New School Year – Days 38-41

Best idea I saw this week: in a Kindergarten class – they had an entire file cabinet drawer filled with construction paper in hanging files – sorted by color. How very convenient!

Best help for a sub: a  first grade teacher printed off a page of labels with all the kids’ names on them! This was SO helpful. I asked the kids to come to the desk, put the label on each of them and marked the attendance list at the same time. All day I called them by name instead of saying “you – in the pink shirt”. So easy to do, teachers!

This week I was in 5 schools in 4 days, K, 1st, 4th, and two stints as the art teacher in an upper elementary. That involved supervising them making torn-paper collages, and reading and discussing a book about the five senses.

Suffice it to say that it was a very good week, except for one afternoon with 4th grade in Redford (across the street from my house) where the poor behavior got me a bit riled up. About ten kids (and 4 in particular) just would not cooperate and quiet down, so I accomplished as much as I could. At one point I sent a kid to the office with a note asking for the principal to come by for some back up, but no one came. Oh well. I decided not to let it bother me since I was trying everything I could think of, and some of it worked at least for awhile. I do find that the MOST annoying thing of all is the kid who constantly comes up to me to ask irrelevant questions or make irrelevant comments – obviously just avoiding work and garnering attention. I did put one girl in the hallway, finally. I didn’t know if the school would approve of that procedure, but since they weren’t providing any assistance, at that moment I didn’t care. She kept knocking and I ignored it while I read and discussed a book with the rest of the class. I sent another boy to the office. I have a strong sense of wanting the rest of the kids – who have to put up with these jokers – to have a chance at learning something that day.

Jokers never consider what they steal from the rest of the group. I’m sure that in high school and college (where I was an occasional joker) I never did.