Rough Redford

I decided a long time ago that I would not sub in Redford anymore. Too bad, because there’s a school across the street from me. Well, I didn’t have any other work this morning, so I figured – hey, why not, and agreed to sub in 4th grade this morning. I decided that I was NOT going to leave there upset.

From the start, I only enforced having their work out and at least pretending to work on it and staying in their seats. I knew that keeping any level of quiet would be impossible.
Some of them did a few pages of math. Then, to my surprise, all of them worked on reading their Time For Kids magazines since I let them work together on it. It was actually quite nice for about 15-2- minutes. Then they made Minions and that wasn’t too bad. The problem was that certain kids wouldn’t stay in their seats, and when they got up it usually meant trouble. I sent 3 kids to the office at various times.

I debated what to do for the last hour, and decided to turn on a video. There was a lot of arguing about what to watch and I said that there was NO way they were going to agree on what to watch. Ended up watching two Donald Duck cartoons, a couple of Tom and Jerry cartoons, and some of the newer Road Runner cartoons (same plot, updated graphics and Wile.E.Coyote has a computer for ordering from Acme.) The kids were totally shocked when they saw Donald Duck and others SMOKING. I explained that the cartoon was made long before smoking was considered bad for you. It was interesting.

The good news is that I managed to not get stressed out and upset, despite disrespectful looks, comments, and behavior. It’s the penultimate day of the school year – my goal was just to keep people safe and survive. Rain poured down right at recess time – which means that they kids would have the (teacher-dreaded) indoor recess – I was VERY glad to be leaving before that.

In the afternoon, I was the gym teacher at a Livonia school – one that happens to be air-conditioned! Two classes went fine and then the last teacher said they weren’t coming due to their class party. I had a break – then was asked to take recess duty outside. Whew, was it hot out! Some kids I subbed for a few weeks ago saw me and hugged me and some remembered – you guessed it – the Pizza Hut song.

The only odd thing about the afternoon was that as I was passing by the gym to go to the office at the end of the day, I noticed that there were a lot of kids lining up for their buses but NO adult in there. I’m sure that was an error – one NEVER leaves a large group or even a small group of kids alone at a school. I went in and sat down and kept an eye on everybody for about 10 minutes until the principal came. I mentioned that I was surprised that no one had been in there – I wanted him to know, although this late in the school year it likely won’t be addressed.

Gym: varied activities between freeze tag, free play with lightweight soft volleyballs, races, and rock-paper-scissors-capture and r-p-s-last person standing. The kids loved it!