Queen of Rambles

I had a really great day at school today. I didn’t even meet the teacher I was subbing for and I was scared of her. Her students were too. Ok, maybe not scared, but they certainly had a healthy respect for her.

I knew it would be a good day when I saw my lesson plans. They were lengthy. They were color-coded. There were back up plans. There were seating charts. There were referrals and instructions and everything else I might need. Basically, they were the same type of lesson plan that I used to leave for my subs because they are the type of lesson plans I like to receive.

So why did she scare me? She was very forceful in some of her demands. The top of her note had a green highlighted line “DO NOT USE THE COMPUTERS!” Now, I know that wasn’t meant for me personally. The sub-text was not “You, Carrie P., I know you and know you are irresponsible. Keep your dirty paws off my damn computer! You should have written your Mosaic Minds a long time ago so you aren’t going to be writing them on my watch!” I know the sub-text was something more along the lines of “Ok, you substitute person who might be a very nice, professional ex-teacher or future teacher, I can’t let anyone use my computers because there are other people out there. If you are a gross pervert who wants to download pr0n on this computer, keep your mitts off! If you are a college student, looking to make easy money by spending the day IMing your friends instead of paying attention to the students you are supposed to be teaching, keep away from my computers! If you’re some crazy person who thinks they know all about computing, but really knows nothing, HANDS OFF! If you are nice and normal and productive, I know you brought a book to read, so do that, ok?”

I know that was the sub-text. I used to be on the other end of the sub equation. I know most of them are not the kind of people you want to entrust with anything important. It must be even worse here. They don’t have to have anything but 60 hours of college credit. The school district is so big that it’s not easy to build a bond between subs and teachers. Even in my little tiny school district we had more subs we hated than subs we adored. Walking into your class after a sub day is always a bit on the scary side. You have to gird your lions, take a deep breath and hope to God they left a note.

Still, she was one scary lady.

The kids were mostly nice and did what they were asked to do. I had a few of them on Monday so they recognized me. Their behavior was so radically different that I didn’t even mind. They knew that in this space they are expected to behave, so they did. Not to say they were Stepford children, but they were certainly manageable.

I am really surprised they even hired a sub for her. She was supposed to be gone until 12:25, but she only had one 90 minute class in that time period. I spent a very large chunk of the morning reading Lion of Senet by Jennifer Fallon. It really would have been nice to use the computer to do some stuff, but I don’t want to leave any electronic traces of my online life at my place of work. Bad, bad idea. I saw those little key chain USB drives at Target yesterday and almost bought one. It would be the perfect solution to my “no floppy” problem, but the school district here uses Macs and I have a PC. I didn’t know how easily I would be able to switch back and forth between the two formats. I sort of remember they were starting to make some progress on that front back in my Mac days, so I’m guessing it is entirely possible now. That was six or seven years ago. Many of the classrooms don’t even have a computer at all, though, so I don’t know if it would be worth the money. All the teachers have their own laptops and I am not comfortable using those. It just feels too much like invading their privacy, even though some of them let the students use those computers for class work. A lap top just seems so personal, you know?

Despite the wealth of this school district, I think I would much rather send my kids to school in Oregon. I was doing remedial reading today, so I know I can’t use that as a whole district comparison between state standards, but the seventh graders today were doing work that would not have been acceptable in the third grade class I worked in last spring. The other day the fourth graders were doing work that second graders in Oregon are expected to be able to do. If there’s one thing you can say about Oregon, it does have high standards even if it doesn’t have the money to back them up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2004 at 11:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.