Days 47 and 48

Smiles and squeals everywhere. The third graders reveled in playing “Hungry, Hungry Hippo” in P.E. yesterday. I had gathered a couple dozen squishy balls and placed them in the center of the gym. With one child from each team on a slider board with another child “driving” them by holding their feet – they pushed them towards the center where they took a large orange Home Depot bucket to capture one ball and then slide on back to home base for the next person’s turn. It looked so fun that I was tempted to try it myself. 🙂

Not so, for the fourth graders at the charter school in Detroit. Both classes were so uncooperative that I gave up after awhile, and simply let them run around the gym shooting baskets and pelting one another with the balls. I was reminded of why I generally don’t take sub jobs in the upper grades at that school.

The next day I was in Westland in high school history classes. The students were required to work on their info packets and keep their voices, as I like to say, “Low voices or no voices.” I even let them listen to music with their phones, after learning that school policy prevents teachers from taking phones away or even touching them! (In some cases, teachers can tell students to place their phone into a box.) Still – some students saw the class as a free for all, and while I probably should have written up more of the students, I limited it to the two who not only kept on talking, but were disrespectful and argumentative as well. Yeah, I enjoyed writing out that discipline form.

During one of the quiet classes, I sketched a student and later gave the sketch to her (to her delight). I had a few fun conversations with various teens before and at the end of the classes also. Still, starting at 7 (although I was late because I got the assignment late) and ending at 2 – the day seemed longer – to be in 4th period and still saying “Good morning” seemed – weird.