Complete 180

I always told people when they asked about the difficulty of subbing that I hadn't had a bad class yet.  That was true until yesterday.  I still don't know if this is how the kids regularly behave, they were too hyped-up after the weekend, or the weather was throwing them off, but there was definitely something not right with yesterday.

I started my day like every other sub day.  I checked into the office and attempted to get directions to my classrooms from one of the office ladies.  This is where I found out that not only were all the office workers out that day, all the office workers for the school district were "sick" that day.  Without getting into the politics of the matter, I was directed to the teacher I was subbing for and taken to my classroom. 

The teacher warned me that it was a difficult class.  He had 20 boys and I think 7 girls in the sixth grade class.  I read through the sub plans several times and braced for incoming students.  The morning started out easily enough with the students heading to Library for the first half hour.  They returned to work on some math.  I somehow got the chatty class through until math without any major incident.  Sometime after recess though I had to give my first "you ned to be more respectful and quiet lectures."  It seemed to work.  Until it started snowing.  That's right, snow in MARCH!  Tiny flakes floated down outside the classroom not 10 minutes after my lecture.  They had been working almost silently for ten minutes, so I opened the blinds if they promised to continue working and continue their quiet working.  They got about fifteen minutes of snow viewing before the class stopped working to watch floaty flakes.  Blinds closed, minds refocused.  I got the students through till lunch mostly focused and at least finished the tasks planned.

I had one particular boy that argued with me all day.  He switched seats, distracted others, and lied to me about his homework completion.  I would have sent him to the office if they weren't so short staffed yesterday.  They didn't need any more problems.  I somehow shepherded them through their reading lesson and was moving on to correcting their grammar lesson.  As I was going through the questions, I had the attention of about three students.  Half the class was talking, the other half moving about the classroom, reading, or staring off into space.  A few attempts to redirect students failed, so I did the only thing I could think of.  I made the students take out a blank sheet of paper, lectured them on their poor choices that day, and made them write their teacher a letter explaining why we did not complete grading their grammar lesson.  The next ten minutes clicked by in utter silence.  The students letters were mostly sincere appologies to their teacher, pleading for his forgiveness and mercy.  I gave several students the cold stare to reinforce the punishment.

I finished the last lesson, packed off the kids and sent them home.  I had to attack the urge to spring to my car at the end of the day.

Today is a much needed reprieve.  I had one class working quietly on a state pre-test before working quietly the rest of the class period (hurray for high school!).  Two class periods are away on a field trip and I end the day with two more pre-test classes.  I need days like today to recover from the almost career changing days like yesterday.  At the end of the day, I'm still alive, and more importantly, so are the kids.