Fresh Start
I accepted a job today in a district a couple of cities away. It came out of the blue, all of a sudden. Starting 21-Aug, I’ll be a sixth grade math and science teacher at a junior high school. It’s an interesting, unique, and potentially very beneficial opportunity, and I’m grateful to have a chance at it.
The principal called this morning as I was getting ready for yet another doctor’s appointment and asked if I were still available. We arranged an interview for 13:00. The interview last about 30 minutes or so and then he went and called a couple of my references, which were very positive (he said). He offered the job to me on the spot. We then went over and he let me pick out a classroom. I then found myself driving to the district office and going over all the necessary paperwork with a very nice HR lady.
The district is much friendlier and less closed off than my last one. I am cautiously optimistic about it. The assignment itself won’t be easy; but for various reasons I won’t go into, I think it will be much easier than my sixth grade long-term sub stint this spring, which was a real blow to my self-image and self-confidence.
So, the horse is back in the gate, and I’m about to get back in the saddle. Wish me luck. ★
• 230 Words written by Steve @ 20:46 | 07-Aug-07 in Anxiety & Middle-School • Comment
Middle School Musing
I’m in the middle of two days of subbing for a sixth grade class in a different middle school. My first experience with sixth grade confirms what I’ve long suspected: something happens to middle schoolers increasingly as they progress through the three-year period that turns them from sweet and reasonable and cooperative to smart-assed and ridiculous and sullen.
Sixth grade subbing is a joy, eighth grade involves not a small amount of pain.
So what happens? The usual suspects … puberty, top-dog/upper classman cockiness, height/weight gains that put them on par with adults, discovery of wider dating and social and networking worlds, realization that they’re not as special and individually treated as they were in elementary school, but increasingly are one of a herd of 180 moving through a teacher’s day, hence a loss of individuality and identity, and bullying/roughness that comes along increasingly at that age.
That’s my guess. We pretty much know why this happens. But the more important question is what to do about it … how to mitigate it.
Interesting stuff to ponder at midnight. ★
• 179 Words written by Steve @ 05:41 | 15-Sep-06 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Middle School Composition
Is it real? Or did I make it up?
‘Once upon a time in detroit there lived a gangsta named Darnell. he was a pimp, thug, and we as I said a gangsta. he had nothing to do with drugs cause he wasn’t that type of thug. he was also a rapper. he lived in detroit so fans couldn’t find him. he was a fried of 2-Pac, and was getting introduced to the game. one night when he was in his corvet in las vegas, driving down the road high as a mutha figure.’
• 96 Words written by Steve @ 11:55 | 22-Apr-05 in Middle-School & Writing • Comment
Middle School is Hell
Subfinder called me last night and offered me a two-day seventh grade social studies position at a middle school on the northwest side of the city. The teacher was on her way to the hospital.
I arrived Monday morning at 7:45 and was greeted nicely by everyone. It’s the first time I’ve been to this middle school; I’ve now visited four out of the five in the city.
The school’s scheduling is a bit weird; the first two hours are an academic block – the kids stay in the same classroom. The teacher then has the third hour off. The fourth hour is an Ann Arbor thing called ‘advisory,’ a short period of 20 minutes during which kids can get advice and work on assignments for other classes. This is followed by a fifth hour (which this teacher has off) and lunch. Another academic block follows, and the day ends with a 45-minute elective period. This teacher is responsible for an elective called WWOW — Wonderful World of Words. The students work on spelling, vocabulary, etc., using games such as Scrabble and Boggle and many other methods. The academic block periods alternate classes on a Monday-Wednesday/Tuesday-Thursday basis. In other words, there is one set of kids in first/second hours on M/W and a different set on T/Th.
The first hour Monday was noisy; the teacher was caught by surprise and there really wasn’t enough for the kids to do, so the noise levels rose. There was lots of chaos as I tried to keep 30 kids on individual paths. Finally I resorted to breaking out Boggle for two groups of boys, even though it really wasn’t kosher for the geography hour.
I went home for lunch, then came back for a nightmare of a class. Very noisy, disrespectful and rude; I thought I was back at Scarlett. One girl claimed I called her a cow, even though I was referring to the collages on the bulletin board. I took them through an oral quiz; they knew surprisingly a lot about current events, etc. Still, the less said about that two hours, the better.
This was followed by the very quiet and nice WWOW class, which was balm to my head. Three girls played Boggle and three boys played Text Twister on the computer. I was able to get caught up on these entries.
And there’s at least one more day of this tomorrow, which is yet another day in public education. ★
• 417 Words written by Steve @ 19:22 | 13-Sep-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Intercepted
Note intercepted while substitute teaching for seventh graders:
‘Dear ————,
‘I hate you so much. why? Because youve been ignoring me and I want you to apollogiz to Mr. ———— for being such a pest. And I don’t want you talking to ————. It makes me uncomfortable. What do you people talk about?
‘P.S. Answer back in a note.’
Reply: ‘But ———— is my friend and did mr. ———— tell u to say that’
Reply: ‘No’
Reply: ‘Get over whatever happened last year your such a baby’
Reply: ‘OK I will apallogiz and u are going to the party y or n’
Reply: ‘No, I barly know ———— where is the party?’
Ain’t middle school grand? ★
• 113 Words written by Steve @ 17:29 | 08-Apr-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Even Sweeping the Floor is Better Than Math
Did yet another half-day at a southeast city middle school, with the group that I’ve become well-acquainted with. Two girls are still well-nigh unreachable, but one of the boys and I have reached detente.
So, it wasn’t a bad day, all-in-all. Problem child was absent, and the rest, while manipulative, were fairly well-behaved.
There was the incident where one of the girls was having cramps; however, there being no nurse on site today, she was on her own. Her uncle finally came to school to get here. In the meanwhile, unless she had been able to sneak some Midol in her purse to take care of it, no drugs of any kind were to be administered to her, not so much as an aspirin. This is the climate litigious, screaming parents and zero-tolerance, zero-common-sense administrators and board members and attorneys have created. That and the one where you can’t hug a child who asks for and needs one because our society has lost its common sense ability to tell the difference between an encouraging hug from a professional teacher and full-on sexual assault.
During math time, one girl already had permission to help the school custodian in the cafeteria after lunch with the sweeping up. The aforementioned boy I connected with asked to help as well, so I took him down and asked the custodian if she would like the extra help. It was accepted and I pretty much had some free time at that point.
The last period was pretty uneventful; all the seventh graders (the problem children) were gone home or in the cafeteria, and the eighth graders were well-behaved and watched a Scooby Doo video all hour (don’t ask, I don’t know).
Pretty much the best of the five times I’ve been there. My fingers are crossed that the trend will continue.
After I got home, the system called me to do a new, fresh gig, finally: 11th grade social studies at the other big high school I haven’t been to yet, all day Monday, 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. That schedule still makes me ask: How in the heck do these people expect high school students to focus on anything at all at 7-friggin’-30 in the morning?
Guess I’ll find out Monday. ★
• 385 Words written by Steve @ 22:42 | 23-Mar-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Back in the Lions Den
Just got a system call to go back to the southeast middle school where I had such fun last week … fortunately it’s just a half-day. Should be interesting … ★
• 29 Words written by Steve @ 21:15 | 15-Mar-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Lessons Learned
Another day, another $70. Today is much, much better than yesterday at that sucky ES. It’s a teacher assistant gig at a middle school I haven’t been to yet. It’s an older building with a new annex attached to the east end. It’s just 5 minutes from home.
Ironically, the assignment is to sub for the woman who got the job that I applied for back in November; T/A for a seventh grader who has problems ‘staying on task.’ It’s been a very enjoyable day, even with its inauspicious start. Walking up the sidewalk in front of the building, I hit a patch of ice I couldn’t see and fall on my left side while drinking from my Pepsi bottle, spilling it everywhere. And this in front of a long line of arriving parents dropping off students. I pick myself up, my left hip hurting like hell, and go into the building.
The secretary here is very efficient and already has my time card filled out and ready to go. I explain the fall and tell her where the ice is, but whether anyone will do anything about it, I don’t know. She tells me where to go and I hop upstairs to the special ed room.
The schedule is sort of complicated; the first 20 minutes is ‘advisory,’ and I am supposed to find my student in a certain classroom. But they are gone and when I check the library, they aren’t there either, as my instructions note says. I go back to the special ed classroom and wait out the period, then also wait out second hour, which is a free class. In other words, I could have slept two more hours. But it’s okay.
For third hour, I go down to the language arts class and meet my student. He is wiggly, but polite and introduces himself and shakes my hand. His assignment is to copy a rough draft of an essay into final form. The essay is actually really good, especially for an ADHD seventh grader. The class period passes uneventfully.
We then go down to science class, where their assignment is to look up ornithological terms in their science books and write definitions in their own words. My student and another special ed student in the class are given two class periods to finish their work. My student works well and I just work on better markup on the airbeagle.com main page and make some copies of the worksheets for the teacher.
We then return to special ed for the next class, where I simply do more typing and watch him finish his worksheet. Another girl is working on the iMac for a health class assignment on … syphilis. She works mainly from Google, looking up pretty technical sites. In order to do her assignment, she needs the information, but it also pulls up very graphic pictures (‘Oooooo! Is that her you-know-what?!’) This prompts the teachers to ban photo looking and to call her mother to make sure she’s fine with the assignment. She is, and the reading about STDs continues through the hour.
My student gets a bit distracted by all this, but still manages to finish right on time. It’s been a very good morning. He has me tote around a notebook; it contains notes back and forth between his parents and his teachers, some indicating good days, some bad. There is some conversation about some … despair he’s having, along the lines of ‘It would be better if I was never born!’ He’s an extremely interesting kid and I hope he does well.
After that period, I go down to an academic support class, where I assist one student with his math (fractions) and go back to typing in the journal. There are two teachers in this small classroom already, and not much to do. A thirty-minute lunch period is next. I take a trip to Burger King.
At 12:45: Given a mere 30 minutes for lunch, am handed an overfull Pepsi at Wendy’s. Add to earlier Pepsi stains on pants, as well as new Pepsi stains in the Jeep. Discover that I am told the wrong time to be back at school, resulting in a regular teacher asking, ‘Oh, are you the sub we’ve all been looking for?’
At 1:20: My afternoon student is true special ed. Severe Down’s. Why she’s been mainstreamed into a combined math/science class whose lesson today is deer population sampling and statistics is something about which I will forever be bemused. I am told that her teacher assistant does all her work for her, although she will write things while at home under Mom’s supervision.
I am told that the hour-and-a-half afternoon session duties will be thus:
1. Make stuff up to keep her occupied. Spinning a calculator on the desk does the trick quite nicely.
2. Keep ever vigilant for pig noises. She’s big on pig noises and quite expert at it and it annoys the scary regular teacher.
3. Be prepared to remove her to the hallway when she gasses the class. This will happen often, I’m told; when her fellow students start holding their noses, that’s my cue. Fortunately, she’s fairly good this afternoon; she only gasses us twice.
4. Escort her to her locker. No one knows where it is or what number it is. She does and she has a the key on a rubber curly thing on her wrist. We undertake the journey, which involves going upstairs. This elicits one pig noise per step, 25 in all. At her locker, she produces the correct key, extracts an empty backpack and her coat, and we’re off back to Deer Sampling class. Going downstairs is a breath-taking adventure. Descent is precipitous, headlong and the sound of a herd of Cheshire Whites fills the echoing stairwell. I get ahead of her so I can catch her if she falls down.
5. We don’t know which bus she takes or how to get there through the back hallways, but she does. Five minutes before everyone else, we leave. Our progress is lurching and the Cheshire Whites have reappeared. I make sure I’m upwind. We come to a row of buses; she picks number 46, which is occupied by a driver described to me by her earlier teacher (a black woman) as, and I quote, ‘A scary black man with braids.’ Unquote. I hand her over to the scary black man with braids and beat a hasty retreat to the Jeep, parked nearby. I beat the crowd out of the parking lot and hurry home through the rain to examine my bruised and swollen hip and begin to plot my return to the south, or as far away from the crazed great white north as possible.
So what did we learn today?
1. How to sample deer populations to determine total numbers of the little buggers in the Upper Peninsula.
2. Ice is not your friend.
3. Middle School is just as truly horrific as we remember.
4. Far from being ‘retarded,’ certain ‘special ed’ children are in fact born Rich Littles, capable of an astonishing ability to imitate farm animals. I could swear I was back in 1976, chasing those Cheshire Whites of my father’s around the slum place that day I was home sick from school. This mimicking ability is not restricted to just noises; it extends to smells as well.
Time for winter break. I need the money, so the week off isn’t all that welcome, but I’ll take it. I have no choice. ★
• 1273 Words written by Steve @ 14:26 | 21-Feb-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Attitude Ed, Not Special Ed
Subbing a half-day this morning back at the southeast city middle school. These are EI kids, which is just shorthand for bad attitude. You ask them to please sit down and read as they were told or you will have to call the teacher (who is just down the hall in a morning meeting); they say they don’t care, go ahead and call her. Fortunately, the assistant shows up and they know to behave around her. We spend about 20 minutes reading quietly, then the bell rings for second hour and they flit away to their next class, whatever it is.
I sit from 8:40 to 9:25 doing … well, not much. I read, look around, type this entry. They will be back by 9:30, when I am supposed to start the movie Gandhi (interesting choice for attention-challenged seventh graders). If they quietly watch the movie, things will be fine. If they don’t, I am supposed to stop it and give them a worksheet to do. At 10:15, we will troop down to a science class and I will just observe and help out there until 11:05, when presumably I get to go home. The office lady here is a bit of a dragon. I already knew her routine with the time card: ‘Sign here, put this here, it’s 3 hours times $12.50 and that equals $37.50 which you put here.’ Another sub signing in attempts to point out the obvious: that working from your 8 a.m. arrival to 11:30 a.m. equals 3.5 hours, not 3. But dragon lady is adamant; subs are either paid for 3 hours or 6, and that’s that. I didn’t say anything. I think it’s pretty much the same impression in other buildings.
I don’t mind sitting here for an hour getting paid, but I would rather be back in the warm bed with the beagle. It was extremely cold this morning with heavy fog. Not a day to come down to middle school and deal with attitudinal seventh graders.
They return from their classes (one is cooking, others are swimming). We start Gandhi. One has to visit the restroom, then absorb another 10 minutes attempting to reinsert an earring in his pierced ear. And that is foreshadowing; he and I and other kids and teachers are about to have some major difficulties.
After Gandhi, the four kids and I troop downstairs to science class. Disaster awaits.
When I arrive, the regular science teacher is gone, replaced by a sub—a very dignified African-American woman with an interesting accent that I have to strain to hear. She is confused why I am there; I am confused myself and don’t know what to tell her. We finally get it straightened out and class begins.
The routine is that everyone copies down the day’s assignment from the overhead projector. Then the day’s work begins: A word search puzzle with life sciences terms on it. Yep, that’s it. In fairness, it may just be busy work for days when they have a sub, but mostly it’s a recipe for loud chaos and very little learning.
The sub barely has them under control and they pretty much ignore me. I have my hands full trying to keep my four students under control. While interacting with the other students, they get pretty … brazen, I suppose is the word.
And then it begins. At the beginning of class, one of my charges gets in the face of a tall skinny white kid with glasses. They mouth at each other. At first, I don’t know what’s going on; the skinny kid looks like someone who would get bullied a lot. But no, he’s in my kid’s face, not backing down, planning to meet him after school so they can settle things. My charge gets indignant, mad and sulky. Refuses to do the work and starts cussing at other students.
After 20 minutes or so, he’s no longer in control and he’s disrupting the class (if it’s possible to disrupt it any further). A white kid, he’s now having problems with a black kid and a latino in addition to his fellow EI students and the skinny white boy. Before racial epithets get thrown, I try to talk to him. Ask him why he’s mad and won’t work on his assignment. He’s says, ‘’Cause I’m about to beat somebody down!’
This school has a ‘time-out’ attitude adjustment center. If your teacher can’t handle you, you get sent there to get talked to and do exercises which are all about ‘making better choices’ and ‘being a better citizen of the school.’ I tell the kid we’re going there. Attitude now ramps up. He is belligerent, but I manage to get him out of the class without further incident. As we walk down the hall, I ask why he has to be so difficult, what happened. He won’t tell me and says, ‘I don’t give a fuck!’ when I tell him that I don’t care what his problem is, but he’s making me be a hardass jerk and disrupting the class and it’s unnecessary. A teacher immediately pops her head out of her classroom and asks if we have a problem and need help. I tell her I don’t think so, but thanks. She glares. I’m sure she’s thinking, ‘Stupid sub!’
I have to carry his books because he refuses. At one point, he stops in the hall, and I instinctually put out my arm with the books in it and try to ‘herd’ him along. He says, ‘Don’t touch me!’ Ooops.
This is a difficult issue. Normal human interaction (or at least for me) is to occasionally touch someone on the shoulder, or to get a kid’s attention by lightly touching his shoulder and moving him around to where he needs to be. This is now verboten in 21st Century Amurrica. I would, of course, never touch them beyond that, but now even that is not possible. Sealing kids off in plastic bubbles is probably the next step in the No Tolerance Zone, where common sense is dead and we’re unable to tell the difference between a light touch on the shoulder and full-on assault. It’s an interesting sociological thing, and it is probably my number one concern with teaching; i.e., being accused of ‘inappropriate’ actions which I would never in a million years think of doing as a result of a reflexive tap on the shoulder.
At any rate, I realize the mistake and apologize and we move on down the hall. I deliver him to the powers that be, then return to the chaos.
The hour moves along with both of us circulating all over the room to keep things under control. Most of them are really not listening to us and it feels like we’re just sitting on the lid of a pressure cooker.
This will be an issue in the next day’s class, and it’s very difficult to tell whether kids are actually this way all the time or if it’s the ages-old ‘push the sub’s buttons’ thing. I remain somewhat optimistic; a teacher who knows these kids and has her bluff in on them from the beginning of the year probably sees mostly good behavior. But I’m not so sure, because as a teacher assistant sub, I’ve been in some classes with these teachers who seem to be living on the edge of anarchy themselves. Should be interesting to see how this develops as the semester goes along.
After science class ends, I go looking for the teacher so we can discuss what happened. I track her all over the building, but no luck. It’s past time to go, so I check out and leave.
This school seems to be … racially divided. Having just been there twice, however, I’m not entirely sure if that’s true. But observing some behaviors while I was there indicated that Martin Luther King might be appalled at how little progress has been made since his death. In fact, if anything, we’re regressing, particularly under this administration. Statistics show that schools are becoming even more segregated, students at a college started giving their own ‘white’s only’ scholarships this week and there’s precious little understanding going on.
But perhaps it’s just this city and Michigan. These people are very much an enigma, here at our six-month mark. And today left me thinking, ‘I can’t wait until this is over and we can move back down south where we belong and where I understand the people.’
It was the first time since we moved here (or at least the first week anyway) that I haven’t been happy with it. Actually, to be honest, graduation in June ‘05 can’t come fast enough for me. ★
• 1495 Words written by Steve @ 13:52 | 18-Feb-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment
Drunk Girl: That is a Gay School
Called at 5:45 a.m. to sub for a teacher assistant at that northeast middle school again. This majorly sucks since I didn’t go to bed until 2:30. I’ll be dead by 2:50 p.m.
Stayed in bed another 45 minutes, then got up and got ready to go. Hit the road at 7:40 and arrived at the school at 8:00. This MS is possibly the furthest school from my home.
On arrival, found out there was a big teacher in-service going on, so there was lots of subs and lots of chaos. I spent 8:10 to 10:40 a.m. in the library, first re-shelving books, then processing new ones. Said processing consisted of stamping the middle school’s name on the edges and title page and taping date due grids to the back inside cover. This is the second time I’ve subbed for a T/A in a ‘media center’ … and I can certainly understand why Frank and others want a professional library degree which lets them work in libraries without the drudgery of shelving books, etc. It’s a total pain. In addition, since this is a school for 6-8th graders, most books that need to be reshelved come from shelves near the floor. It’s a constant ballet of bending over, stooping over or sitting in the floor to get it done.
At 10:40, I walk across the hall to work the detention assistant’s job. Another sub is in there already and can handle the center. I sit here and type this entry and cover the lunch detention room during the lunch periods. Trouble is, those are staggered, so I go back forth four times. It’s a pain. For the sixth grade lunch period, two girls show up; they’ve been banished for throwing things (in one case, a recycle bag) at someone else. They gossip and eat their lunch, then take off as the bell rings for the next class.
I go back to the detention center and alternate between ‘blogging and playing my stupid mindless ‘Big Money’ game.
One girl in detention tells me she is there because she and her friends drank some Coke and Bacardi rum. ‘I’m stupid with things like that,’ she says. ‘It tasted nasty.’
She tells me this is her first (and last) year here. She is an eighth grader who transferred in. Conversation:
‘It’s a K-8 school, a gay school,’ she says.
‘A what?’ I ask.
‘Gay school,’ she says.
‘Why is it gay?’ I ask.
‘Because it sucks. It’s like being in elementary school the whole way through,’ she explains.
She gets a pass to go get some homework to keep her busy. You can tell she’s 14 going on 32. She doesn’t learn to say no, you can tell there’s alcoholism/drugs/teen pregnancy and a trailer house in her future.
I go back to lunch detention for the eighth graders, hoping no one shows up. I tell the librarian that I’m available again at 2 for more library duty. Beats the crap out of sitting around playing a game in detention, where there will be three of us covering for that final hour of class. I prefer books to other human beings, a thought which, every time it comes up, makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing pegging the next year of my life (not to mention huge debt) to grad school for elementary certification. I should be certified alright.
No eighth graders show up by 1 and I’m outta here … I spend the last hour of the day helping out back in the library. Anything is better than the boredom of detention. Library is kinda fun. I check in and reshelve more books and the hour passes quickly. ★
• 626 Words written by Steve @ 15:45 | 13-Feb-04 in Middle-School & Subbing • Comment