DAY 70 subbing

Day 70 subbing – 1/2 in Livonia, 1/2 in Westland

I had a wonderful group of 5th graders this morning. Someone walked in and asked, “Are you nice?”

I responded, “Are YOU nice?” I smiled and let them know that there was a correlation. It was a good morning.

In the afternoon, I taught 1st grade in Westland, although I took over a 4th grade class during the last hour because a teacher had to leave.  The 1st graders were a good bunch, overall. The only problem was that some of the items needed for the science experiment were nowhere to be found, so I had to improvise (have I mentioned how much I don’t like doing science experiments?)  Also, one of the activities was not explained or described in any way, so I just skipped it and left a note.

Some of the 4th graders seemed prepared to give me a hard time since it was the last hour of the day and I’m a sub, but I wasn’t having it. Fortunately it was easier to “shut them down” than those 6th graders I had for art yesterday afternoon.  There was one incident that I wrote up since it involved an injury. An impatient girl pulled on the chair of a somewhat rude boy and knocked him over and he hit the back of his head and got a good-sized bump on it. I sent him to the office to get some ice and wrote up what happened, how we discussed it, etc.

One thing that is hard about subbing is that I don’t know the history of the kids, or what they have studied. Some of the first graders had a hard time with the math lesson and I did not know whether it was unfamiliar territory or not. Not knowing how to proceed is a handicap.

Glad to see that the Livonia school has art class. And while I have been trying to master drawing an ellipse perfectly, I noticed that in drawing a rubber band a first grader drew a perfect one this afternoon. 🙂 “We gotta have art!”