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.