DAY 97 (regularly at Montessori until further notice)

I refused to comply.

The CEO of the school wanted to know why I stepped out of the gym filled with 250 children, 4 teachers with walkie-talkies, and a blaring speaker that was, I guess, announcing which childrens’ parents had arrived to pick them up. I couldn’t understand anything from the walkies or the speaker. My ears were hurting. I wondered how much it would cost to buy some kind of monitor from Zeo Brothers to determine exactly what the decibel level was and if it would indeed harm my eardrums and those of the little kids.

I told her that the decibel level was too high – it hurt my ears and that I thought it was likely to harm the kids’ ears as well. I kept an eye on the kids from the doorway (but the other teachers wondered why I was standing outside when they had to be in there.) She went and asked the gym teacher to turn down the speaker, and I’m pretty sure he turned it off. 250 kids and a few walkie-talkies are annoying, but do not cause actual pain. I’m not about to risk my hearing because they have a horrible 20-30 minute system of dismissal. Tomorrow I will address the issue earlier in the day if she is there.

Today I was in a Kindergarten class, with an aide working with me  much of the day. None of these kids had been taught how to log on to a computer, so it took most of their computer time to go to 25 computers and do it. The mouse cords and headphone cords are quite long and several kids had them tangled around their extremities or the legs of the chair. The tables are too close together, even though there is excess room outside of them. Since some of the kids weren’t logged on until we were 6 minutes away from being done, I chose to let them stay  longer and skip something else in their agenda. The aide was fine with that. But then she decided that the activities I wanted to skip needed to be done anyway, and she took over, and everything got confusing for me as to what the kids were supposed to be doing or not doing. Previous to that, she had told me that she was glad I was there because the other subs always sat back and she ended up doing everything. Hmmmm. I may tell her that if she wants the subs to do the job, she might have to let them do it a little differently. Example: I was supposed to give them math and handwriting work – fine – but she put it in their folders and then they were working on those two items and a myriad of other stuff that I knew nothing about. I would rather have done the two assigned items and then let them move to their “folder work” (a mixture of assignments they do each week). That way I could have checked it as they did it. I also have difficulty with the very lenient snack situation, where kids seem to snack over a long period of time, nearly right up to the point of lunchtime. This class has a snack table where two kids can sit for 10 minutes, but there are 25 kids and there was a mob waiting to get to it (and arguing). Honestly – I still  need to have a better appreciation for the whole snacking during schoolwork thing.

Unfortunately, my stress level then led to my decision to visit the Chinese Buffet for lunch (since I had an hour), which then unfortunately led to a bout of diarrhea which then unfortunately led to me being late going back to the school. 😦 I can hear the teachers asking the kids, “Are you making wise choices?”

The rest of the day went fine, although some of them were rather hyped up towards the end of the day, and there was still some confusion between what usually happens and what the sub thinks is supposed to happen (not every little thing gets written down in the lesson plans). Of course, the day ended with the dismissal problem. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better – they plan to have me floating from room to room.