Baccalaureate Theatre. He should have been doing some pretty advanced stuff. But how advanced can you get with theatre by yourself? Instead he worked on wheeling and dealing for some big party he's going to throw with his business partner. They were talking about each fronting $500 for a deposit on some venue. When I was his age, I don't think I ever had that many dollars at the same time.

Fourth hour was supposed to have three students in it, none of them showed up, so I got an extra hour of prep to Google chat with my sister-in-law.

I had everything figured out for what bus to take to get home and I knew I had to book it to get there on time. I asked the woman in the office what door would get me out to the street I needed to be on. It was locked, they were all locked. I couldn't get out of the school and I knew I was missing the bus and I tried really hard to not get worked up about it. But it has been a while since I've felt so trapped in a building. I had forgotten my phone at home, so there was no way I could figure out how to catch another bus at another stop, so I just sat there in the cold for what was about 25 minutes.

Then I went to mail my grad school things off to Madison at the downtown post office. Have you ever been to the post office in downtown Minneapolis? It is so awe inspiring that you will forget how crabby you are about just about anything.

Net(doesn't)work

2011-01-11T18:34:00.000-06:00

Subject: Health
Grade: 11/12

Most of these classes had more than 3o students. There were two laptop carts full of shiny MacBooks in the room. The only problem was that we were in the basement and a wireless router wasn't. It worked fine with the two classes that only had 25 students, but once we got up to 36 kids trying to log on to the network at the same time, it was sort of worthless.

It was really frustrating to know that we had more then $40,000 worth of computers in this one room and using them all at the same time was impossible. Students were supposed to be researching their final Power Point presentations on a specific topic related to health. They had all turned in little slips of paper with their topic proposals. Each class had somebody doing diabetes, cancer, drug use and concussions. One smart alec was going to get up in front of the class and give a 20 minute presentation on Erectile Dysfunction. At one point a really quiet boy came up to see if anybody else had chosen his topic yet, It was the Black Plague. Without even looking, I told him he was good to go.

During 5th hour, this couple came in 20 minutes late and reeking of hippie perfume. I have never seen two students more noticeably high in all my teaching days. I wasn't sure what to do about it, but the principal called down for one of them anyway and away he went stoned out of his mind. The rule was that if you were off task, I could take the computer away. They were having way too much fun with the crazy effects on Photo Booth, so I took it away and he tried to start a chant of the regular teacher's name in protest. It didn't last long.

hot sub.

2011-01-10T18:21:00.002-06:00

Subject: Chemistry
Grades: 11/12

Maybe it's more of an "advanced science at the end of a semester" thing than a "rural vs. urban" thing because for the most part, these classes got down to business and did their work almost like when I subbed in my hometown.

Their work was to do a seemingly random series of problems out of the chemistry book. There were still a handful in each class who didn't get around to working on it. One hour there was a group of rowdy boys in the back of the room that kept needing redirection. There were also a few computers in the back that I kept having to kick kids off of for playing something called "Dolphin Olympics" instead of doing their work or checking their grades.

At one point, I when I went back there, I was met with an eruption of laughter. Someone had written something other than a username in the username slot on a computer waiting to be logged into. All fingers were being pointed at the kid who had still done nothing all hour. It said
"the sub is hot"
I had been feeling really sick all morning, so I just walked away from the whole situation like it never happened.

At the end of the day a teacher from across the hall came over to say hello and tell me about how he was a sub back in the '70s and they threatened to walk out unless they changed their title from "Substitute" teachers to "Reserve" teachers because "Substitute" had connotations of being "sub-standard and ultimately sub-human, so don't let anyone call you a sub."
Nobody outside of the schools knows what I'm talking about if I say I'm a "Reserve Teacher".

Long Day

2011-01-07T19:59:00.000-06:00

Subject: Teacher On Special Assignment (TOSA)
Grades: 6-8

There was lots of boring drama in the morning. I had agreed to sub for the same art teacher as I did the week before break, but he messed things up and another sub got the job and I was jobless in the morning. I ended up finding one, and it just so happened to be at the same school. He wanted the other sub to switch with me but we all just stayed put.

This was another teacher who only teaches half the day and I was nervous that there wouldn't be work for me, but it turned out just fine in the end. In the morning I taught AVID which is a really great program for students to get ready to graduate and go to college and stuff like that.

Their assignment was to catch up on old work and write a blog entry about 5 current events. They have a laptop cart, so there were kids in every corner of the room all over the internet. In a lab, I can glance across the row and see that everyone is on task, that is nearly impossible in this setting. There was a list of links to “Tween”-centric news sites, including my favorite thing - Flocabulary.

Lots of kids wrote about all those animals dieing or just quoted Flocabulary and wrote "nerds worth 50 billion". As I was checking over students work, one boy had listed
"bomb in nasty toy" as a current event. His friend said "oh, I just wrote 'bomb in girl's personal belongings" They were of course, talking about this:

During the last class of 8th graders this one tiny guy was just out of control, he ran around the room, hid in a cupboard and turned the emergency eye wash station on all over the back of the classroom. I tried to get a hold of behavior support for each offense, but there was no answer. When I announced that it was time to log out and put the laptops away, he yelled “But I just started!”

After that, I helped set up for the Spelling Bee. It was pretty exciting at first, but heart breaking once it began. At least two thirds of the group of 30 got out in the first round, including the only two girls with parents in the audience. There were tears, it was devastating to watch. That girl is never going to forget how to spell “adobe” again (she had it until she added a 'y' at the end). I got really stressed out for these kids just watching, but the girl who won was really awesome and now she gets to go on to the district-wide bee.

After that, I checked-in in the office and they had me go help out in a kindergarten room. There was a sub in there as well, and all the kids were doing choice time. The teacher asked me to help this one little girl write a letter to her dad. It was a handful of lined loose leaf papers stapled together. The front page said “Dad, you are my best dad in the whole world.” and then there was a page with a big blob and it said “I love you” she was working hard on the 3^rd page which was a letter that started:
“Dear Dad, I miss you. I love you”
Then I helped her write
“I want to see you soon” then there was another “I love you” and I showed her how to sign a letter. When I told her to write a comma, she said “oooh! I got a comma up there!” and she pointed at a giant curly cue. I asked her where her dad was and she said “jail".

I told her “I'm sure this will make him very happy.” I suggested that she draw a picture in the big empty space on the bottom. First she drew a big sad face, then proceeded to draw her big pony tail coming out of the top of her head and her dress and boots with surprising detail. Then she decided to draw her dad. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but she grabbed a jumpsuit orange marker and scribbled a happy dad standing next to her. If that doesn't break a guys heart, I don't know what will.

I am so thankful this was a Friday.

The Quiet Game

2011-01-06T18:38:00.008-06:00

Subject: Language Arts
Grade: 6

This day was great.
The classes were no bigger than 13 students and there was plenty of meaningful work for them to be doing. They were starting a new unit on the themes of "Responsibility, Choices and Justice" first they were supposed to write down their own definitions of those words and then look them up in the dictionary.

Perhaps you still remember what 6th graders use dictionaries for. One girl shouted out
"THERE'S A PICTURE OF A BOOBY IN THIS DICTIONARY!!"
It was, of course, the sea bird, but everybody still giggled uncontrollably. They were all whispering around a page number and it turned out to be "condom". I caught one boy pointing to the header on a page that said "Do-It-Yourself" I tried to hurry them through the dictionary portion of the lesson.

The best part of the day was when the loudest kid in the class declared "Let's play the Quiet Game!" In 3 years of teaching, I have never had such a luxury. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in front of my students before. It was great.

I always get a little excited about 6th grade Language Arts assignments because that's the grade where you get to learn all about Minnesota. While our lessons weren't directly related, there was the best ever MN mural out in the hallway. I didn't get a shot of the whole thing because there were too many full names of students, but here are a few of my favorite details that are so cute I want to cry:

(This one just might be one of my new favorite kid drawings of all time. )

It's the Magic Number

2011-01-05T18:28:00.000-06:00

Subject: Special Ed
Grades: 1/2 + 7/8

When I accepted this job, it was listed as a full day assignment. When I got there, the lesson plans ended at 11:30. I checked down in the office right away. The teacher is only there for half of the day but it was some how entered as a full day. I knew that I would be getting paid for the whole day and they would just have to figure it out. There was someone coming in for the second half of the day for another teacher and they just put me in that slot instead. I felt bad that another sub lost their half day, but there was enough time for them to find another job and the teacher I was subbing for wouldn't have to lose out on a second personal day just to pay me to twiddle my thumbs.

In the morning time I worked with small groups of 1^st and 2^nd graders with math and reading. We got to read about bats and spiders, it was great. One little boy told me that I should get that stuff off the tv for those bumps on my face. For the math group, we counted money and then they had a worksheet to do. One of the questions asked them to finish a sequence counting by 3s but starting up at 60. I rambled off the “3-6-9-12-15-18...” part of School House Rocks “Three is the Magic Number” and they were all blown away. In this class, a little boy told me I should sing on tv. You win some, you lose some. I told them it was from a video and if they worked really hard and finished their worksheets that I would show them at the end of class.

Thanks to Teacher Tube, I was able to make good on that promise.
I wasn't sure how they would react, but they LOVED it.
“ooooh that's so icy!”

They were trying to sing along by the second time around and they were screaming it down the halls when I excused them.

Each student gets three animal crackers at the end of class. The attempts to get more out of me were both comical and fearless.

“The teacher gives us 4, I mean 5”
“I dropped mine on the floor”
"You only gave me two”

All the while I could see all three in their hand still as they hadn't even eaten them yet because they were too busy bargaining for more.

The second half of the day, was for another special ed teacher, but with 8^th graders who for the most part sat down and did their work. It was great.

Work Every Day: 2011

2011-01-04T18:13:00.000-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD)
Grade: 7/8

When I looked through last year's planner, I realized that I didn't sub until February. Granted, I had another job at the time, so I wasn't looking as hard. This made me nervous. I decided to not even bother looking for a job for the first Monday back knowing the pickings would be slim and the lessons unprepared, so I stayed up late with my friends like a young person instead. The next day I found a job and I've been finding jobs ever since.

I was a Special Ed Resource Teacher. Which in this case means that I teach small groups in math and reading. This is the school where I took a paper airplane to the face and the same grade and even some of the same students as well. It was much mellower in smaller groups, but this is still one of the loudest bunches around.

They were supposed to do worksheets and for the most part, that's what happened. One boy asked me 20 questions about public transit because he wanted to get to the Mall of America to use his Hollister gift cards and everyone else was giving him a hard time “You 13 and you never been on a city bus? Man, what's wrong with you?” For some reason, kids seem to respect me a little more when they find out I take the bus. I don't know if it's because it shows that I don't have any money either, or if it makes me seem young, I don't know, but I seem to earn some kind of points every time it comes up.

"No sub ever comes back twice"

2010-12-21T15:04:00.002-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (Level 4 EBD)
Grade: 9-12

I got a second job back in my old high school and my budget will now be back up to pre-Snow Day pay. My mom is the Administrative Assistant to the principal there and her duty day starts 45 minutes before mine. We live a ten minute drive from school, so I rode in early with her and got to go get an apple fritter at my favorite bakery and hang out in the office and explain my life to all my old teachers. When I told people who I was subbing for today, they all got concerned looks on their faces and wished me luck.

I attended this high school for four years and I never knew this room existed. Back in the hallway behind the cafeteria and between the wood shops, is a self contained room for students with the highest level of Emotional Behavioral Disorders. There were two assistants in the room, being that they lived in my small hometown, it turned out we all knew each others relatives and we were off to a good start.

There were about eight young men in the class and they arrived in an overwhelming cloud of body spray. I introduced myself at the beginning of class and let them ask me questions:
"do they have metal detectors at all the schools in Minneapolis?"
"have you seen any fights?"
"what teachers are still here from when you went here?"

One boy raised his hand and told me "No sub ever comes back twice"
"Well, I live in Minneapolis, so I probably won't be back again, but I'm not intimidated by you."
And that was that.

I read some short story from "Chicken Soup for the Christmas Soul" then we worked through the lessons on how manage anger and I did some math one on one and then they worked on independent projects about The Chronicles of Narnia.

Taxidermy is a class offered at the high school that I graduated from. I did not take it, but it was not uncommon for someone to find a stuffed squirrel in their locker. The teacher who taught it retired, but has since been replaced by my childhood neighbor, so I'm sure the legacy will live on. Some of the boys go to one mainstream class a day. I was asked to go with one of them to Taxidermy and wait until the bell rang. Now, I am a vegetarian, but I like to think that I'm a pretty gutsy one. I grew up out in the country down the road from a gun range, I know animals die and sometimes people kill them and sometimes that actually helps the ones that are still living. But I think anyone would be taken back by the sight of walking into a room in a public high school to see 25 kids pulling floppy squirrels out of grocery bags. I tried to get my student to take his dead weasel out of a ziploc baggie, but he just sat there stabbing the table with a scalpel. The combination of dead animal and toxic chemical was making me sick, so I took the scalpel away from him and went to go visit my mom. It turned out I was only supposed to stay with him until the bell rang to start class, not through the whole 86 minute period. You can't imagine my relief.

The last hour of the day was a class called "Street Law" which was a curriculum about how the legal system effects you. Today's lesson was on adoption. There were only three boys in this class. Two of them offered up the fact that they were adopted. When we were talking about foster care and the legal process one of them raised his hand and told us about how he had lied about his grandparents being alcoholics when he was 10 because he didn't want to live with them when his mom left and then he went to 14 different foster homes and the last one was abusive and now he ended up back with his grandparents anyway and how strict they are. You don't have to teach in a big city to hear sad stories.

Homecoming

2010-12-20T14:46:00.000-06:00

Subject: Science
Grade: 9-12

I am also in the system to sub in my hometown. My hometown that had school until the day before Christmas Eve. So I decided to come home early to try to make up for the Minneapolis snow days. The Jobulator rang, and there was an assignment to sub for my high school science teacher, so I took it.

The teacher was there in the morning, so we got to catch up a little bit before she left. They are on a block schedule. Four classes a day 86 minutes each. The school was going to have to cut a handful of teachers, but they worked out a deal where so many teachers agreed to give up their prep time and teach an extra class for one semester instead of their colleagues losing their jobs. Teachers, man. Tell me any other occupation where they have to do that. So I didn't get a break other than lunch, but it was totally fine.

I taught two college level biology classes and two regular biology classes. We went to the media center to work on the computers, and get this - everyone did their work. I was dumbfounded. This is not what I'm used to. I'm used to kicking kids off Youtube and making them turn their music down and telling them to stop taking photo booth pictures and catching sass for it at every turn. I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. I was almost bored. Even the sassiest kid in the class got his work done.

The computers in the library were probably still there when I was in high school. They had floppy disc drives for Pete's sake. I'm told they have a nicer lab upstairs. The schools where I work in Minneapolis have really nice computers because they have so many students without any money and they get grants and donations. There are plenty of poor kids here too, but there aren't as many kids total, so they get old computers and teachers without breaks.

I think I taught five students that were not Caucasian today. This is what I was used to when I went to high school, but as a teacher, I'm used to things being the other way around. It was weird.

Geek Day

2010-12-17T14:24:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grade: k-7

I was really into the outfits today.
So many thick plastic glasses frames and ties, I think kids should dress like this every day.
It did bring this article to mind.

It was the Friday before Winter break, I wasn't expecting the best behavior, but it was perhaps the smoothest day of the week. Even the kindergarten class was manageable.

There was no way we were touching mosaic things today. I hid every last heavy box of tile in a locked closet. There were 7 computers in the room and 7 students finished with their projects, so I let those 7 get on the computers for free time. We might not have gotten to the next project, but the computer motivation got every single student finished with their first project.

I kicked one of the sassiest boys off the computer for not being done and told him I'd leave him alone when he had finished. It took him less than four minutes to complete the project that he had spent the last two days not doing. I held up my end of the deal for a while, but then I went over to the computer where about five boys had gathered. They were watching some awful Drake parody about a girl with poop on her butt and I told them to stop it and that I knew they were on a proxy site, but please choose some school appropriate videos to watch. “Proxy?! What's a proxy, we don't even know what that means” The sassy boy from earlier said “She's not dumb, you guys”

One small victory for respect.
I'll take it.
(for the record, a proxy site is one that enables kids to get around the school's web filters and look at crap they shouldn't be wasting their time on at school)

There was apparently a pep fest during this class which no one told me about. I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing, but I had prep last hour and needed to use it to clean up.

I cranked the radio over the sound system and danced around giddy as I cleaned, knowing winter break was only minutes away.

Pajama Day

2010-12-16T14:08:00.001-06:00

Subject: Art
Grades: k-7

I had contemplated wearing my pajamas to school today. It was cold enough to make wearing my polar fleece snowflake pants sound like a really good idea. I decided against it when I thought of my city bus ride and the ten minute lay over downtown between buses. The office assistant told me I should have worn them anyway, that parent's come in wearing worse than that every day.

Most of the classes were doing drawings with one point perspective. Where you have one dot in the middle of the paper, and all other objects connect back to it with a straight line. There were stencils all over for students to use for shapes. There were your standard squares and triangles but then some really weird scrap booking stencils or something. There were lots of champagne glasses and baby bottles on these drawings, it was weird. One kid went to town with the letter stencils on the back of his paper and had these awesome things to say:

At one point a kid looked out the window and said “WHOAH, LOOK OVER THERE!” I thought this was surely a trick where he was going to steal somebody's fries or something, but then he shouted out “THE METRODOME IS GONE!” He was right.

When the 7^th grade boys burst into the room, there were shouts of “WHO SNITCHED! Did you snitch?” apparently, their early departure earned them lunch detention. I finally said “I snitched. It wasn't hard to figure out.” and it was dropped.

My plan was to introduce the idea of mosaics with a really great Power Point I made back in my student teaching days with examples of New York City subway station mosaics so that the four students who were done with their drawings could make sketches of ideas for their mosaics. With stencils in the room, it took them about two minutes to complete 6 sketches and then they were expecting to be able to start breaking tile. Have I mentioned the absence of hammers yet? Yeah, the teacher couldn't find them, so he recommended that I let them use rocks to break the tile. Only two students were at the tile breaking part but the way the room is set up, there was no way I could keep other boys from getting over there to throw rocks at breakable things.

The end of the hour was total chaos and an ER visit waiting to happen. Then some boys flipped through the Power Point to this super dorky old picture of me that I had included for scale back when I made this to show kids who knew me. I had pulled it down past the end of the presentation so these guys wouldn't see. The whole room erupted with “oooooh she's uglyyyy”s and the one boy whose crayon hit me yesterday and I chose to have a talk with instead of a written referral said real shyly“I don't think you look that bad.” It was really sweet. My skin really has gotten pretty thick over these years.

Wacky Tacky Day

2010-12-15T14:03:00.000-06:00

Subject: Art
Grades: k-7

So, these three days were supposed to be five and it's quite possible I would have been a wreck by the week's end if I had spent it all there. K-8 schools are just exhausting when you actually teach all of those grades in a day.

It was Spirit Week, which meant the uniform policy was out the window, but there were some pretty impressive ensembles.

Wacky Tacky Day was the first day back from the snow days and the office was busy answering “What dress up day is it?” phone calls, so I grabbed the keys and went up to the room to figure out the game plan for this short week. It was all pretty straight forward except for the last class of the day which was just me and 30 seventh grade boys. The regular teacher had told me that they were actually his best class, and I'm sure they're great with him, but they don't know me. We had talked on the phone about doing mosaics with this group, but it seemed they all had a lot of work to do on their large scale one point perspective water color resist drawings, so for the first day I went with that. I got a crayon thrown at my head and about half the class left early. I had the remaining students write their names down and used that list to figure out who had left. After doing all this legwork, I brought it to the behavior specialist and she just said “oh, we can also just look at the video camera for that hallway”

Busted.

I decided there was no way I'd do mosaics with that class.

Snow Day, No Pay

2010-12-14T12:22:00.001-06:00

So, I was feeling really good about having a job for this whole week. The art teacher at this k-8 school had contacted me a month ago to see if I could fill in for the week before break, which is sometimes a tricky time to find jobs. I was excited about not having to worry about finding a job for the next day, leaving my shoes at school so I don't have to carry them back and forth while I wear my Sorels to hike over snow banks, having enough money to get a little frivolous with Christmas gifts.

But then we got 20 inches of snow followed by sub zero air temps and school was canceled for 2 days.

Every other hourly employee in the district got paid.
Substitute teachers, did not.
I'm over it.
Can't you tell?

At least it gave me a chance to get all my Christmas projects taken care of.

The Game of Life

2010-12-10T12:05:00.001-06:00

Subject: Special Ed DCD
Grade: 12+

I got to be with my favorite class again today.

I was so excited to be there on a Friday, because in most programs in this buildings that means a field trip.

During some down time in the morning, I got to chat with that young woman with Down Syndrome who wants to be a high school special ed teacher. She brought it up again and also wanting to get married and have babies because her favorite game is Life and that's how you're supposed to do it. I reminded her about how that is just a game and not everyone lives their Life that way. She insisted that's what she wants to do with her Life. The other S.E.A just told her flat out "you can not be a high school teacher and you can't have babies." It was kind of awkward and she didn't say it in a mean way, but just a realistic one. We changed the subject to things that she can do, like work with in a day care. I was ready for a field trip after that.

We got to go to some nature center and hike around in the woods a bit. On the way there, we passed a few fast food places and to facilitate some group discussion, the S.E.A took a poll of people's favorite fast food places. There is one student who is further along the Autism Spectrum and I've only ever heard him mutter things to himself quietly, indiscernibley. When it got to be his turn, before she could even finish asking, clear as a bell he just said “MCDONALDS” . When he's not running, he's usually walking pretty slowly, so I stayed with him in the back of the herd when we started out hike. At one point out of nowhere he just said “Well WHAT do we have herrrrre” in a total cartoon vilan voice. I asked the S.E.A later, where his quotes come from and she said he just really loves Disney movies.

The weather was totally perfect, sun shiney, not too cold. There were some fancy people using the inside of the nature center and my Disney buddy was being really loud, so we sat outside in their little outdoor amphitheater while the students played stand up comedian with a stick microphone.

Then we came back and had popcorn and leftover birthday cake.

I could do this every day.

La Ciencia

2010-12-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

Subject: Science
Grade: 6-8

When I took this job, it just said “Science Teacher”. It would have been convenient if the teacher had also included in her posting that it was in Spanish. I took three semesters of Spanish in high school, the last of which was ruined when my teacher was gone on maternity leave and we got a long term sub who I'm now convinced knew no Spanish. Either way, I have the vocabulary of a 1.5 year old who hasn't spoken in 10 years. Luckily, there was an associate educator there who happens to speak both languages fluently.

The first two classes were a part of their Dual Immersion program, where students who are native English speakers are mixed with students who are native Spanish speakers and in theory they learn the other language from each other. We got to watch Bill Nye in English, so I was a happy camper.

The rest of the classes were just native Spanish speakers. They all knew plenty of English, even though there's always one who tries to convince me otherwise until I bust them speaking fluent English to their friends. They were studying for their test on photosynthesis and plant physiology, in Spanish. Two languages I don't remember anymore.

At one point I saw a girl gesture towards me and then tug at her pants in a weird way to her friends. I walked over and joked “Are you talking about my pants?” and with more of a tone of concern than condescension She said “yeah, they don't fit right” I then explained in a light hearted way that I was well aware of the fact and that they were too loose on top because they had to be big enough to fit my big biking leg muscles left over from summer. I'm sure she had so many tiny things she was at that very moment insecure about. Seventh grade is probably the crappiest time to be a girl.

At the end of the day we found what was apparently a gang sign written on the floor in marker. There were eyewitnesses that it was a boy who was already in trouble that day for trying to recruit other 6^th graders.

Planet Earth

2010-12-08T13:01:00.001-06:00

I got to meet the teacher first thing in the morning. He was one of the most bitter and jaded teachers I've ever encountered. It made me really uncomfortable to listen to his rants about how the kids he was taking on a field trip didn't deserve it and how he should have been an administrator because of how much more money they make. He also reminded me of how underpaid I am. I just stayed super positive until he finally left.

At least I got to watch some Planet Earth.

I saw the Great Plains episode 3 times and that fox caught those fluffy baby geese every time.

5^th hour was the one that was on the field trip. The teacher told me that there might be a few students that still come and to send them to the media center. I told one of the Education Assistants that was his plan and he said “yeah, well you don't want to be that sub that sends kids to the media center” and he was right. One kid showed up I asked him if he'd like to go to the media center or watch a Planet Earth, he picked the latter and I asked him to please pick a different episode because I'd already seen Great Plains twice and was facing a third time after this hour. So I sat in a big science classroom with one kid learning about the Shallow Seas.

DCDecisions

2010-12-07T14:17:00.001-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade: 3/4

I love working with all age levels, but I've been thinking more seriously about what level I want to work with when I have my own classroom. I think today might have helped me make that decision. There are essentially three different classifications of special ed and their names do a pretty good job of describing them:
Emotional Behavioral Disorder (EBD)
Learning Disorder (LD)
Developmental Cognitive Disorder (DCD)

I want to be a DCD teacher when I grow up.

Now, there is plenty of overlap and kids are constantly developing in different directions, which makes it difficult in the younger grades to find just the right setting for some students.

Today, there were a handful of students who seemed to need more of an EBD setting and a handful of more vulnerable students who actually fall in to the DCD category. This becomes problematic when the student who needs an EBD setting kicks a chair across the room because I didn't give him a jelly bean for good behavior and I have to stop teaching math to the student who needs a DCD setting to deal with it. It's not fair to anyone. A lot of these angry little boys do really well with one on one, which is something they can get more of in the right EBD setting (there are also different levels within that which I will spare you an explanation of right now).

I still had an awesome day with some really cool kids, but I just really like yesterday.

My kind of Monday

2010-12-06T19:46:00.004-06:00

Subject: Special Ed
Grade: 12+

Today I was subbing for one of the other DCD (Developmental Cognitive Disorder) teachers, so I saw a lot of familiar faces from last Monday. They have a class called "U R What U Eat" where they learn about cooking and nutrition. The lesson for the day was about (the health benefits of) dark chocolate, a subject on which I am an expert.

Later, for "Self Advocacy" class, we practiced making 911 calls, and I had to keep coming up with new scenarios, I saved "you're home alone with no car and your sister is going into labor" for the girl I knew was an auntie, but then she wanted to make up her own, which was "a boy got shot".Most of the kids did just fine, but some would get hung-up on for sure. After that we played "Community Signs Bingo" with common (and not so common) street signs instead of letters and numbers and one young man kept asking me why I didn't have a beagle.

During free time, a student I knew from next door came over with a bag of fake hair and asked if she could come over to our room to give extensions to one of my students. I asked her if she'd done it before, she said "well, I watched my step-mom do it once." She gave up quickly and then I learned that she had really just played me to be in the same room as her boyfriend, which was soon remedied.

Friday Floating

2010-12-03T19:33:00.000-06:00

Subject: Special Ed
Grade: 12+

There was a mandatory training today that every staff member in the building had to attend, so they hired me to be an extra sub to sort of float around as needed.

I started my day in the lunchroom during breakfast just sort of hanging out and chatting with students until I found out where I'd be next. Toward the end of breakfast, the administrative assistant who deals with sub things came up to me with an apologetic face. "I'm just so sorry, I feel so bad about this, I really do, but I need you in this room that is just terrible. They bite and they pull hair and they're awful."

Now I've been bitten before, but I'm not shy. She led me to a room where two young men were eating breakfast and two grown men were keeping them in place. One young man came up and tried to hug me, but I followed the lead of the SEAs and re-directed him to his breakfast spot. There was a lot of time spent re-directing. It was announced that they would be going to the Skywalk downtown to get pizza and The Hugger kept pointing at the clock and we kept explaining that it wasn't time yet, and hitting the clock with a broom handle wasn't going to make it happen any faster. The administrative assistant came in after 10 minutes with another SEA to try to relieve me, but we told her I was fine. After 10 more minutes she returned with another male SEA who had worked with the students before and she sent me to another room. I only got my hair pulled once.

I was kind of bummed about missing out on the pizza train, but then I found out I'd be with the group I spent yesterday with and we were going on a field trip to Barnes and Noble. Yesterday, during computer lab time, one girl asked me what I knew about Canada and what language they spoke there, apparently Justin Bieber is from Canada and she's totally in love with him. On the bus ride over she asked if it would be illegal for them to date because she's 18. Before she could finish asking me where the Justin Bieber books were, she found one on the front sales table and spent our entire 45 minutes swooning over it and sharing new facts with me. Then I got all gushy over my platonic crush on Tina Fey and how they overlap right here. But believe me when I say that I have never felt that way about a student.

Easy as Pie

2010-12-02T19:51:00.001-06:00

Subject: Special Ed
Grade: 12+

It seems that I have an "in" at my favorite post high school special ed school, and I couldn't be happier. I subbed here a small handful of times last year. Monday was my first day back and all I did was offer to let some students hang out in my room during prep because the person who takes them to their job site was gone and now I'm subbing there for the next 3 days. I'm sure it didn't hurt that I also smile a ton when I'm here because these are my favorite students.

They got a grant to hire some job coach type people to work with their food services program and part of that grant was to pay for a sub when one of the two assistants were gone. So I got to hang out in a kitchen and eat pie the students had made the week before and talk about how to do a job interview.

The second half of the day I was keeping an eye on a computer lab. There were quite a few students from the high school art room where I subbed the most. It was fun to see them in a different setting. For the record I have typed and deleted the word "kids" to replace it with "students" four times.

These kids are at least 18 now.

Job Crush

2010-12-01T19:13:00.001-06:00

Subject: Arts Integration
Grade: Middle School

If it were possible to have a crush on a job, I would have one on this woman's, well except for the part where she teaches an hour of Spanish as that is something I will never be qualified to do. She is an "Arts Integration" teacher. The students don't just go to her for an hour a week during their classroom teacher's prep. She visits their classroom and twice a year they do an intensive project that ties in with their classroom curriculum.

Also she gets to teach regular art to the special ed classes, which is pretty much my dream job. I got to see the kids from this class. My tiny spider buddy ran up and gave me a hug and the angry boy didn't want to stay at first because he "only likes to make 2-D art" and they were working in clay. However it was a glazing day, so we convinced him to put those 2-D skills to use on a 3-D surface.

The rest of the day I was hanging out with the class she's doing shadow puppets with, only the actor they're writing their shadow puppet story with was there instead today to play some fun games with them.

Last hour was Spanish class. They did a crossword puzzle about travel vocab. A tiny bit of Spanish came back to me, but I also had the answers in my hand.

"Or does it explode?"

2010-11-30T20:14:00.001-06:00

Subject: Reading
Grade:6-8

Sometimes teachers leave notes on the substitute-organizing website AESOP that I can see when I accept a job.

Today's notes were:
"Please do the KWL activities in all classes, using Nat'l Geographic with the students after independent reading. 5th and 6th period will be led by the artist in residence."

When I got to the room, I found no further lesson plans, schedule or class lists.
Granted, I remember that KWL is a learning strategy where you write down what you "Know/Want to know/Learned", but a lot of those non-teacher subs would be in the dark on that one. One thing I knew for sure was that a KWL activity wouldn't take up the whole hour. I called down to the office and they sent up the "Reading Coach" who helped me figure out a different strategy for the day.

One of the articles was called "The Fungus Among Us" and was about mushrooms and fungi. One girl had asked about poisonous mushrooms vs. edible mushrooms and I dropped all kinds of former co-op employee knowledge on her about the mushrooms that we eat. It later came out that I was a vegetarian and she shouted "I knew it!" I asked her how and she said "You knew way too much about mushrooms."

As promised, the Artist In Residence came for 5th and 6th hour. He was so cool. He is a poet from Sierra Leone who has some kind of fancy computer job but works from home one day a week to come do this thing in the schools. He told me he's been doing it for 7 years. He performed a piece and then they got to analyze Langston Hughes "Harlem: A Dream Deferred". He stays for the whole year. These kids in the city have so many amazing opportunities and they don't even know it.

Oh, you know, just another favorite day

2010-11-29T18:18:00.000-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grade 12+

This was my first time back in the post-high school special ed school this year and I was really excited when I found out I would be in a DCD setting. I recognized quite a few faces from last year and even one from my first year.

One girl asked me if she could show me her dance at 11:30 (the beginning of social time). She had to work on her IEP (Individualized Education Plan) goals before that. I overheard her telling the SEA names like "Dr. Dre" "Biggie Smalls" and "Janet Jackson"
Later, I saw her writing on a piece of graph paper to practice writing in a small and legible fashion.

(for the record, Trey Songz is spelled with a 'z')

When she was done, she got to go on the computers, which she used to watch this video on repeat:

At 11:30, she got out of her chair and sang along, turning it down whenever there was a swear. That song came out my senior year of high school.

During gym we walked, danced and jumped rope to 30 second ringtone clips of Trey Songz "Bottoms up", Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" and in 2010, the girl who loves Eve insisted on hearing Big Poppa by The Notorious B.I.G every time it was her turn to jump. The first two songs will definitely be on my end of the year "Top Jamz" list. Sometimes when I come home from school I need to listen to them to get then out of my head, my neighbors must think I'm awesome.

At the end of the day we ate popcorn and I beat kids at both checkers and Uno. I also got to chat with one really cool girl with Down Syndrome. She overheard me talking to the SEA about my plans to go back to school for special ed. She told me she wanted to be a high school special ed teacher. I wish there was a way to make that happen.

At the end of the day, the secretary came and found me and asked if I could come back on Friday and then Monday. This is probably my favorite building to work in and I would be happy to have a job like that every day when I grow up.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T20:28:00.001-06:00

I made it back to the house where I grew up for a few days over Thanksgiving.

My dad picked me up on Tuesday right after I got home from school. I got to surprise my 8 and (nearly)5 year old nephews.

My oldest nephew is in 2nd grade and I think of him often when I'm teaching kids his age. He still had school on Wednesday, so he had homework to do. I got to play a money counting math game with him and it felt kind of like being at school. I was hearing the words coming out of my mouth and I still sounded like a teacher.

At one point he asked me if I told my students about him. I explained how sometimes students will ask me if I'm a mom or if I have any kids and then I tell them I'm an aunt instead (which usually results in them telling me they are aunties as well).

I asked him if he told his teachers about me and he said
"One time we had a sub and I told them 'hey my Ree Ree is a substitute' and then they laughed"

Somehow over the years my name has been abbreviated by the small children in my family to "Ree Ree" it wasn't until my student teaching days that a student told me that was slang for "retarded".

When we dropped my nephews off with their mother over the weekend, she asked if I had gone shopping on Black Friday and said "The sales at Target were just retarded this year." without even thinking my mouth opened up and out fell "pick a different word" and without being the slightest bit phased she said "well they weren't very good"

Sometimes I wish I'd never started making titles because some days I just can't think of one.

2010-11-23T19:29:00.001-06:00

Subject: Social Studies
Grade: 7

There were a ton of absences today on account of Thanksgiving travel plans. Have I mentioned that at least 3 kids in any class seem to have immediate family in Chicago? This school has a reputation for being rowdy, which I choose to try to ignore, even though today it felt true. It was the last day before a 5 day break and I was their 6th sub in as many days. It was destined to be a crazy day.

Another teacher in her team had wrangled up some worksheets for them to do on immigration. Worksheets from 1995. I tried to talk about modern day immigration in Minnesota (as it no doubt included the families of at least 1/3 of the students in the class) but they were too out of hand for discussion, so worksheets it was.

This is the school where the teacher I used to sub for the most took a job as an arts coordinator. It was the first time I had seen her since before the whole "not getting that job thing" happened. After talking with her I feel even better about the way that all worked out for everyone.

Grad School Or Bust

High Five!

2010-11-22T18:36:00.000-06:00

Subject/Grade: Hi-5

Can we all just agree that "Hi-5" is the very best name for an early childhood program ever?

I've surely talked before about the exhaustion of teaching kindergarten. They just don't know how to be in school yet and often there are 30 of them and one of you. You might then think that Hi-5 would be a nightmare. But it's actually nothing but fun.

They're only there for half the day and today, there were two other grown ups in the room. The students just practiced writing their names, colored pictures of turkeys, ate breakfast or lunch, sang some songs, played some "centers", then sang some songs again. It was great.

Do you guys know about Dr. Jean.
If you don't, consider yourself lucky.

Stop making sense

2010-11-19T18:15:00.003-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD) "Life Skills" program
Grade: high school

The first two hours were Health class. They were taking practice assessments on the nervous system. Third hour was super practical math. After that there was nothing structured for me to do for the rest of the day. The teacher has due process time where they keep up to date with their student's Individualized Education Plans (IEP) and then he spends the rest of the day as a resource while other students were at their job sites. It was actually pretty boring. I know I shouldn't complain, or even make such a ridiculous thing known for my own job security's sake. But it was just one day and it sort of balanced out the craziness of yesterday.
It always balances itself out.

Now, I've seen plenty of "fashion glasses" out there, usually nerd/dork plastic frames that kids with perfect vision wear to try to look cool. One girl today had some pretty regular looking frames like maybe she forgot her contacts. A boy asked her if they were real. "NO, they're for fashion." she said. He went on to try to convince us that if you put "real" glasses up to a cellphone you get better reception. I don't even know, man.

On the wall were posted "Celebrations of Health" on little note cards that included the following statements:

"I will stop texting and reading email when I drive."
"I will move my monitor higher."
(I have no clue how this would effect ones health, maybe glasses/reception guy has some other theories)
"Considering abstinence."

Hair Today

2010-11-18T20:01:00.003-06:00

Subject: Social Studies
Grade: 8

Back in the same school as Monday but a different grade than the victim. It sounds like she will be paralyzed from the neck down. So stupid.

It was a busy day with full classes, but those tend to zoom right by, so I didn't mind. I told a kid to pick a word other than "gay" to describe his paper. The student in front of him said "yeah, that's not ok, don't you know this is a GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) school now? I'm in it." If the kid didn't have cheeto fingers, I would have given him a high five. If the kid that picked the wrong word first was eating cheetos, I'd probably make him put them away. Is that totally wrong of me? I talked with some kids for a while about their GSA and one boy said "yeah, a lot of people think gay guys are really weak and scrawny, but I know some with really big muscles."

Not one, but two separate students in different classes asked me how I "do" my hair. I put my hands up to my head and made a scrunching motion and said "like that". I get a lot of comments from students on the curls in my hair. Sometimes it makes me feel weird because I know how much effort, chemicals and weaves a lot of these girls go through to make their hair look like something it's not. When I was in middle school, I hated my hair and spent an hour every day blow drying it straight like all the other girls in my class. In 9th grade, I decided to stop caring and just gave up and let it do it's own thing and I haven't looked back since.

Speaking of hair, I have to recommend this:

If you've ever seen a kindergartener with a super model weave, you'll love this one too:

Survey Says

2010-11-17T19:41:00.004-06:00

Subject: Math
Grade: 9-12

Math and ELL are two subjects I was too intimidated to teach before because I didn't think I knew enough. That's all I've taught so far this week, and it turns out I can do it.

The classes were small and knew what they were doing and were relatively well behaved.

During first hour, one sassy boy called something gay and before I could say anything about it, a girl across the room told him "you gotta stop saying that". It was the first time I had seen that happen. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the room who doesn't think that's ok and it felt good to see there are students out there speaking up, I feel like it means more coming from a peer than some weird lady they'll never see again. He said something along the lines of "you can't make me" and I said "but I can" and picked up the pile of referrals sitting in front of me. He was quiet for a while.

Second hour there was a survey this class had been randomly selected to complete about student health risks. It took up half the time. It asked them how many carrots and potatoes they eat and how they get cigarettes. It was nearly impossible to get them back on task after that. I don't think it asked about smoking anything other than cigarettes; I heard a girl talking about how she was going to get blazed this weekend. The last 5 minutes of class felt like 15.

Knees and Toes

2010-11-16T18:42:00.005-06:00

Subject: ELL (English Language Learner) Science
Grade: Some Kindergarten, some 4th grade

I was unsure what to expect when I took an ELL placement at this gigantic K-8 school, but was kind of excited to learn they have an ELL science program and even more excited when I met Señor Science, the class guinea pig. He was so cute and now I want one.

The first class of the day was the "Newcomers Group" of students in kindergarten and first grade who speak little to no English. It was the beginning of Eid, so all the Muslim students were gone resulting in a group of 2 for the morning. They were working on learning body parts which led to the singing "Head-Shoulders-Knees and Toes (knees and toes!)" so very many times. You won't often hear me call my students cute, but there are few other ways to describe these guys.

Instead of a desk chair, this teacher had a yoga ball. If anything, I felt like it made me slouch more. At one point during prep a guy popped his head in the office and when I explained that the teacher was gone but would return tomorrow, he brought in a brown paper bag containing both a box full of crickets and a bag with a plant inside feeding so many aphids. Science rules.

A Cold Wind Blows

2010-11-15T20:24:00.005-06:00

Subject: Math
Grade:7

When I got to the school, the computers were down, so the administrative assistant said she'd bring me the attendance sheets when they were back up. When she arrived, she handed me another sheet of paper and stood there as I read it.

On the paper was the school picture of a smiling 7th grade girl. Above it was information about how she had been the victim of a drive by shooting over the weekend and was in the hospital recovering and if students wanted to make cards they would be making a delivery after school.

The teacher I was subbing for shares the room with another teacher and together they lead an advisory group twice a week. I was grateful that this was one of those days. The other teacher handled it really well. Explaining before she said anything the importance of thinking quietly before reacting out loud and only repeating facts.

The room was freezing as for some reason cold air kept getting blasted through the vents, so it was only appropriate that we played a game called "A Cold Wind Blows" where you sit in a circle with one fewer chair than people and one person in the middle says something like "A cold wind blows if you're wearing green" and everyone who is wearing green has to get up and find an open seat somewhere else. The last person standing then comes up with the next cold wind. Some real examples:
"A cold wind blows if you know how to jerk"
"A cold wind blows if you own skinnies" (skinny jeans)
"A cold wind blows if you know who Criss Angel is"
"A cold wind blows if you like Elmo"

I think I got stuck in the middle on "if you like macaroni and cheese" and I said "A cold wind blows if you're wearing plaid" then one of the four kids wearing it asked what plaid was.

One boy kept getting in the middle on purpose, I was sure. He called a cold wind for the friends of the victim and about 5 kids scrambled across the room.

After I take attendance, I typically call out the handful of names I'm about to list as absent, just to be sure. Luckily, I caught myself before asking the whole class if she was there.

It is weird to be a sub and just walk in to a situation like this. I've never met this girl and I probably never will, but my heart is still heavy and will be for a while.

Mellow Yellow

2010-11-12T17:59:00.002-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD)
Grades: K-2

There are some days when I come home ears ringing totally exhausted on every level imaginable. Today was the opposite of that and I kept trying to remind myself to enjoy it even though at times I would have preferred a little chaos, or at least some interaction. Somehow it all balances out.

The teacher I subbed for pulls kids out of their mainstream rooms for one-on-one help with math and reading and also joins them in their mainstream rooms for support. Thanks to some schedule changes and a concert by a community college choir; I only got to work with 3 students back in the room.

I was warned that one of the students could get out of hand both in the note and by other staff members. All I had to do was take him to the lunch room and bring him back up to my room to eat it. He was totally fine. He told me about how his "boo boo" was gone from his nose, which I thought meant scratch or something as he had another one on his face. As he went on to talk about it more, I learned he had meant a booger. He then told me about how his cat keeps peeing on his Christmas tree and he doesn't know why.

I had questioned the presence of a Christmas tree, but on the bus ride home I watched as they changed the giant cereal bowl planters downtown from arrangements of kale to pine boughs and birch logs. I tried to take note of every patch of grass before they're all gone - we're supposed to get quite a bit of snow this weekend, and I already have a job lined up for Monday, so I won't have to spend it taking my laptop all over with me to wait for the Jobulator to ding.

Is it Grad School Yet?

2010-11-11T15:48:00.006-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (DCD)
Grades: 3-5

Every time I work in a DCD (Developmental Cognitive Disorder) class room, I find myself wanting to start grad school tomorrow. But this is yet another year of patience. I'm still on the fence about what age level I want to work with, but I had an awful lot of fun in the elementary setting today.

The challenging and exciting thing about working in a DCD room is the variety of students and abilities. At one point, I was trying to help 3 students with their math work. One student was very high functioning and very bright when it came to math, but he couldn't read the word problems, so I had to read each one to him, he worked through them very quickly and was very impatient. At the same time, one of the younger, lower functioning students was working on writing his numbers and needed constant redirection both back to his seat and back to his work. The 3rd student was the lowest functioning in the class, he was non-verbal and struggled with fine motor skills. His worksheets were also to trace numbers, instead he spent the time scribbling in the pictures on the page. When we were done he pulled me over to the cd player and made a fists in the air dancing gesture with the biggest grin, which I just couldn't refuse. We danced to a cheezy kids version of The Hop, which made me laugh as I danced along imagining listening to the Daniel Johnston version in my own future classroom (I couldn't find a linkable reference for you, but here's one of my very favorite songs.)

There was one student who was mostly blind except for objects held super close to the corner of his left eye. The Special Ed Assistants were out of the room with other students and I was just getting by with asking the remaining students "well, how do you normally do this?" They were working on packets that require cutting and pasting. The way I choose to approach people with special needs is to just assume they can do anything and watch for what they might need help with (or even better yet, what they ask for help with if they are able). As opposed to the mentality of "oh, you can't do one thing, you must need help with everything". I still maintain that my strategy is the better of the two, but it didn't take me long to realize that asking the boy who holds everything centimeters away from his good eye to try using scissors was probably not my best idea.

Another bad idea is to put the music room right next to a special ed room with a paper thin wall. I got anxious myself every time they played the most dramatic part of Night on Bald Mountain. During prep, when I was alone and the room was quiet, they played some Enya and then my all time favorite Raffi song that may or may not be known to make me cry (seriously, ignore the pants and awful keyboard effects in this video and listen to the words).

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

2010-11-10T16:51:00.008-06:00

Subject: Special Ed (LD)
Grade: 9/10

Sometimes in my sub folder, I will find the paper printed off from the website and it gives more details about the absence. From this paper, I learned that the job was:
posted at: 1:31:09 pm
accepted: 1:31:32 pm
23 Seconds.
That is how long it took me to swoop in and pick up that job, at 24 seconds, I'm sure it would have gone to someone else. My life really is sort of a game.

Most of the day was spent supervising a study hall for kids that need some extra help.

Their warm up assignment was to write about how their mid-term grades were looking and how they planned to improve them. One particularly sassy student wrote
"I got str8 As"
and wouldn't hear my insisting that no word in the English language includes a numerical.

This is the same student who was trying to make a bet with someone and wagered an ounce, I said "Excuse Me?!" and shot him one of my teacher looks to which he replied "oh, well an ounce just means 15 dollars" my teacher face remained unchanged and his friend said "dude, she knows what you're talking about" (drugs, they were [jokingly] talking about drugs). What happened next was one of the weirder things I've seen so far. I let him go to his locker right outside the door, but I poked my head out to keep an eye on him and I watched as he gave one student a dollar and received a plastic baggie full of fruit flavored tootsie rolls. Then the student with the bag said "hold on, I don't got any dollar bags, but I can give you two 50 cent bags" When he came back in to the room his friends were asking for "reds" and "blues"

Now I don't know much about drug dealing, but I've watched The Wire enough to know what they were emulating with cheap candy. So weird.

Do you ever find yourself in public fighting the urge to tell that kid to pull their pants up? Well I get to and am expected to. One new strategy at this school is to just hand out lengths of rope for kids who aren't wearing belts. I still saw a lot more low pants than I care to, but it's an interesting idea.

After helping one very soft spoken girl with her chemistry worksheet, she asked if I knew "that one song that goes 'ooh ah ooh'? How do you spell that?" Her sweet singing made me think of "Video Killed The Radio Star" (one of my favorite songs at her age)so I asked her if it was an old song and she said it was new. After further discussion, I found out that this happened...come on...Really?

Also, for any Cambridge Middle School Alums out there, the P.E.N.S strategy is still happening. The students were supposed to write 2 SSV (Subject Subject Verb) sentences. One boy wrote "Mom and dad is divorce."

Another Best Day

2010-11-09T16:18:00.008-06:00

Subject: English
Grade: 6

Today was great.
I got to work at the Montessori school where I taught summer school a year ago. There were a few familiar faces, but I didn't want to embarrass anybody by shouting "HEY! Remember me from SUMMER SCHOOL?"

The first 3 classes were doing a worksheet on the Julia Alvarez story "Before We Were Free" It's about a young girl growing up in the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo regime. Having just read "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz over the summer, I was excited to share what I knew.

Some vocab words we got to have awesome discussions about were: Dictator, Underground and Cooperative.

During 2nd hour, I noticed a girl with a sweatshirt bearing my friend's last name on the back and her high school alma mater on the front. I asked the girl if they were related...cousins. The next hour the sweet little brother of one of the teen printmakers I worked with all last year came in as well. It really is a small world after all.

All the classes were relatively well behaved, even when each one had at least 30 students. They have these dorky microphones hooked up to the sound system, so I didn't even have to yell. It was great, but the best part was 6th hour.

6th hour was knitting class.
I think it's a Montessori thing to teach kids this, and I think it's great. Granted, it was the second day of the class and there were 30 kids in it constantly asking for help, it was fun to look across the room and see so many needles going. I got to use a document camera and projector to show them how to start actually knitting.
TECHNOLOGY!

I left itching to start knitting for the year myself. Luckily I rode my bike, so I got to visit some friends at their work where I spent what would have been bus fare on a brownie then biked over to pick up some sweet purple alpaca yarn to knit something for myself. I always feel so empowered when I can just get myself around the city to where I want to go when I want to go there.

It was a good day.

I leave you now with some "bumper stickers" the class had made and posted in the back of the room, I'm not quite sure what the assignment was or what its objectives were, but here are the results:

Jobulator Salvation

2010-11-08T19:53:00.005-06:00

Grade: 5

I didn't get that job I interviewed for, so I went ahead and spent 40 of my hard earned dollars renewing my yearly subscription to something called The Jobulator.

The Jobulator is a little application you can download that refreshes the subbing website every minute and dings when there is a job available. It is created by the same company that makes the subbing website. It sort of infuriates me that they don't just include it as a feature on their website but rather make money off the shmuck subs instead. I could see paying ten bucks for something like this, but 40? At the same time I am grateful to have it, even though I feel a little like Pavlov's dog running to check the computer from across the room every time a bell rings. It gives me freedom and jobs, so I ought not complain.

I met the teacher I was subbing for in the main office. Her son was sick and she was bringing him to the doctor, but first stopped by to get everything in order for me, which was awfully nice. I could tell she is one of those teachers kids still talk about later as being one of their favorites.

The morning started out fine, but then two boys started punching each other and had to be sent out. After lunch, they were super rowdy. There was one group of girls who were being super obnoxious during silent reading and sassed back when I asked them to separate. I also had to confiscate a Lisa Frank fuzzy poster day planner. I had to be mean a bunch today and I hate that. Eventually these girls earned their way back to sitting by each other. When we were walking to Specials one of the girls apologized for being a sass before, she said "I'm sorry I was mean before, I didn't know you were really so nice" It was funny and sweet.

The last 20 minutes of the day were pure chaos when a birthday girl's aunt brought in cupcakes and Kool-aid pouches for the class. After so many days off, there's no easing back in to this.

Also, can we talk about "Teach: Tony Danza"? You know, the reality tv show were Tony Danza tries to teach one High School English class? I caught a bit of it when I was falling asleep at my parents house once but I just now discovered that it's on Hulu. As I've stated before, I don't typically like to spend my out of school leisure time watching things I have to put up with every day, but this is hilarious. He is such a well-intentioned yet disconnected dufus. For me, the funniest part is watching the actual staff try to deal with him. Whatever, he's still learning to teach.

NSFW at School

2010-11-02T15:23:00.016-05:00

Subject: Science
Grade: 7

When I walked up to the school this morning a little early on account of the bus, the parking lot was totally full. As I got closer I noticed the "Vote Here" sign. It baffles me that we are so protective of the security of our kids locking all doors, requiring bright "visitor" name badges, but one day a year the doors are just swung open for anybody to walk right in and learn the lay out of the school. My polling place is also a school, a school that I really enjoy subbing in. It just feels extra weird to walk past photos of students I know with their names beneath them on my way to go vote and knowing that any other random could do the same. Seriously, where do sex offenders vote?

Enough about that.

Today's lesson was to give a test followed by silent reading out of the text book. The test was about cells or something, 6 pages long, no notes, no word bank. I don't think I could pass it, so many of these kids just gave up and then spent the rest of the time distracting the rest of the class.

When I was putting the text books back up front for the next hour, I noticed the all too familiar dangers of not assigning specific books to specific students. In addition to an overwhelming amount of comments on the teacher's weight, genitalia and general disdain there was the following:

From the most current

To the fed up

To the cutely positive

To the anatomically confused

And of course there was this

But what really got me was this response. You go, guy!

But my absolute favorite was this

Spooky Scary

2010-11-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

Since there was a 50/50 chance I would either have to sub at 10:30, or not at all. I decided to get out of town for Halloween. While my friends slept, I got up at 6:30 to check and see if I had been taken off the assignment or not. After a bunch of stressful struggling with a borrowed internet phone, I found out she had indeed taken me off that assignment, so we didn't have to leave town at 7 a.m. after all, which no one was complaining about. I would never have taken a day off intentionally to go have fun, so I suppose this forced me into it.

Later that day I got a phone call from a school I had applied to on Friday asking if I could do an interview on Tuesday, which I couldn't exactly do with the sub job I had already picked up for that day, so we arranged for an interview on Wednesday, which paired with the upcoming 4 day weekend, means I could only work one day this week, but just look at all this blogging I'm getting caught up on!

Maria(n) the Librarian: Day Two

2010-10-29T12:58:00.007-05:00

Subject: Media
Grades: 9-12

After two days of checking books out and in - here are the most popular series for these high school students.

The Cirque du Freak series by Darren Shan was just flying off the shelves, mostly in the hands of teenage boys. There are 12 books in the series and a lot of these kids were up past book 6. It seems like Goosebumps all grown up with a continuing story to suck them back into the library to get the next book.

The girls were really into these books published by Kimani Tru, which under further inspection is actually a subsidiary of Harlequin, which makes total sense. They even have a "Worth The Wait" series on the struggles of abstinence.

"CRANK dat Superman Dance!" Every teenager at the barbecue moved to the music of Soulja Boy, doing the Superman Dance in unison."
-from The Pact by Monica McKayhan, an INDIGO novel for Kimani Tru

There are so many cheesy looking books out there, but you know what, these kids are reading something and I love that.

The library also had a collection of autobiographies of hip hop celebrities that are mostly pictures and read like they were written by college freshman. I noticed they had random perhaps unfamiliar words bolded, but I couldn't for the life of me find a glossary or any other reason why the words subpoenaed and plea bargain were bolded in the biography of Jay-Z where the following excerpt is from:
"Often Jay's rhymes were filled with violent, materialistic and misogynistic references, which drew the ire of those who wanted to see rap go a new direction after the murders of Tuac and B.I.G"

In other news, kids are still reading The Giver, Bone and Simpsons comics.

Also quite a few kids reading Push, the novel that the movie Precious is based on. I flipped through it and it was ROUGH. It is written from the perspective of Precious who can't exactly read or write, so everything is spelled out phonetically as if she wrote it. It's a tough enough story as it is, I don't know if I could make it through that text.

This day marked the first non-long-term time I had worked every school day in a month. I was so ready to keep the ball rolling when I quickly clicked a 2 day assignment for Monday only to realize that it was for a partial day. I got really stressed out and tried to get a hold of the one person who could fix it, who was gone for the weekend. My first email asked her to remove me from both, but I realized the unliklihood of finding a job Monday morning, so I emailed her again asking her to keep me on Monday, but not Tuesday. I just made a really confusing mess and there was nothing I could do about it until Monday morning...dumb.

Maria(n) the Librarian: Day One

2010-10-28T10:37:00.001-05:00

Subject: Media
Grades 9-12

When I clicked this assignment for a Media Teacher at a high school where I'd never subbed, I knew I was in for a mellow two days. After two years and more than 30 schools, it's weird to come across one I'm unfamiliar with. It seems that a lot of the students who went to the school where I did that long term placement my first year, ended up here. It was funny to see them all teen aged.

Second hour they have Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). Which means there are 20 minutes built in to the schedule for reading every day. It's cool in concept, though I've been in classes where students just sort of end up taking a nap instead. They are allowed to come to the media center during this time to find a new book if they need one, so it actually got busy.

I don't remember my high school library ever being busy. I also don't remember my high school library having any books worth reading. I do remember trying to find a new novel to read for fun, but every new book was locked up in a cupboard, when the librarian was finally around to open the case, it was 60% R.L Stine and 40% teenage romance novels. I had to steal my brother's William S. Burroughs and buy my own Kerouac (with my Mom's money) or any other author I found out about from bands that I liked.

Tomorrow, I'll fill you in on what the kids are reading these days...

ASD Awesome Students Day Two

2010-10-27T21:01:00.003-05:00

Subject: Special Ed ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Grades: 4-7

We found a fresh box elder bug for that spider (I'm not even sure if they can eat such crunchy bugs) and I used it as motivation for the only girl to get some work done. She got to look at the spider after every page she read, it was almost too easy.

The instructions for when the boy who wanted to organize some anarchy gets sent back to the special ed room for behavior issues in the mainstream room is to give him 15 minutes to cool down before dealing with him. It was super painful for him and almost comical to watch, but it worked really well. I tried to talk to him about what went wrong in class but then he got worked up again and hid under some tables, so I let it go.

Then I asked him about the Invader Zim drawing on his cubbie, and he bounced up and came back over to me and we talked for the next 10 minutes about Jhonen Vasquez. I used to be really into that guy when I was 19 but it had been years since I really thought about any of that stuff. I had to stop myself when I asked him if he had read any of his comics “Yeah, he had a series called, Johnny, Johnny the-, oh I can't remember any more.” Homicidal Maniac, it's “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac”, but this kid is 10 and already a little too into some dark ideas, so I went along with my memory loss. He then focused on drawing some heart breakingly adorable pictures of Gir from Invader Zim and I'm kicking myself for not remembering to take pictures.

I decided to go with him to his next mainstream class to try to slow down his pattern of walking out of those classes. He had been given a piece of candy right before we left, so when we got to the 4th grade writers workshop he still had it in his mouth. I gave him some space at first which was when I overheard this one really obnoxious girl asking why he had candy to which he replied “You don't get candy because you're not in Special Ed because you weren't born with Autism.” Yikes. Not a good way to make friends, buddy.

ASD Awesome Students Day One

2010-10-26T18:48:00.004-05:00

Subject: Special Ed ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Grades: 4-7

If I had to choose between a classroom like yesterday and one like today, today would win. Every time.

There were only 8 students, and two Special Ed Assistants (S.E.A). Some of the older kids spent most of the day mainstreamed with some guidance and some of the younger, lower functioning students stayed back in the room with me.

The 7th grade boys were doing their science fair project on how sound effects spiders, using one in a mason jar that came from a student's laundry room at home. There was only one girl in the class, she was tiny and needed more one on one instruction than others and she loved that spider...also, cats. We spent most of the day talking about those two things.

There was only one 4th grade boy and I still haven't decided if he's really angry, or just needs attention. He was making swastikas with the snap-blocks during choice time and the S.E.A next to him handled it really well, by not over-reacting and just having a conversation about how sick Hitler was.

While I was gone with another student, he had a behavior issue that required some outside assistance which led him to make an “Anarki To Do List” which started with recruiting “anarky members” and ended with a big speech followed by a big party. The other S.E.A showed it to the outside behavior guy who suggested a call home. When the student found out later that home had been called, he pretty much lost it and the end of the day became pretty chaotic.

The best part of the end of the day was when one of the 7th graders asked me “Have you ever seen the Labyrinth?” I said “are you kidding?” Then he asked if I'd seen the Dark Crystal and I geeked out with this 12 year old about the movies of my childhood for a while.

Learning to Get Over It

2010-10-25T17:50:00.000-05:00

Subject: Art
Grades: 9-12

Today, I subbed for the teacher who replaced the teacher I subbed for the most. The woman who got the job I was so sure was mine. If you knew me back in 2009, you would know my motto for that year was "Get Over It". Something I feel I have done now that I subbed in this room again, even after she included in her sub notes that she was in L.A for a conference. I had way more fun spending my M.E.A break in rural Wisconsin.

Here are some reasons I'm ok with not getting that job:
~ The fact that the school now has the longest student day in the district, which means teachers are only paid to be at school for 15 minutes after the kids leave, which is just not enough time.
~ 2 hours of prep in the morning, which means back to back classes the rest of the day, which makes transitioning in to teaching so many different mediums a challenge.
~ A class with 35 freshman. Just imagine that for a moment, and try to think of how much anyone can get done in a room with 35 freshman.
~ Two other classes with more than 30 students, which is really huge for art.

They laid off the other art teacher for this school year, so now there is only one who has to bear the brunt of an entire student population trying to fulfill their art requirement for graduation.

In the end, she left worksheets for 4/5th of the classes, one step above a movie day. Some of the students were griping about having to do worksheets and I said "this is what your teacher left for you to do" and one boy said "well, what would you have us do?" I changed the subject, but given my context it felt like a pretty loaded question. Another student informed me that he was going to try to make this teacher quit, I told him that was a bad idea. While talking about college with one of the advanced students, I mentioned my own art teaching degree, he told me to try to get a job there.

Oh kids, if only they knew.

Due to some district politics, the dynamics of this school are about to change and get a little more challenging. This really would have been the hardest job I would have ever had and I'm way too excited about my special ed future to look back.

Day Three: Three Day Week

2010-10-20T18:09:00.006-05:00

Subject: Special Ed "Life Skills" (science + english)
Grade: 9-12

Today was my last day subbing for this teacher, also the last day of the week before every Minnesotan kid's favorite 4 day MEA weekend.

I wore a purple cardigan today. I only saw one other kid wearing purple. The biggest kid in the program. I didn't ask him about it. I liked the silent solidarity aspect of this campaign. I get so tired of trying to explain to kids why it's not ok to use the words they do to put down so many people. But I can't stop.

In the morning, I helped that girl work on her resume again. It somehow came out that I have an art teacher degree and she said "OOOh, I wish you were my art teacher! The one we got now is bossy, like my mom." I'm sure the new teacher is a perfectly lovely human. I hesitated, but did tell her that I had applied for that job and she said "Well, you should just try again next year!" I suppose if I believe in her ability to get a seasonal job at the mall, she has no reason not to believe that I can just try again. It was sweet.

Yesterday after school I saw a bunch of kids I know from my last two years subbing, they all waved and said hello. Then on my way to the bus I intercepted a pack of teenagers, one of them said "Hey weren't you our sub last year?" and a bunch of them chimed in. We all laughed when I said I was going to the bus too. It was bitter sweet, I would have liked to be their teacher for real. But I've come to find a number of reasons why it's ok that I'm not.

Two of the English classes had already finished Freedom Writers and two had not on account of yesterday's computer lab visit. The very loose lesson plans told me they were working on a poetry unit and told of the Def Poetry DVD that usually starts each day. I couldn't find it and the teacher told me I could make up my own poetry related curriculum. I was excited when, thanks to the wonders of "Teacher Tube" (an un-blocked website full of education related videos) I found my very favorite all too beautifully relate-able internet video to share at the start of class. I wasn't sure how receptive they'd be to some cutesy white Canadian chick, but for once it was totally silent with all eyes up front.

In talking with one of the Special Ed Assistants after school, she told me about how the art teacher had prepared them for the sub on Monday (me) by telling them they wouldn't be painting. It sounded like they watched a video the last time they had a sub and it didn't go over so well. I was pretty bummed to hear this. I have a license to teach art. I have taught art in that room more days than the art teacher and I'm not being trusted to use paint? I guess this person just doesn't know how awesome I am yet, proving yourself gets so old.

I felt weird and crabby about this news at first, but then my favorite Octogenarian Alumni came and picked me up at 3:30 for a dinner date and everything was alright.

Day Two: Learning to Blog

2010-10-19T17:42:00.004-05:00

Subject: Special Ed "Life Skills" (science + english)
Grade: 9-12

One part of the week's lesson plan was for 2 periods to go to the computer lab to work on the "online journaling site BLOGGER" It took longer than you'd think for these students to remember how to even log in. I don't think anyone finished a post. Some spent the whole hour just signing up. Apparently Blogger now requires a cellphone number to send a verifying text message to. Sketchy. I'm glad I got on the train before that happened.

The other two classes finished Freedom Writers. One girl with an incredible lack of regard for anyone else yelled out more than once "Why can't our class be like that?" I reminded her of that statement when it came time to write in their journals and she refused to work.

During journaling time, one smart mouthed kid yelled out "How do you spell fellatio?" I told him to look it up in the dictionary right in front of him.

Another kid said something was "retarded ass" My stand-by quick and easy response when students throw words around that make my skin crawl is to just say "pick a different word". To which he replied "well fine then, butt" I have become so desensitized that I didn't even think of the second word as the one to be offended by.

Watching those students changing around their blogger lay outs has me itching to do the same. Don't be surprised if you come back to find a new and frequently fluctuating set up for a little while until I figure out what I like best.
Feedback welcomed/encouraged!

This first try at a new background is my dad's handwriting practice from elementary school. He got a C-

Day One: Emo Movie Day

2010-10-18T16:57:00.004-05:00

Subject: Special Ed "Life Skills" (science + english)
Grade: 9-12

Today was my first day back in the building where I subbed the most since I interviewed there in September. I just smiled and chatted with the administrative assistant in the office like I always did, like my heart never broke when I found out I didn't get the job I was so sure was mine.

I picked up a 3 day assignment with some very loose lesson plans sent to me the night before. I had planned on spending 1st hour prep figuring things out. When I got there I saw there had been a sub on Friday, who just started watching Freedom Writers with them, so I figured we'd continue with that, which was perfect since I had a visitor 1st hour.

She said she always comes in for help from the classroom teacher. She pulled out a McDonalds application and an outdated resume. Now this was something I have experience with. I spent most of first hour helping her very slowly type out a new version of her resume. I could have typed it in less than 3 minutes, but I wanted her to do it. By the end, she was even remembering to capitalize proper nouns.

2nd hour was science class and they were watching the last 30 minutes of Apollo 13. I haven't seen that movie in years, but the super intense ending got me a little choked up.

The following four classes were spent watching the middle 45 minutes of Freedom Writers. The first time I saw this movie was also at this school, also out of sequence. I've learned that watching movies about school and teaching when I'm not working, usually makes me crabby because I'm spending my free time watching kids pull the crap I get to see for free every day. But this movie, still makes me cry every time.

This was the part where we started watching today:

If you haven't seen this movie yet, go do it now.

P.S

2010-10-15T16:26:00.005-05:00

Some left overs from a week ago:

I can't believe I forgot to talk about Flocabulary! The curriculum that has the potential to be super cheesy, but was actually really cool. Each hour, I got to listen to this song and watch the kids rap along with the vocabulary words of the week.

The next week's song was about Nelson Mandela.

Also on that middle school day, for the first time a kid came up to me with fake blood on his finger trying really hard to be convincing. I was completely un-phased and sent him across the hall to wash it off in the bathroom.

When I was in that ELL room and a student held up a really great looking paper. I said "ooh la la" and the girl whose native tongue was French got really excited and asked "Do you speak French?!?"

Then there was the high school Somali girl wearing a hijab and a Twins jersey and thinking of just how beautifully Minnesotan that is.

Kindergarten Special: Day Four

2010-10-15T16:00:00.004-05:00

Subject: Special Ed (Learning Disabilities [LD])
Grades: K/1

I'm on a roll, I've now worked every day for the past 3 weeks, a new non-long-term record. On Monday, the classroom teacher will return, and I'm ok with that. It has been really nice to be able to spend the nicest days of Fall walking to work, but I won't miss leaving my house when it's still dark at 6:30 to do so.

The most challenging student of all was present today. He made yesterday's most challenging student seem like a saint. I met his very young mother this morning, she told me about the other students her son said were hitting him. I saw him punch one of those students before we even got back to the room from breakfast. We read a book called "Hands Are Not For Hitting" and when I got to the part about what to do if someone else hits you he said "My momma told me if somebody hits me I gotta hit them back" I told him we don't do that at school and she screamed "MY MOMMA SAID SO!" When he stayed back from specials because he couldn't handle it, he actually played quietly by himself for a while. I heard him make the mom doll tell the gorilla to "Stay away from my son!" over and over again before she flew away in the sky.

The Mother told one of the social workers that she's doing every thing right at home and she just doesn't know where he's getting this from. I don't know where a kindergartener learns to call people "mother fuckers" and "assholes" either. It's a bummer to label a kid this young, and I am by no means an expert, but this kid needs to be in an Emotional Behavioral Disorder (EBD) setting. It's just not safe for him or anyone around him and he's not getting the full help he needs and deserves.

The staff that work in this room were all amazing, but all beyond exhausted.
I hope they find a solution soon.

Kindergarten Special: Day Three

2010-10-14T18:51:00.004-05:00

Subject: Special Ed (Learning Disabilities [LD])
Grades: K/1

In the end the most challenging student never arrived, but we all held our breath until after lunch. Apparently it's not uncommon for him to arrive half way through the day.

Again, we had a smooth morning. After being praised during calendar for knowing what day it was, the girl with the princess complex who entirely ignores grown ups when they ask her to do anything but also speaks very minimally, walked right up to one of the SEAs and said "I already know everything" and it was really hard not to laugh. She also told me at the end of the day yesterday that she was going to throw away the note we sent home talking about how she needs to listen to her teachers.

It's interesting what constitutes a "good day" for one student vs another. The most challenging student present today laughed hysterically through part of nap time, ripped another girl's library book and kicked right through someone's lego house. But, he settled down for the second half of nap, didn't bring anybody physical harm, was engaged (apparently for the first time all year)in the power point lesson that I whipped together about patterns and he kept his pants on, so he still got snack.

Coming in from the fire drill, the secretary told me she'd know by tomorrow afternoon if they would need me again next week. Even though my current head ache is making a 7:30 bedtime sound like my best idea ever, I wouldn't hesitate to come back again (especially since it might mean another apple orchard field trip!).

Kindergarten Special: Day Two

2010-10-13T18:09:00.001-05:00

Subject: Special Ed (Learning Disabilities [LD])
Grades: K/1

The morning went smoothly with the three of the most distracting students gone. While most teachers will deny playing favorites, I have yet to meet one who doesn't release the smallest sigh when they learn the most challenging student in the class is absent. The dynamics of a whole room can be changed when just one student is missing, the quiet kids who spend half their day waiting for things to settle down, actually get a chance to learn something.

Of course there were still behavior issues to be had, there's always another student to take over the position of "Most Challenging". I did recognize some of these students from the room where I taught Early Childhood Special Ed (ECSE) a few times last year, including the boy who stepped up to the inappropriate behavior plate by standing on desks, and intentionally dumping his milk all over the cafeteria floor. He lives on my street and I see him playing outside a lot, I'm trying to decide if it would be totally creepy if I stopped one day to say hello without coming across like "HEY, tiny vulnerable child, I'm a grown up your parents don't know and I know your name!" It's doubtful that he would remember me anyway. He's going to be gone the rest of the week as he informed us during calendar time that the day after Wednesday is "Cabin Day".

The student who was gone in the morning visiting his new school, came back for the second half of the day, which we weren't expecting, which brought the class dynamic one step closer to chaos again. During my lunch, the social worker came and told me that the violent student from yesterday, the one whose mother said she was pulling him, would be returning tomorrow. We all rescinded those sighs.

Kindergarten Special: Day One

2010-10-12T19:30:00.009-05:00

Subject: Special Ed (Learning Disabilities [LD])
Grades: K/1

I don't want to jinx it, but I have been truly blessed lately when it comes to getting sub jobs. After 3 almost boring days in a computer lab, I quickly clicked and got a placement for 4 days in an elementary special ed room. Meaning I will be working 3 full consecutive weeks, a first in my non-long-term subbing career.

This is one of those schools where you have to be there at 7 am, it's also within walking distance, so as long as I'm in bed by 9, I can't complain.

While I was getting myself acquainted with the room before the kids arrived, I found the stack of referrals for one student who didn't last very long today. He had a rough morning but after hitting at least 2 students and 3 grown ups (myself included), he went on to slap the principal and apparently call her the Mother of all F words. He was a threat to himself and to other students and staff, this was his second day in a row being sent home. He won't be coming back tomorrow. I hope they're able to find him the right program. This class is meant to help kids with learning disabilities catch up to their grade level so they can be mainstreamed. There are other fantastic programs for students with additional emotional and behavioral issues to get one-on-one help without interfering with the safety and education of other students.

There were two other boys who should probably be in other programs as well, and about six kids who just learn to put up with screaming and running.

After a very hurried lunch, it was time for recess. Their playground is home to some magnificent trees dropping loads of magnificent leaves. The other kindergarteners were building a pile and one of my students ran his dump truck right through it. I can't say that I blame him, it looked like a lot of fun, but it did make another kid cry. After he apologized, I showed him how to use his dump truck to help the cause and interact with these other kids.

I can't believe it took me two years of subbing and being exhausted by kindergarteners to think of their brilliant portrayal on this show.

In researching and thinking about making decisions about graduate programs for special ed, I've been sort of on the fence about what age level I want to work with. Even though I'd be working with a different population of students (DCD), I think today reinforced the thought that maybe I'd like to work with older kids when I grow up.

But recess is still pretty cool.

Computer Class Day 3

2010-10-11T18:57:00.001-05:00

Subject: "Industrial Technology" (Computer design/digital photography)
Grade: 9-12

I was really careful not to declare that the teacher was returning tomorrow as the students informed me that every other sub had told them that for the past 2 weeks. I checked with the office before I left, and as far as they knew she truly was returning.

Many rumors had surfaced by the end. One kid told me she had cancer and he knew because his mom emailed the school about how they weren't doing anything in that class for 2 weeks. For the record, this kid spent every day playing games and when I asked him to show me where he was on the long list of self guided tutorials, he hadn't even started.

The last hour, this super obnoxious kid was spilling water all over on purpose and took a few tries to wipe it up after I called him out on it. At the end of the hour there was water all over the floor in the back corner as well as an entire packet of mayonnaise. No one would fess up to it and more kids just lied straight to my face. I was feeling ok to be done with this assignment.

At the end of the day as I put my bike helmet on, a group of boys asked "Are you a student or a teacher?" I wasn't sure if it was a compliment to my age or a diss to my mode of transportation. As I rode out of the parking lot two boys biked past me and one of them yelled "My bike is more pink than yours."
It was true.

Computer Class Day 2

2010-10-08T16:56:00.001-05:00

Subject: "Industrial Technology" (Computer design/digital photography)
Grade: 9-12

I told the classes yesterday that I would be here for 3 days. It helps them know what to expect and eliminates the "man, we got a sub again" attitude. Also, it sets the tone so they know they can't get away with crap.

There was still a large handful of girls late for class after lunch. They showed me their tickets to the Sadie Hawkins dance as if it were their pass for standing in line for them. I still marked them tardy.

These tickets are $40 a pair or $22 per person.

Presently, I could not afford to go to this dance.

I am envious of some of the outfits these girls wear.

It's weird.

So is the socioeconomic make up of this school.
There are a lot of super privileged kids, also a large immigrant population, also regular poor kids. I don't know how, but it works.

During work time, one boy started playing that one Cee-Lo song (Sorry, Mom. I know he doesn't talk very nice), which I can't deny that I really enjoy. I was across the room and I just grinned and let it slide. Later, that same boy played some other crappy rap song and I told him to turn it down. Then he said "Did you ever notice that all Somalians smell bad?" within ear shot of at least 5 Somali students, and we had to have a talk.

The building was nice and cool and quiet as I was leaving. The second I opened the door, summer hit me. It was 84 degrees and there were about 100 kids in the court yard and even an ice cream truck parked out front. The end of this day marked the first time I'd worked every day of a pay period other than my one long term placement 2 years ago. I had just learned how to fix my brakes the night before and biked home feeling more content than I can say.

Computer Class Day 1

2010-10-07T16:30:00.001-05:00

Subject: "Industrial Technology" (Computer design/digital photography)
Grade: 9-12

I was thrilled to find a 3 day job at a school I can bike to in a room where I have subbed before. When I arrived and started looking through the notes on the desk, I soon learned that this teacher had been gone for nearly 2 weeks. I'm still not sure why, but I actually prefer it that way. I am basically incapable of lying and it's easier to tell the students "I don't know" when they ask why their teacher is gone instead of trying to avoid over-sharing personal information about someone I don't know.

Most classes were working with Adobe Illustrator, a program I once knew how to use in 2004. It felt good when I actually knew how to answer questions. I was helping one student save her work per the teachers instructions which asked them to "save your file as 'yourname.pdf' in the class folder" this girl literally saved her file as "yourname.pdf" This teacher has her work cut out for her when she returns.

I had to be diligent about checking names at the door with so many skippers trying to make this room their home for the past 2 weeks. One boy gave me an East African girl's name and when the real girl came later and I asked him for his ID#, he got really defensive and stormed out, only to return to class next hour with his real name.

If you're going to give a substitute a fake name. Don't try to come back the next hour with your real name.

Kids lie to me all the time. I can normally tell, or at least I know the right threats to make the truth come out. There was one kid today who was a little too good at lying. He came up to me when I was checking students on the way in the door. He said he was an aide for the class, I told him he wasn't on my list. He wouldn't back down and the line was building up. I told him I'd call the office to check up on that, a threat that usually results in a student dropping the act. He just came right in and had a seat. He wasn't being a bother, but I knew I had to follow through, when I called the office, they had no record of a student by that name, she asked me for his id number, which he pulled out of nowhere, also non-existent in the records. The voice on the other end in the office told me she'd send some one up to remove him. They never came and he sat through the entire hour.
He won.
I told him I didn't want to see him again tomorrow.

P.S

2010-10-06T20:56:00.004-05:00

So, I'm always too quick to hit the "publish post" button and then I remember small anecdotes that I wish I had included. From now on, I guess I'll wait until they accumulate in a pile, then share them.

So here are some more things I don't want to forget:

~Riding on a very noisy bus full of orchard bound 8 year olds and hearing 2 girls behind me harmonizing to some song I didn't recognize about love and yearning, then they started singing some Soulja Boy followed by New Boyz "You're a Jerk" in their sweetest little voices.

~The two times this week that little girls have asked about the curls in my hair and how they got there, or the time a kindergarten class stopped right by me on their way to the buses and a little girl after staring for about a minute said "I like your hair"

~Talking to one middle school girl about being an aunt, which eventually led to her asking if she could go get her daddy's obituary from her locker to share with me. It was 2 years old. The topic then turned to family size. Every one trying to one up each other with pretty staggering numbers. The unspoken winner said she had 12 siblings on her mom's side and 8 on her dad's.

~Trying to get an out of hand middle school girl to focus on me by making eye contact, only to have her say "ooh, your eyes are pretty" as she continued to make a ruckus. Realizing that I had the only set of blue eyes in the room.