*****LAST WEEK WAS THE LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL.*****

[...and what the hell am I going to do now?]

There were three days of school last week, the last 3 days, and I spent them where I spent the first 15 weeks of the school year - in Miles' classroom with that amazing group of kids who showed me that I could be a great teacher.

MONDAY was a whole school picnic/game day. We walked over to a nearby park and each teacher set up a game [water balloon toss, pinata bashing, face painting booth, sack races, etc.] and the classes made their way through all of the games. Since Miles was busy running his beanbag toss booth, I got to usher his class around all day. It was a lot of fun, and the kids had a ball. Girl With Autism Update: This little girl just gets CUTER and CUTER. She was amazing all day, taking part in everything that was thrown her way. She even walked up to a complete stranger to get her face painted [she got a cloud on one cheek and a heart on the other]. Miles admitted that he totally grew to love her over the course of the year. She certainly grabbed my heart.

TUESDAY was Miles' Kindergarten Graduation Celebration for the kids. In the morning they finished up these "yearbooks" they were working on, and then in the afternoon we had a party. Parents came, there was pizza, nasty "lemon-flavored" drink, cake, and Miles sat all of the kids in a circle and handed out "diplomas". He gave each kid a unique award based on something that they excel at. It was SO cute and sweet and I teared up when each kid's name was called. Miles would pull out each diploma and describe the kid before reading the name [This kid scared me at the beginning of the year, but we worked at it and got to like each other, etc.] and the kids were constantly guessing who Miles was talking about. I knew every one instantly. At the end of the day, Miles gave each kid their final report card and told the parents that were there, "SO, you've got your last report card... SO, it is up to you whether or not you want to send your kid to school tomorrow..." Clearly, he viewed Tuesday as the last day of school.

WEDNESDAY was the OFFICIAL last day of school. A good amount of kids showed up, but there were a number of absences. I spent the whole day playing with kids [blocks, Legos, drawing pictures] while Miles began to pack up the room. By the end of the day, the room was pretty bare, and looking around at empty walls once covered with these amazing kids' writing and drawings was a sad affair. It was an amazing year that I spent with a fantastic group of rugrats and an inspiring teacher.

After school, all of the teachers and support staff got together in the teachers' lunch room to bid farewell to a woman who has worked at the school for 20 years, the Principal who is taking some time off, and Miles. There was cake and punch, and everyone sat in a circle and shared nice things about these three folks. At one point, one woman said, "SO, next year's going to be weird. A new principal and new teachers. I just hope that ____ gets the 4/5 teaching job that she so wonderfully filled in for this Spring." Ok, here's the story on ____ who filled in in the 4/5 classroom. [Let's call ____ "Sharon".] Sharon was a student teacher in my program with me at Bryant in the Fall. The teacher that she was with in the 4th/5th grade classroom quit suddenly in January. You may recall that I got a call from the Principal at that time asking me if I wanted that job and I said, "NO". Well, the old student teacher, who, frankly, should've gotten first crack at the job in the room where she spent the previous 17 weeks, ended up taking the class over and EVERYONE at the school LOVED her. And, really, she is a fantastic teacher. [In fact, I'm indebted to her because she's the one who told me that I should request being with Miles, as she had already been in his room a bit the year before...] Anyway, the Principal said, "Yeah, a number of people - consolidated teachers - have been calling me to ask about that job and I keep 'misplacing' their phone numbers and 'forgetting' to call them back..." The implication here was that he was working hard to give her the job, even though he should, technically, go through the proper channels and offer the position to other teachers in the district before Sharon has a chance at the job - but, he has chosen to ignore the channels. AHEM!! I thought it was pretty fucking rude of him to say that in front of me since I was pretty much in the same boat and he REFUSED TO FIGHT FOR ME. Without missing a beat, Miles piped up and said, "And I'd like to ask that everyone send good thoughts in Eric's direction because he's in the process of looking for a job and he deserves one because he's going to be an AMAZING teacher..." Miles rules.

A bit later that afternoon, most of the teachers at Bryant left the year behind and went out for a drink... a NUMBER of drinks. I'm telling you, I haven't been that drunk in quite a while. And Miles? His goal was to get completely blotto... and he faithfully succeeded. Somewhat blitzed myself, I told him at one point, "You know, I am forever indebted to you. I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but you showed me that I could be a GREAT teacher. It's you who gave me the confidence to KNOW that I can be a great teacher." I'm not sure that Miles remembers me saying that - I'm telling you, he was REALLY drunk - but I meant it whole-heartedly. That evening, I had a number of teachers and support people from Bryant come up to me and wish me the best in my job search, telling me that I am a great person and that they know that I'm going to be a fantastic teacher. It was a good night.

I subbed two more days last week, and boy did they SUCK.

WEDNESDAY I was at a school which I swear I had heard through the sub grapevine was a good school. Not my experience. I got there and found out that my classroom was in the "annex" buiding across the street - which I thought was a pretty crappy idea for an elementary school. Why make 6-10 year olds cross a busy-ish street when they have to go to lunch?

Anyway, I got into the classroom and the teacher that I would be subbing for was there getting ready to leave for a morning visit at another school. He told me that there were some doozies in his class, but that he had already arranged for them to spend the day across the hall in another room... Bad Sign #1. As the kids were coming into the room at the start of the day and I was trying to get them to sit on the rug at the front of the room, a woman walked in and said that she was a sub for some resource teacher and that the office had sent her up to our room for "extra support"... Bad Sign #2. One kid arrived half-an-hour late with his mother. I walked over, introduced myself as the sub, and the mother said, 'Oh, your a sub, huh? Well, let me give you my cell phone number in case you need to call me"... Bad Sign #3. I said to her, "Well, thanks for your number, but I certainly hope that I won't have a reason to call." She give me a blank stare and walked out of the room.

Maybe I exaggerate, and maybe I perceive certain situations as a lot worse than someone else might see them, but this day got pretty out of hand. I mean, these kids were pretty monsterish. Most of the kids just seemed to be SO freakin' angry for some reason. There were two or three handwritten posters in the room that had ways to "calm down" written on them, and four of the kids had little paper bags with slips of paper in them. Apparently, whenever the kid felt angry or upset they reached into the bag and got to do whatever the little slip told them to do: i.e. Get a drink of water. Take 5 deep breaths. Draw a picture. Count backwards from 20. etc. Evidently, a number of these kids had MAJOR issues.

After morning recess, the kids came back in an even worse mood. A couple of the students, I was told, were down in the office because they had been fighting, and a couple of other kids were yelling across the hall to one of the "bad" kids who the teacher arranged to spend the day across the hall. SOMETHING was going on because 3 kids on my side of the hall sat down and drew pictures of people being RUN OVER BY CARS and BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD, then SPIT on the papers, folded them up, and put them in the "cubby" of this girl across the hall. I KID YOU NOT.

All morning I barked and barked. Sure, we got a couple of things accomplished, but, for the most part, VERY FEW kids were paying any attention to me or showed me the least amount of respect. At lunchtime, I made an announcement for everyone to clean up their tables and then line up by the door quietly and in a line. I spent 15 MINUTES exclaiming, "DO YOU GUYS WANT TO GO TO LUNCH OR NOT?! WE'RE NOT LEAVING THIS ROOM UNTIL YOU CAN SHOW ME THAT YOU CAN GET IN A LINE AND NOT TALK!" Well, in the end, I got neither of my wishes granted, but I really didn't want to keep them from eating their lunches, so we set off down the hall. Thankfully, all of the other classrooms were empty [THEY went to lunch 15 minutes ago!] because these kids were SCREAMING down the halls. Walking down the stairs, another teacher passed by us and I said, "I'm SO sorry!" She said, "Oh, believe me, it's not your fault." Whew. I walked them across the street - ok, actually, they all kind of ran across the street without looking both ways - and we went into the cafeteria. People, I'm telling you, this was one of the LOUDEST and most CHAOTIC lunchrooms I've seen. Kids were yelling, running around, there was food on the tables and floors, it was CHAOS.

THANKFULLY, the regular classroom teacher returned at lunchtime and I got to spend the afternoon in a different classroom helping out a teacher who was there but wanted to work with a small group of kids.

ON THURSDAY, I returned to Bryant and ended up spending the morning in a 3rd grade class, and the afternoon in a 2nd grade, Spanish Bilingual class. The morning was alright - the teacher told me to alternate reading aloud from Where the Red Fern Grows and let them work on these end of the year biography books they were trying to finish up. Well, she said to me, "Yeah, I'm trying to blaze through the book because I want to show them the movie next week - the last week of school. They love hearing stories read aloud, and they are LOVING listening to this book in particular." Well, the kids didn't really show this dedication to me. The majority of the kids seemed BORED TO TEARS by the book, and, I've got to admit that I don't blame them. Even I was bored with it and I WAS READING. Dry dry dry.

In the afternoon I went to the other classroom and was instructed to read them a story from this collection of Greek Myths. I chose a story about Echo and Narcissus, and did a FANTASTIC job bringing the story alive. But, again, these kids weren't completely into having me there. There were 5 boys in this class that were ABSOLUTE MONSTERS. Truly, 5 of the most ill behaved kids I've seen so far. RUDE, INCONSIDERATE, DISRESPECTFUL, CRUDE, LOUD, etc. I mean, they weren't listening to me AT ALL. Even when I had the kids come to the rug to read some of the stories they had just written [well, MOST of them wrote a story], these five boys were rolling around on the floor, hitting each other, laughing, etc. I pulled out my patented "It hurts my feelings that you don't show each other respect because you can learn a lot from each other" speech, but it fell on very deaf ears.

At the end of the day I made an announcement to the class to clean up so that we could go home, and only 2 kids actually started cleaning up. "Um, maybe you didn't hear me! It's time to GO HOME! LET'S START CLEANING UP!" The five boys thought that they would be helpful by getting into this large drawer full of fake money [bills and coins] AND THROWING IT ALL OVER THE ROOM. I ran over to them and said, "THAT IS NOT BEING HELPFUL. CLEAN IT ALL UP... NOW!" Sure enough, they just kept throwing it around. I ended up sending one kid to get the regular classroom teacher [who was just around the corner in the library] so that she could force these kids to clean up while I took the rest of the class outside to go home. When I came back to the room the teacher said, "So, you got to experience my boys, eh? Yeah, they are horrible and I've been working on them all year but nothing seems to work. I'm NOT going to be crying on the last day of school. I won't miss them at all."

Thankfully, that was my last sub job of the year. There was NO WAY that I could've dealt with any more.

So, yeah, I suppose that I should talk a bit about the job search. [There are only 6 days left in the current school year.]

Well, "nothing is happening with it" is the short answer. I don't even know what the hell I'm going to do this summer.

I subbed for Miles today - I got there pretty early, looked over the lesson plans, and then went to gab with my friend Monica [who took over for the bi-lingual Kindergarten teacher who is on maternity leave... IT'S A GIRL!}. When I came back down to the room, this semester's student teacher [my REPLACEMENT!] was in the room. Apparently she mistakenly thought that today was the last Tuesday of the school year, when, really, she was supposed to come to school NEXT Tuesday. I asked her [before she frantically ran off saying, "I suppose I should go to work right now so that I can get next Tuesday off..."] what she was doing this summer and she told me that she will be working for the Marin Day Schools all summer, mostly as a substitute. She told me that I should "totally" call them up because "they are always looking for subs, and they would totally hire you". Please let this work out for me because, as of right now, I have no job past this Thursday and we are HURTING for money. Yes, this is why I went back to school for the last FOUR years: to be completely unemployed.

The school district is completely dragging its heels on the whole "hiring of new teachers" thing. We had to have our applications in by April 2nd, and they promised, via auto-reply email when you submitted your resume, that the hiring process would be swift. We were supposed to know by April 25th if we made it to the round where we got district interviews. The district interviews were to be on May 22nd. No one that I know who applied has heard ANYTHING since the auto-email. It just horks me off that they haven't even had the decency to send a mass email saying something to the effect of "The process of hiring this year is proving to be a special challenge. As of right now we have no positions available/don't know how many positions we will be hiring for. We are reading through applications and will get back to you as soon as possible." But, no. Some people on the inside say, "Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure that there will be jobs available and you will have no trouble getting one", and I want to keep a positive attitude, but... the waiting just sucks. There is a 1st grade job that I know is open at a school that I liked subbing at, and I will likely contact the Principal in the next couple of days, but I just don't see it turning out in my favor. Right now, teachers that have been "consolidated" have first choice of jobs, and then "voluntary move" teachers have second choice. One all teachers who have been consolidated or just want a change of scenery have made the move, then any positions that are open, or suddenly become available over the summer, are up for grabs to people like myself.

I just don't know that I could handle being a sub next year. The money is decent, but the headaches can be huge. And, again, I didn't go through all of this schooling - and financial aid debt - to get some crappy job that I didn't even need all of this schooling/training to get. Friday will be my last day subbing this school year, and it can't come too soon [even though we need the money]. I'm probably going to go into Miles' room Monday [school picnic], Tuesday, and Wednesday [last day of school] next week - I don't figure I would get any sub work next week anyway. What lousy teacher would take a day off during the last 3 days of school?

So, yeah, I subbed for Miles today and the kids were kind of crazy. So, maybe it IS just me. Or, maybe it IS just because the kids are getting antsy what with it being the end of the school year. It's not a very exact science. I just know that today these kids were VERY active and VERY loud. I realized today that subbing at Bryant is WAY more stressful than subbing at some other school that I've never been to before. At least at some random school I can go in, do my job, and walk away without any consequences for a bad day. At Bryant, because I know all of the teachers and a lot of the kids, there is more pressure to "have a really good day". If things suck, and I yell at a couple of kids, chances are I will see them again soon, or the teacher will find out and I'll end up looking like a complete sucky, jerky teacher. AND, when subbing for Miles, I feel like I should be able to accomplish a WHOLE bunch successfully in a day because I was in there all last Fall teaching. STRESS-FULL.

The Principal of Bryant [who has decided to leave after this school year - yeah, the least he could've done for me was hire me for Miles' job and then left. Heck, his decision to hire me wouldn't have ended up affecting him at all anyway...] has called me in as a sub for Thursday of this week. I guess he wants to use up all of the sub money for the year, so I will likely be a "floating sub" [no sorcery involved] all day, going from room to room giving teachers time to finish up end of the year testing, scoring, grading, etc. Could be fun, or it could be a nightmare. I'll let you know which it ends up being.