Quiet Week, Sort Of

I haven't worked this week. This isn't usually a slow time of year, but I was on jury duty. I needed to be available to report, and I only found that out when I called in the evening (too late to get a hold of the sub caller).

I am terrible at early morning wake up calls. Kind of a silly line of work to go in, isn't it? My job is dependent upon teachers who for whatever reason must take a day off. I should be used to having the phone ring at 5:45 AM. But I'm not. I'm much happier when I can call ahead and line up jobs a week or two in advance.

So, no early morning wake up calls, and I didn't have to report to the courthouse. It's been a peaceful week. Well, it would have been a peaceful week if I hadn't gotten sick (a little head cold) and I wasn't busily cleaning house for company (Thanksgiving, of course).

Next up, December craziness.

Rats' Nest

The last time I attempted color work was more than ten years ago. I was young and naive then.

Christmas is quickly approaching. I need to get some of my presents done. It's not that I've been putting it off, exactly. It's more like I've been busy with work and various other things, and I haven't had the time to devote to figuring out what I'm going to knit, let alone find time to do the swatching and the math that goes along with it. But Sunday I finally started on the dinosaur cardigan that I've been thinking about making for my soon to be 3-year-old nephew.

Since the boy is dinosaur mad, I thought a dinosaur sweater would be perfect. I searched through my stash of knitting magazines. I scoured the Internet. But there are no dinosaur patterns. Well, there are, but one was from Germany and one was from the 1980s. Neither were locally available. So, I am obliged to design something. Ugh.

So, on Sunday I started knitting up the design that I cobbled together from various sources. And I remembered how much I hate color work. Every couple rows I had to detangle myself as there were strands of yarn twisting around other strands of yarn.

If it turns out okay it'll all be worth it. I hope it turns out okay.

Finding Names

Today I covered three periods of government (for seniors) and two periods of world history (for sophomores). I'm guessing that the teacher was new. Her lesson plans were pretty sketchy. She didn't have her own classroom (which meant I spent the day traveling from one room to another all day). And she didn't leave me any seating charts.

Generally, classes average around 32 students. 5 x 32 = 160. If I average around 160 students a day, how am I supposed to retain any names? I can't. I need the help of the little cheat sheet called a seating chart.

Funnily enough, earlier in the day I was talking to another sub, and the topic of finding names came up. It happens sometimes--I need a student's name. I need to mention some idiotic thing that some random boy or girl did in my note. But I've developed some strategies to get a name when I need one. Since some of these ideas came from other subs, I thought it was about time to share them.

Firstly, I never let the student know I want to know his name. As soon as I do that, the student will make sure that I don't hear it. But if he doesn't know I want it, I can find it out sooner or later.

Most days the students are assigned book work. That book work is due to me, and they will put their names on their papers. As long as I'm walking around the room, I can just peek over their shoulders and voila, I have a name. (And as long as I have a roll sheet, I can compare. That way, if the student's handwriting is horrible, I can still figure out the correct name.) If the student's name is not on the paper, I can "remind" him.

What if they don't have book work? What if they're working out of notebooks or something similar? Then I look for notebooks or such. Many times they have names on those. Or on their backpacks. Or belt buckles. Some girls wear earrings or necklaces with their names on them. And most times the students are oblivious to this fact.

But the surest way to find out a student's name is just to listen. The student who's being an idiot is most likely a fairly popular student, and at some point someone will call out her name. It's simple. I just wait for it. And when the girl turns to respond, I've got her.

There's nothing quite like the look of astonishment on a student's face when you call him by name. "How do you know who I am?" he'll ask. My reply: "I pay attention."

Turkey Day

Today was Turkey Day at the continuation high school. They serve the students (and the workers in the district office) a turkey...um...meal (way before noon, so brunch?) the week before Thanksgiving every year. And since three of the teachers are in charge of the thing (setting up, supervising, etc), subs are needed for the day. Bonus: we get to eat, too.

I have been to Turkey Day a couple times now, so I know the drill. I also know how the students react. It's the same every year.

First, the students don't want to do anything because it's Turkey Day. Then, after they've refused to do the activities assigned (nothing too taxing or terribly academic), they complain that they're bored. Oh, and did I mention the school-wide video? That's on in the background, but they don't watch it.

They complained about being at school, and they complained that the food is never any good. Then, when our turn wasn't called, they got anxious and upset. They seemed to think that the office forgot about us. Never mind that the office called (on a loudspeaker so every student heard this) and told us that the schedule had been changed and that we would be going a bit later than our assigned time. I assured them that we would be called, and eventually we were.

I enjoyed the meal. They seemed to enjoy it as well. When our turn had finished and it was time to return to class, the complaint was that they didn't have enough time to eat. I offered to let them take back a plate to the class, but no one took me up on that offer. And then the students moaned and groaned about having to be in class until dismissal time (noonish).

During clean up (subs had to help clean up, but that was cool as we were being paid for our time) I talked to the teacher from next door. We compared notes for the day. And her students had the same complaints as mine. Why am I not surprised?

But I do love Turkey Day. Free food. Early dismissal. And I got paid for this.

Verbal Report

Yesterday's 6th period class was loud. Really loud. I got a sore throat trying to speak loudly enough to get their attention (I had to get their attention first before I could get them to stop talking and listen to me). And they spent the period talking loudly. It irked me greatly.

The bell rang, and the noisy ones departed. I started to pack up my stuff. Then the teacher walked in.

She had an after school program that she was running. The first question she asked was, "How were they?" I vented about how loud 6th period was.

I generally leave pretty detailed notes. But telling the teacher how things went is so much better. Things I may not put in the note (such as this) generally come out of my mouth before I realize it. And I can go into much more detail.

I've subbed long enough that I know many of the teachers by sight. I suppose I should mention this to the students. Maybe it'll make them think twice. I may just have to talk to their teachers about them.

Missing Directions

"Write out the question as well as your answer choice."

The assignment was test prep. I had 8th grade history classes.

I repeated the above instruction using different words a couple times. Most seemed to get the point. We finished the first reading passage, and then we moved on to the second one.

"What? We have to write out the questions?" one boy asked.

A chorus of students replied that he did.

"You should have told me," he said to me, accusingly.

"Um, yeah, I suppose I should have," I replied.

I'm not supposed to be sarcastic in class, but sometimes I can't help myself.

Shoes Not Required

Today I covered a severely handicapped special education class. It was a very long day.

First period I was working one on one with this one boy. He had to read a short story (by short I mean it wasn't more than 20 words long) and answer five questions. It was an easy enough assignment, but he was having none of it.

For twenty minutes I had to repeat myself over and over: No, read this. No, actually read it--don't just underline each word while reading every third word. Now, answer the question. No, you can't skip to number two, you must first answer number one. No, no period there, finish writing the sentence. And on and on and on.

Classes like these have instructional assistants, and they know the kids. So, two of the instructional assistants backed me up by coming over to try to push the boy to get some work done.

One of the IAs had a punishment for the boy. "We're all going to take off our shoes and socks." This frightened the boy enough to get one question done. Then the threat had to be repeated.

Throughout the day, the IA would start to unlace his shoes. Not the student's. The IA's shoes. A couple times he got one shoe off. And this seemed to work.

I never got a chance to ask. Why was the boy frightened of bare feet? How did they discover this method of motivation? Were there days that they had to go barefoot to get the boy to work?

It was a great motivator, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to apply it to other classes.