Why, Eric, oh why?

Yesterday I subbed at the school that I had vowed never to sub at again. It was the school in the really bad part of town where 75% of the murders in San Francisco occur. You know, the school where I was supposed to have a 3-day assignment in a Kindergarten and I only made it to the end of Day 2. Yeah, the one where the kids just started spontaneously SCREAMING at the top of their lungs and when I left the secretary [who is still there, by the way...] said, "Yeah, this school is terrible". Uh-huh, that school.

My first indication should've been that I called the SubLine to see if there were any Sub jobs available [I just wanted to be 100% sure that I got as much work as possible last week] and there this assignment was - just sitting there in the Sub pool. Like the SubLine called EVERY other possible sub and they all knew better and declined the position. But, I took it. To be fair, the main reason that I took the job was because it was a Resource Specialist teacher sub job so I thought that I would just get to work one-on-one with kids all day rather than be thrown into my own classroom. And, to a lesser degree, I thought it would be a good test to go back to a school that I had a HORRIBLE experience in months ago, and see how far I've come since then.

Well, I showed up at school and the secretary said to me, "Back for more, eh?" The Resource Specialist was there in the office and wisked me quickly away to her room telling me along the way, "Oh, today should be really easy for you. The kids that I see on Fridays are good, good kids." As I put my bag down on a chair in her room another woman came in and said, "Oh, Ms. __, there's actually been a change of plans. Mr. Barbus will have to take over a 1st grade room because Mrs. __ called in sick and we're a sub short." I KNEW IT! I KNEW that it was too good to be true. So, the second woman took me to the classroom that I would be in for the day and while we were walking I said to her, "You know, I was afraid this was going to happen. I REALLY wanted to be the Resource Specialist today - that's pretty much the only reason I took the assignment." I hated to be whiney, but I had to make my feelings known.

I stiffled a gasp as the woman openned the classroom door for me. The room was a total pit, with random papers piled on every surface, and, naturally, because the teacher called in sick that morning, there were NO LESSON PLANS. The woman who let me into the room felt bad for me so she called the classroom teacher up and I talked to her for a few minutes, trying to get an idea of what the hell I should do with her kids all day. She was pretty incoherent, so I knew that I would just have to wing it. And, the day pretty much sucked. Even though there were only 12 kids in the class, there were a couple of ring-leaders that caused chaos to break out amongst the ranks. There was one girl in particular who I just wanted to STRANGLE all day. Little Miss Thang just couldn't keep her mouth shut and kept giving me MAJOR attitude. I sent her next door to spend some time with another 1st grade teacher because I just couldn't deal with her - and she was riling up all of the other kids. As I was walking my class out to recess, we walked past the other room and I saw this little girl standing with her forehead pressed against the chalkboard! Out on the schoolyard I thanked the teacher for letting me send this girl over to his class and he said, "Yeah, she's a pain in the ass who'll take a mile when you give her an inch." I found out a little later on that it was this girl's last day of school for the year because her parents were taking her to Florida for the summer a couple of weeks early. I'm sorry, but that is COMPLETELY WRONG... especially if your child is a RAGING BRAT. What is more important than your child's education? I mean, come on, you can postpone your summer in Florida for 2 weeks so that your child can finish out the school year with her peers. In any event, I felt bad that I was barking at this girl all day [and made it so that she had to stand against the chalkboard for an hour] on her last day of school. I quickly got over the guilty feeling, though. SHE WAS A TERROR!

Overall, most of the assignments that I've had since my last post have been kind of crappy. I had a couple of weeks there where things were going quite well, but the streak had to end, I suppose. I even had an assignment one day where, when I got to the school, the Principal realized that there were too many subs hired for the day. So, she came around before school started and said, "I need two subs to go on a FIELD TRIP with the 3rd grade classes. Immediately I yelled out, "I'LL GO!" It turned out that they just didn't have enough adult supervision, so I got to take a boat ride around the Bay [UNDER the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz Island!], and then got to walk around on an old submarine and WWII boat. FUN!

I'm starting to wonder if it is just me. Maybe I just suck as a substitute. For a few weeks there I had [what was likely] a Sinus Infection to blame for some rotten sub days, but what's my excuse now? Is it just that the kids are rotten? Are the kids getting antsy because it is getting close to the end of the school year? Are the kids just being kids who have a substitute? I actually had a kid say one day, "You're a bad teacher", and, for a minute I felt kind of bad. But, then I realized that the kid who said it was one of the most ILL BEHAVED kids I've seen so far and decided not to take it personally.

I got into each classroom these days thinking "This is going to be a great day!" - so I initially have a positive attitude - but they rarely actually turn out that way. My attitude at the end of the day has changed over the months, though. I'm now able to just walk away and not take a bad day home with me, or let it freak me out and cause me to stress over the next day coming up. In fact, it actually makes me say, "Well, today kinda blew. Tomorrow is another day and I can take it as a challenge to make sure that tommorrow is a lot better than today." Actually, during days when I can see things are taking a turn for the worst, I no longer let my feelings compound. I'm finding that I can be COMPLETELY pissed off by the actions of one kid one minute, and then turn around and be completely sweet to a kid who is actually paying me an ounce of respect. I guess I'm growing and realizing that there is only so much that I can do in certain situations. Or, maybe it's just that I've become incredibly apathetic.

I subbed two days last week:

Thursday was: Good!

I gotta say, Wednesday night I did not sleep very well. It was strange that, immediately, after almost 3 weeks of restful nights [um, basically, the almost 3 weeks that I didn't have any sub assignments... Coincidence? I think not.] that the night before a new sub day, I keep waking up and not being able to fall back asleep very easily. Turns out, though, that I didn't really have that much to be worried about.

The school that I was assigned to is a "Chinese Education Center" located just outside Chinatown, nestled in between tall buildings on an alley. I turned the corner on the street/alley where the school was supposed to be and I thought, "Um, Mapquest is on crack. There is no way that the map that they gave me, telling me where I could find this school, is correct." Luckily, a second before I turned around to look elsewhere, I saw some parents and their kids turning into a building down the alley. Sure enough, there it was, across the alley from the trash-bay of a huge hotel. The school itself is quite small - I believe that there was only one class per grade [K-5], and as few as 9 or 10 kids in a class. Whenever I get a sub job, I go to the SFUSD website to look up the school. There you can get enrollment information, including class sizes and racial makeup. For this school, the data said that it was 100% Asian, and it didn't lie - I was the only non-Asian person in the whole school all day.

I checked in at the front office and asked for a key to the classroom - the secretary looked confused at my request for a key, and, instead, just took me to the room. There was no door on the "room" because it was a large section of the hallway, separated from the hallway by large partition walls. I couldn't even find the light switch [it was on a pillar in the hallway outside the room]. On the teacher's desk was a scant lesson plan [WHEN I'M A FULL-TIME CLASSROOM TEACHER I'M GOING TO LEAVE EXTENSIVE LESSON PLANS FOR MY SUBS], part of which was IN CANTONESE. Obviously, this woman didn't know before she left school the night before that she wouldn't be attending the next day. Which got me thinking, I've only had sub assigments that I found out about days in advance so the teacher knew well in advance that they wouldn't be there so they had time to come up with lesson plans. What the hell would I do if a teacher calls in sick in the morning, and I get a call that morning, and then have to wing the day without a lesson plan? Well, I honestly thought that I was about to find out what I would do. I had brought a lot of books to possibly read [it was a 4th grade so I brought some Lemony Snicket, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, and a couple of longer picture books], thought of a couple of games that we could play, and hoped that there was maybe some P.E., Art, Music, or library time that we could do at some point. Another teacher at the school popped her head in and I expressed my concerns about the lack of lesson plans to her. She said, "Oh, there is a student teacher in this class that should be here today. She knows what to do..." Well, the time came for me to go up to the roof [yeah, the playground was on the roof - well, the school was tucked amongst tall buildings downtown...] and pick up the students in the morning and there was still no sight of a student teacher. I almost began to weep, however, when I came back into the room with the kids and standing there, getting some paperwork together, was a young woman - MY SAVIOR. Indeed, she was the student teacher, although, she didn't seem to know what to do all day either.

Half of the day was conducted in Cantonese, during which I just sort of stood around and smiled, and the other half was conducted in struggling English. Interestingly, during English Language Arts time, the students were working out of 1st grade Practice Books, circling pictures that started with the /k/ sound ["king", "kettle" (actually, it looked like a teapot, but I said it could also be a "kettle" - I couldn't find the Teacher's Edition to confirm my suspicions on this issue...), "kangaroo"]. So, even though it was a 4th grade class, I got to do some language arts stuff that I'm used to doing with primary grade kids.

The teacher also noted in the "lesson plans" that the kids should talk about adjectives, so the student teacher had me stand in front of the class while she asked the students to use adjectives to desribe me. First came the requisite "tall", then a student said "handsome", and next, in quick succession came "fat", "hairy", and "old shoes". O-k. During Math time, I taught a Probability & Statistics lesson [My favorite math subject - I got a D in it in college. I know Taragirl loves Stats, too...] that was about spinning spinners multiple times, and pulling colored marbles out of a bag. I actually learned something teaching it to the kids, but there were 25 blank faces staring back at me while I was up there at the dry-erase board. Language barrier? Or was I just unclear?

During P.E. time, we went up on the roof and while the student teacher took some kids aside to play basketball, I got to play kickball with the rest of the class [What is it with me and kickball? Why do I keep getting these assignments where I have to play kickball with the kids? I'm gay and have NEVER liked sports.]. The thing that I quickly learned, though, was that these kids had no clue how to play kickball. I divided the kids in half and told one group to go out in the infield and outfield. Well, everyone started to go to the in/outfield. No, no, just you guys over here go out and catch the ball. Then, when the first kid kicked the ball [again, I was the pitcher for both teams...] the girl that was in the outfield close to 1st base started running to 2nd base. Wait. Why are you running? You didn't get onto 1st base by kicking. You aren't even on that team. You should just be out here running after the ball once someone on the other team kicks it in your direction. This concept seemed to fly over the heads of most of the kids. SO, I just made sure that everyone got a chance to kick and run around a couple of bases and then I called the game OVER.

Friday was: A Lot of Fun

I had to get up at 5:30am because the school was across town and happened to be a 7:50am start-time school. I thought that I was getting a late start by not leaving home until 6:45am, but, I had great MUNI-karma that morning and in no time at all I was bounding off of the N-Judah, getting lost in Cole Valley, and asking a lovely young woman how I could get to the street that the school was on.

The school was kind of neat, with a big open courtyard in the middle [although, it was littered with old, antique furniture (???)], and the classroom that I was assigned to [2nd grade] was big and bright. THANKFULLY [bless this teacher], there on the teacher's desk was the most thorough lesson plan that I have gotten so far. Kids names, times, specific activities, materials for the day under the lesson plans. It was all in order. On the downside, the school is located in a part of town that is kind of foggy and humid in the morning, SO, even without looking in a mirror, I could tell that my hair was doing the craziest things. We're talking wavy and flippy and out of control. I went into the bathroom just minutes before I had to pick the kids up from the playground to assess the damage. Yeah, it was pretty darn bad. I salvaged what I could, and went to get the kids. Now, I've got to say that most schools that I've been to so far do the Pledge of Allegiance before school. AND, because I'm a roll model to these kids, I feel like I need to do it with them. BUT, I promise you, every time the "one nation under God" line comes up, I REFUSE TO SAY IT and go mute during that part. If it were up to me, we'd be reciting Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss poems instead. The woman who led me to the room [who I assumed was the school secretary] was talking to the whole school on the playground, and took time out of the morning announcements to tell me, in front of the entire school, which line of students would be mine.

I picked up the kids - at the time, there were only 10 of them - and the little girl in the front of the line said, "Mrs. [can't remember the name] said that you were 'handsome'." I said, "Who is that?" "The principal!" Well, maybe I can use this to my advantage in getting a job for this Fall, eh?

We got into class, the kids put all of there stuff away, and we convened on the rug to take attendance and go over the daily routines [calendar, weather, # of days in school, etc.]. I stopped the action and said, "I have a VERY important announcement to make so everyone needs to pay special attention. My hair is doing CRAZY things this morning, so, periodically throughout the day, I want you to give me a status report on how my hair is looking. Ok?" Sure enough, at various points during the day, either by a student bringing it up, or by my prompting, a kid would say, "Well, your hair is looking a bit flippy right now", or something to that effect.

I'm starting to do two new things with each new class. One, right when I get to school in the morning, I look at the lesson plans and write the times and activities that we will be doing during the day on the board for all to see. I.E.:

7:50 Attendance / Morning Routines
8:15 Read Aloud
8:30 Journals
etc.

For some things, like Lunch and Recess, I'll put a smiley face next to the word, and for others, like "Spelling Test", I'll put a sad face. Then, for the rest of the day, whenever we complete one of the activities and move on to the next one on the agenda, I ceremonially erase what we have just done. It's working well because it gives the kids a heads up as to what we will be doing all day, it makes me look organized and like I know what we will be doing, and it gives a sense of completion when something is erased. The only things is, after a couple of activities, kids start running up and either asking, "Can I erase 'Read Aloud'?" or, worse, they just grab the eraser and start erasing. So, I've just been saying, "Nope, I'm the only one who can erase things. I'm the one who decides when we've finished something."

The other thing that I've started doing is, before I take attendance I say, "Ok, I'm going to take attendance. When I call your name, I want you to tell me either your Favorite Color, your Favorite Movie - because I LOVE movies and I'm always interested to see what movies other people like - or an interesting fact about yourself." It breaks the ice, it gets each kid to share something, I get to know a little something about each kid right off the bat, I begin to see who the troublemakers might be, and, it kills a little bit of time. I usually start it off by saying, "My favorite color is green. My favorite movie is Star Wars [My real favorite movie is Brazil, but there is very little chance that kids have heard of this film, and it wouldn't be worth my time to try and explain the plot...]. An interesting fact about me is that I have two cats." On this day in particular, I got a lot of R-rated films for favorite movies. I was REALLY shocked to hear one little guy say that his favorite movie is Kill Bill. I said to him, "Really?! Wow, that movie is REALLY violent." This was a 2nd grade - this 8 year-old was already being exposed to ultraviolence. But, he wasn't the only one - I got Leprechan from one kid, and Terminator 2 [Fat Rabbit will be pleased to know that this film is making its way to the next generation...] from another. Man.

For Math, the kids just had a worksheet with a bunch of simple addition [14+5] problems in a bunch of crazy shapes. The jist was that when you figured out that the answer to a problem was 19, you would color that shape yellow. For all of the 19s that you got, you would color in those shapes yellow. 18 was green, 20 was red, etc. Then, once you colored in all the shapes, magically, a picture would appear! Thing was, you could totally tell that it was a jack-in-the-box without coloring anything in, so the spell was lost on me. The teacher made a special note on the lesson plan that "students should show you that they have done all math problems before coloring", so I made it into something goofy. I announced to the class, "Alright, you've got to do ALL of the math problems BEFORE you start coloring. When you have completed all problems, come show me your paper, and then I will say to you, 'START COLORING!'" So, after EACH AND EVERY student showed me their paper with completed computations I exclaimed, "Excellent work. You may... START COLORING!" I think that the kids thought that I was a bit loony, but I was FINE with that. I'm starting to realize that the crazier and wackier you act, the better.