Saturday, November 25, 2017

Substitute Adventures

Well I have traded in my passport for a substitute teacher badge and have just as many stories to tell!  Here are a few.  I'm sure you'll be entertained!


  • To get assigned a job, you log on to the sub website and you can see all of the jobs that are available.  It usually tells you the school, the teacher and the grade.  This job, though, only listed the teacher, but it was the only one available for that day, so I took it. When I showed up, they told me I would be in third grade in the morning and then doing In School Suspension with a first grader in the afternoon.  Not ideal, but okay.  The morning was fine and it came time for me to report to the ISS room.  When I arrived, there were four teachers huddled together and I asked what was going on.  They pointed to a shelf with cubbies and said "There he is." Sure enough, there were two little legs sticking out of the cubby.  One of the teachers told me they were letting him stay there because "at least he is safe" unlike when he decided to climb the shelves.  Three of the teachers had to leave so it was just me and another teacher who wasn't even in charge of ISS (it's in the same room as the academic interventions, so she has her desk in there). I sit down and a few minutes later, I see some movement.  All of a sudden, he comes out of the cubby, takes one look at me and realizes he doesn't know who I am and bolts out of the room.  The other teacher calls the office and I run after him.  Luckily, he only ran to his teacher, who instilled the fear of God in him.  He returned to our little room with some work to do and we actually had a great afternoon.  That being said, I don't think I'll be signing up for any jobs that don't list a grade level or are for In School Suspension. One time was enough.
  • I was subbing in a kindergarten class and had forgotten how tired the little ones get, especially at the beginning of the year. We were reading a story after lunch and I noticed that two little girls had fallen asleep and one boy was sucking his thumb.  The little ones may be a handful, but they are pretty freaking cute. 
  • In the same kindergarten class, I had them line up for art. Everyone was lined up and one little girl asked if she could hold my hand.  I told her no since I needed to be able to move around and make sure everyone was staying in line. She kept asking, even as we started moving, but I kept saying no. She refused to move and I told her that she was holding up the people behind her.   All of a sudden, she just yells at me "LEAVE ME ALONE!" and storms off to art.  I guess that's one way to solve the problem!
  • I'm in another kindergarten class on the first really cold day, so all of the kids have cold weather accessories such as hats, coats, gloves, etc. The direction was to put them in their cubby because they can't bring them to the carpet.  One girl put away her coat, but had her hat on.  The teacher (I'm one of the paraprofessionals assigned to one of the children) asked the little girl to put away her hat and the girl's response was "But I look so cute!"  

I'm sure there will be more as the year passes, but it's definitely been a fun start to substituting!

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