Clever Costume

It's been a long day and it's not over yet, so I'll make this brief.

Best costume of the day: high school aged boy, wearing a red shirt with a big gold bow on it. From the bow hung a large tag. It read: "To: Women; From: God". He dressed up as God's gift to women. Brilliant!

Happy Halloween.

Taking Names

Today I covered a 7th grade "core" class. I had the same group for two periods--one period for English and one period for world history. They were supposed to work quietly. But quiet working for a sub is hard for kids that age. I needed to give them a bit of an incentive.

Some of them just kept talking. So, I wrote their names on the board. It's amazing how well that works. The girl wasn't facing forward, but her neighbors helpfully pointed out that I had listed her. So, she turned around and stopped talking. That's all I wanted.

6th period I did the same. I only had to list two students to get the whole class to stop talking and get to work. I intended to erase the girls' names after class and leave it at that.

The teacher I was covering was on a field trip. I talked to her before school. So, I shouldn't have been surprised that she arrived at the end of 6th period. And she immediately noticed the names on the board.

Oops.

The girls got detention. The rest of the class got a talking to (for too much talking and not following the sub's instructions).

I shouldn't feel guilty. It's not like they didn't deserve a consequence for not behaving as instructed. But I feel a little twinge all the same.

Sub Behavior

The 7th grade teacher I covered on a Friday and Monday a couple weeks ago had a meeting 4th period, and by sheer luck I was sent to cover her class on my prep. The kids seemed to remember me, calling me by name even though I didn't put my name on the board.

When I got there their teacher was going over instructions. The room was silent. Then they got to work and the room continued to be silent. Then the teacher left.

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

Then five students needed a dictionary, three others needed to sharpen their pencils, and the boy over in the corner reminded me why the story about the teacher who duct taped a student to his chair wasn't such a horrible idea. And I got several questions about the assignment--questions I could answer because I had been listening when the teacher was giving directions.

I wasn't in there for the full period. I had them for about 40 minutes. They got louder and louder. I shushed them, but that didn't work for long.

Then their teacher returned. She barely said anything to me as she took back over. "Put your books and everything away," she began. She sounded angry.

They knew she was returning. So, they did it to themselves.

Taking Roll

The computer in the classroom was ancient in terms of computers. It looked like it had been built circa 1995. And it was sloooooow.

What do I need a computer for? Attendance.

The olden days of Scantron roll sheets are gone. Nowadays, the teachers can go online to input the attendance. There is a website. And we subs are given a temporary password. We log on, click "A" for any absent students, and submit. Easy.

Usually it's easy. Not so much today.

1st period's roll went fairly smoothly, considering. It took me about three tries to log on (I kept getting blank screens), but eventually the roll was input. But then a student arrived late. She had a pass, so all I had to do was go back into the screen, mark her "P" for present, and submit. Her absence would have been eliminated. But I couldn't log back on.

I tried every trick I knew. Then I moved on to my sure fire way of fixing computer problems. I restarted the computer.

A period is almost an hour long. For reference.

So, about halfway through 1st period I sent the computer into restart mode. About halfway through 2nd period, since it looked like the computer was completely frozen in shut down mode, I manually turned the computer off. It took the rest of 2nd period, all of 3rd period, and part of 4th period for the computer to boot up. Then it took the rest of 4th period (more than a half hour) before I could even attempt to find the Internet.

At the beginning of 5th period I had Internet. I attempted to get to the attendance website. Then it took me all of 5th period to input the roll for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th periods. I had to log on multiple times before I could get the screen, and every time I had to submit something, it took nearly 5 minutes before I could do anything else.

Just for comparison, last Thursday I had no trouble. The students had a 5 minute warm up assignment (reading). In that 5 minutes, I could check the roll from the seating chart, go and input the roll into the computer, do a head count to double check, and get to the front of the room, and I still had 2-3 minutes before they were finished.

But I'm stubborn. Today, I won that battle.

Lawn Signs

I was out and about, riding in a car. I was looking at the scenery. Many houses now have those lawn signs, proclaiming to the world at large who the occupants are voting for. One house attracted my attention.

This one house had three signs on the lawn. The first sign was for a presidential candidate (the one I'm not voting for). The second sign was for a proposition (one I'm so voting against). The third sign, however, was for some local something with a candidate that I'm unfamiliar with.

Now, wasn't that nice? I no longer have to research that candidate. Because, if that person is for them, I am most definitely against.

Future Actor?

The sun just went into Scorpio (last night about 6 PM on the west coast). No wonder I've been feeling resentful and retaliatory. But then again, I had 8th graders today.

They were reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a book that I loved when I was about their age. But of course they were having none of it. And I spent the day giving them cold stares in the hopes that they would settle down and actually follow along.

Listening to students, especially middle schoolers, read anything can be painful. They read in this boring monotone. They mangle words. They don't get into the spirit of it. So, when one boy actually got into his reading--giving the words a bit of a Southern inflection, reading for meaning, and giving us something interesting to listen to--I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the class thought it was hysterical and they laughed so loudly that the boy had to stop reading. Sigh.

I guess that's the start of it. The apathy. Because when they do get into something, they get laughed at. It's sad.

Goofy

I really should watch what I put in my notes to the teacher.

Last week I covered a geometry class. It was a pretty straightforward day. They had workbook pages to do. They did them. The day was pretty unremarkable. I didn't even blog about it.

As luck would have it, today I was to cover that class again. As I was walking to the office this morning, I ran into a student from that class. He asked if I was there for his geometry teacher. When I said I was, he commented upon my comment for his class. "You told her we were goofy."

5th period. They were a bit strange, but in a good way. They had odd conversations. They made strange jokes. But they were on task, so it didn't concern me too much. However, I did comment in my note that they were "goofy". And today I paid for that description.

"We won't be goofy today. [Random student] is missing."

"Oh, careful. Don't talk about that. We'll be called goofy again."

Some teachers read the sub report to the students. It's especially useful if the class misbehaved. I guess this teacher gave them a bit of a hard time about the "goofy" comment.

So, today my note about 5th period read in part: "I had no idea that calling them "goofy" would cause so much drama..." I suppose I shouldn't have. That just might make it start all over again.