Thirteen Classes

Last week was kind of crazy. On Friday I tallied up my week. I had covered for thirteen different teachers.

Normally, I cover a teacher a day. Each teacher generally has one preparation period. (Not all do. Some teachers have a class every period. And some teachers have extra no student periods.)

It used to be that I'd be asked to cover a different teacher on that prep period occasionally. Lately, it's more likely than not.

(The fact that we're currently experiencing a sub shortage is surprising. Last year at this time they laid off 55 teachers district wide. I was supposed to be worried that we'd have a surplus of subs as laid off teachers go to the top of the sub list. But most of them got called back to full time the first weeks of school.)

Of the thirteen, eight were classes I covered for one period. Wood shop. AP computer coding. Special ed science. Middle school ELD. And science (biology), history (world), math (IM2), and English (10th grade).

The remaining five teachers were the ones I had been called in to cover for the days Monday through Friday. (Chemistry, health, high school math, and eighth grade English two days in a row for two different teachers.)

Some of the highlights: 

• A student playacting brushing his hair on top of his hoodie. With a whiteboard eraser. 
• Having to walk the entire length and width of the campus to cover an extra period (I was late).
• Getting pulled to cover a different class than I was scheduled for.
• Realizing that other class is one I'm scheduled to cover in a couple weeks. And the students are awful...
• Repeating a class I'd covered for three days a couple weeks ago. And it raining on me again. (It rained the last time I covered for that teacher.)
• A "game" on evolution.
• Eighth graders essay writing. (Oh, peaceful day.)
• And a couple video assignments that I'll tell you about tomorrow and Friday.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I travelled all day. (I was covering special ed teachers who co-teach. It meant that there was another adult in the room. It also meant that I got to change classes like the kiddos all day.)

On Tuesday I had two periods in a row in the same room, but with snack break between them. On Wednesday I had two periods in a row in the same room, but with lunch between them. The closest I got to two periods in a row in the same place on Thursday was having two classes next door to each other (and separated by the snack break). 

So, yeah, it was a week. I'm hoping this week will be much calmer.

Remember Me

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

What if you had the most brilliant what if story idea just as you were falling asleep? (Not like that happened to me yesterday or anything...)

So Fire

ASB (read: student leadership). I was supposed to cover three days, but I got pulled for one of them.

They were "working in committees", which meant they were treating the time as free. (They were going to be graded on what they had accomplished when the teacher returned, so if they weren't done, they'll regret not doing anything then.)

Second period, talk turned to prom. They were debating the merits of a party bus over a limo. (Apparently driving oneself is not done.)

"The party bus was so fire," the girl said. Apparently her friend's family owns one (the company?).

Then the talk was on where to go eat before. Certain places were "fire" while others weren't.

Yup. Fire. That was the word they kept using. And through context, I was able to figure out that "fire" means good. Really good. Probably what my generation would have called "rad" or "awesome".

Consider yourself up on the current lingo 😉

Missing Test

Integrated math 1 for eighth graders (read: advanced eighth grade math). They had a test.

The whole district is adopting a new textbook that has an online component. When I covered that co-taught class a couple weeks back, one of the days the class was logging into the website for the first time. So, I wasn't unfamiliar with what the kiddos were doing.

But new programs mean glitches...

The whole class logged in and got started on their test. Then one boy raised his hand. There was no test for him to access.

He explained that he had switched classes, so he was still enrolled online in the teacher's second period class. He logged into that, but there was no test there.

I don't have access to the teacher's view, so there wasn't a lot I could do...

It took me longer than it should have to remember that I could email the teacher.

(I mean, seriously, I email teachers all the time about the crazy that goes on in class. Why it took that long for it to occur to me that I could email her during class time... *facepalm*)

The teacher was on campus. She explained how the test was going to work to me before she left.

So, I sent the email and went about my business. I hoped she's answer me in a timely manner as to what to do with that one student. About the time I thought to check back with my email, the classroom door opened. Ms. J was back.

She conferred with the boy. I caught enough of the conversation to hear that she had him create a new account. Then she had to fly out to go back to whatever it was that was the reason she was out of class in the first place.

It took the boy several minutes to create the new account. And then... The test still wasn't there. Sigh.

By that time, there wasn't enough time in class for him to get anything done, so we just left it as it was. At least next time he shouldn't have any issues logging in. I hope.

Longer

Ninth grade special ed English class. They were doing a lesson on comparative and superlative adjectives.

The instructional aide warned me that fifth period was a bit challenging. Freshman boys? That's kind of like warning me I'll get wet when it's raining.

Liam did all the usual delay tactics. No pencil. No paper. Not sure what to do. Then the assurance he was brilliant and could complete the whole assignment with minimal effort.

Although, when Liam finally did do some work (I was shocked), he did breeze through the first two sets of questions. (I did not check his work, so it might have been sloppily and incompletely done.) The third set of questions had words he was to put in a sentence. Number one was "funny".

I didn't much care what his sentences were, but he felt the need to announce them. (Notably, no other boys in the class felt this need.)

Then he got to number three. "Longer".

Liam: "Mine is longer than everyone's, especially Carl."

I should have seen this coming. Because, seriously, they do have a one track mind.

Me: "There will be no comparing of body parts."

Liam: "I can't say, 'My arms are longer than Carl's?'"

Carl: "I'd say, 'My legs are longer than Liam's.'"

Uh huh. Sure. Arms and legs were what they were thinking. And Mexico is going to pay for that wall.

Freshman boys. Deep sigh.

Yes, they do grow out of it. Eventually.

In View

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

The other day on my way into work, one morning radio program had found a bit of news that they were making fun of. Apparently, there's a View-Master movie in the works. And they just found that hilarious.

The question they posed to one of the guys on the air was: How could they possibly make a movie about a View-Master?

And off the top of my head, I came up with two different ideas. (One could be a Twilight Zone episode, and the other is more of a bio-pic.)

If I can come up with a couple ideas...

What if your story had to start (somehow) with or contain a View-Master? (And hey, it sounds like no one is attached to this project, yet, so you might consider pitching your idea to the studio.)

The Bird

ELD (English language development). Third period was the eleventh graders.

About twenty minutes into class, Rebecca arrived. She had an excused tardy pass from the attendance office.

I told her what the assignment was. (They were writing essays.) She said she'd already finished. Then she asked to go and see her counselor. I gave her a pass.

I've had Rebecca in various classes since she was in middle school. She can be a little irritating. But she's never made the blog before now.

She returned from the counselor after only about ten minutes. And that's the first time Rafael noticed her.

"You're late," he said. "Where have you been? Class is halfway over. You should be working on your essay. It's due tomorrow."

Rebecca turned to him and flipped him off.

And me? I told Rafael to mind his own business and get back to the essay he was not working on.

I'm supposed to call Rebecca out for inappropriate hand gestures and all, but seriously...

At the beginning of third period, Rafael grabbed a computer immediately. He had to start on his essay right away, never mind that there was a warm up he was supposed to complete first.

We argued. I pushed for him to do the warm up. He complained that he had to do his essay. We got through the warm up, no thanks to him, and then the class got to work on the essay. (He seriously wasted a good two minutes with his arguing.)

I meandered to the back of the room so I could see what everyone was doing on their computers. Rafael was busily typing an essay, right? Of course not.

Nope. Rafael spent the period avoiding doing the essay. He was staring into space. He was "doing research". We had another argument about him getting something done. He explained that he didn't need to be in the ELD class, he had the top A in the class, and he was resentful about being there so he refused to work. (Yes, those contradict each other. This is typical for a teen argument.)

So, when he noticed Rebecca (the second time she walked into the classroom) and went after her? Yeah, no. Nope. No.

Rafael was flabbergasted that I didn't say anything to Rebecca about her giving him the finger. But I had a few seconds only to offer my reaction, and I picked the more egregious behavior. And I stand by that.

Rebecca's response? When Rafael turned back to his computer, she gave me heart hands.