Azsub,

Sounds like a typical first grade - they are just barely
out of babyhood, yet expected to do SOOO many highly academic
tasks. I feel sorry for these kids. When I was in first
grade, it was all about reading in a circle and coloring and
doing fun art projects. Very low stress.

Over the past two years, I have come to believe that I
must have some form of ADD (evidence is the way I do housework,
among other things). However, I also realized that having ADD
is actually a plus for a substitute, because my days
(particularly in elementary) are just a long series of
disconnected events, random movements, unrelated directions,
interruptions, confusing schedules, and half-finished projects.
It's wonderful for me. The attention-splitting doesn't bother
me a bit, because that's how I operate anyway.

I'm glad you can stay in a first grade for four days and
still come out laughing. What grade do you hope to teach after
you finish your degree?

Elyssa

On 11/06/09, Mr.Azsub wrote:
> Well the board seems lively lately, but nothing I wanna
> barge in on, so I will just start my own thread. So far
> life's been fascinating, I just gave my daughter the
> Woodcock Johnson test, she scored really well, too. Even I
> was surprised, she's in third but the lowest score she got
> was a 4.3 (4th greade, 3rd month)in spelling but she even
> scored a 6.9 in reading comprehension... Maybe I didn't
> give it to her right, I dunno. The questions just got
> progressively harder and she seemed to get pretty
> frustrated when this wasn't a "fun" activity to help daddy
> get his degree. One of the most surreal moments was trying
> to decide if I should leave the door open when the
> librarian surprised me with a study room. I actually did
> leave the door about a quarter of the way open.
>
> So I just finished a 4 day stint in 1st grade. I have
> subbed for other members of this team before, but never
> this lady. She was still irked from her last sub who did
> her own lesson instead of the one planned. It was a pretty
> tough class, there were notes exchanged with the T and I.
> She was going to dist training and stopped by every day. By
> day 4 I think she was sick of me. Day 3's morning letter
> had this fun fact "I use the following signal to get their
> attention" to which I replied "Would have been useful on
> day one, I now have them trained in my method" There were
> issues walking in line, but no worse than any of the other
> classes. On day 4 I really cracked down and make them walk
> good, I even pointed it out to my other team mates "See how
> good they are?" She told me about how she had high
> standards and that's all well and good, but 1st graders
> forget everything when a sub arrives, in my note I told
> her "they revert to an untrained state" I complained I
> couldn't do reading groups because they kept interrupting
> me, good grief they nearly came to blows in the listening
> center over the headphones- it was a big pile of bodies,
> grabby hands and tangled cords. The last kid to arrive in
> one of the reading groups saw that we were short one chair,
> and proceeded to stand there and cry. I will spare you all
> the details about the ED kid who basically tantrumed every
> hour on the hour, but let me just say he would storm up to
> the office any time he felt like it, and whenever he felt
> like returning to class he would. And an hour later he
> would storm out again. I actually called the sec at one
> point and told her "This is ridiculous, either he stays
> there or here, or we get a revolving door installed in the
> classroom."
>
> But the best part had to be day four's note that had this
> golden line "I don't allow them to sharpen pencils in the
> morning." I proceeded to find two different documents,
> including one in the section labeled "classroom procedures"
> that said "sharpen pencils in the morning" and highlighted
> those sections for her.
>
> Happy subbing!

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