I am so friggin’ pooped it’s ridiculous. Substitute teaching was great, molding all those little young minds with my nimble hands…Only thing was, I only planned on being there half a day. No matter what the job, planning on working only half of what you end up working can be draining. At 11:20, after four hours at school, I thought I was going home but I got a phone call that said, “Hi…Can you stay the whole day?” The answer was yes, but I didn’t feel prepared. For one, I didn’t have a lunch (and still haven’t eaten any more than a piece of pizza this morning since we were out of milk and cereal was out of the question) and for two, I didn’t have a lesson plan for the rest of the day. And for three, I had to work from 4-8pm at Pier 1. And for four…how can teachers stand up all day! My feet are friggin’ killing me!
The kids were great, really. They were sixth graders, probably about eighty of them by the end of the day, switching around between blocks (which are different subject areas…it’s complicated and I don’t really understand it) about every fifty minutes. We silent read semi-silently, read science articles and studied algebraic expressions for math (twice each, during four different blocks), went to lunch read, came back from lunch together (a surprise to us all), went to recess, got a short break when I wrote my summary of the day’s happening to the teacher, got ready to go home and…also got cute notes from the students on the whiteboard (“Thanks! You were a nice substitute” and “Have a Rockin’ Friday”), received a cupcake from one student and chinese donut from another and, maybe most importantly, got to laugh at myself a lot all day long. I hope I get better each time I substitute teach, but for the first time out I think did pretty flippin’ okay. I’m learning a tremendous amount…maybe even more than the kids. Yeah, probably.
The kids were great, really. They were sixth graders, probably about eighty of them by the end of the day, switching around between blocks (which are different subject areas…it’s complicated and I don’t really understand it) about every fifty minutes. We silent read semi-silently, read science articles and studied algebraic expressions for math (twice each, during four different blocks), went to lunch read, came back from lunch together (a surprise to us all), went to recess, got a short break when I wrote my summary of the day’s happening to the teacher, got ready to go home and…also got cute notes from the students on the whiteboard (“Thanks! You were a nice substitute” and “Have a Rockin’ Friday”), received a cupcake from one student and chinese donut from another and, maybe most importantly, got to laugh at myself a lot all day long. I hope I get better each time I substitute teach, but for the first time out I think did pretty flippin’ okay. I’m learning a tremendous amount…maybe even more than the kids. Yeah, probably.
