Today may go down as the longest day ever.<\/p>\n
The day started with Barbara and me going to the polls to vote.\u00a0 We were the third and fourth ones in the door at 7AM.\u00a0 I then dropped Barbara off at her school, and then went across the street to mine.\u00a0 Today I would be teaching English.<\/p>\n
I met long-time friend, and now retired teacher\/substitute Annie at my door shortly before class.\u00a0 She told me that this was one of her favorite classes to teach, and that I should watch out for two particular individuals in 3rd<\/sup> and 5th<\/sup> periods.\u00a0 The other classes would be fine.\u00a0 She was right too\u2026 sort of.\u00a0 While those two individuals did indeed act out, I was able to subdue them just fine.\u00a0 It was all the other kids acting out in those two periods that gave me problems.\u00a0 Third period was consistently loud and talkative.\u00a0 One of the \u201cproblem children\u201d that Annie had pointed out sort of became a ring leader for an impromptu study group on what was supposed to be an individual exercise.\u00a0 I let it go because the guy didn\u2019t get a single answer right, and he was bringing all the others down with him.\u00a0 I hoped it would prove to be a valuable lesson to that group (though in the end, I advised them to check their answers).\u00a0 In period five, the designated \u201cproblem child\u201d was indeed talkative, BUT he was also one of the first to turn in his work \u2013 all while talking and texting simultaneously.\u00a0 The guy was only a \u201cproblem child\u201d because he was smart and bored in a class that clearly taught to the middle in a whole class style.\u00a0 Smart people hate that and will quickly get bored.\u00a0 The not so smart kids will struggle in this environment.\u00a0 And guess what: that\u2019s exactly what happened in all five classes.\u00a0 The teacher had given me an assignment that the \u201caverage\u201d person could finish in about 40 minutes, a struggling person might finish in 50 minutes (the length of the class), but that a smart person would finish in about 20 minutes.\u00a0 This meant that for most of the classes, I had people staring at me for up to 30 minutes because not only did they finished their vocabulary assignment quickly, but they had also done the \u201cafter\u201d assignment of completing their 10 page book report, due tomorrow.\u00a0 The smart and proactive kids already had the 10 page assignment done!\u00a0 Some of them did other homework; most of them got bored and\/or agitated and started getting loud.\u00a0 I tried to work with as many kids as I could, if they had reasonable requests for doing something alternative with their time, I allowed it, and I cracked-down on those kids who were merely being disruptive but didn’t have a plan for their free time.\u00a0 With that much free time though, I had to constantly monitor the class to maintain order.\u00a0 It was a nightmare for me because I felt more like a prison warden than a teacher.\u00a0 I also couldn\u2019t simply sit at a desk and do work myself, which is what all my substitute friends tell me they do.\u00a0 I also couldn’t do any impromptu activities because some in each class were still working on the vocabulary.\u00a0 Actually, the day went so slowly, and was so stressful, that I began to rethink my whole goal of becoming a teacher.<\/p>\n And then I had night school.<\/p>\n My new class, \u201cSecond Language Learners,\u201d was absolutely packed.\u00a0 I saw many of my friends there, but many more were not there.\u00a0 The teacher was young and full of energy\u2026 at least before break, and then he sat down & settled down after the break to some level that couldn\u2019t keep me interested all the time.\u00a0 Still, the guy knows his stuff and I\u2019m going to learn a lot from him.\u00a0 He also talks at a very high level, and assumes that our class knows more than it does.\u00a0 Some students in this class will struggle.<\/p>\n During the break, I learned three things: 1. the sign-up for this class was so large that it had to be broken-up into two classrooms; 2. the original teacher teaching this class had quit, and the two teachers now teaching these two classes were pulled from other places; 3. the other teacher wasn\u2019t very good\u2026 or nice.<\/p>\n I can only speculate on that third one: that\u2019s what one of my friends told me as we were both in the hallway during break (she had to sneak out to go to the bathroom).\u00a0 She was simply exasperated.\u00a0 The teacher wasn\u2019t offering a long break, maybe 5 minutes max.\u00a0 Students don\u2019t like to hear that.\u00a0 At least that teacher was going to let the class out at 8:30.\u00a0 At one point (during that classes\u2019 break), a dozen students, including many of my friends, came over to my class to see if they could transfer.\u00a0 Nope, our class was as full as theirs.\u00a0 The administration had simply and randomly divided up the two classes.<\/p>\n Our class got out at 9PM, which is our teacher\u2019s target time (half an hour early).\u00a0 Since he was only just given this class, his slides\/presentation looked and felt like something he had done in his Master\u2019s classes at Vanderbilt U…. and probably was.\u00a0 This class would also be light on handouts and heavy on reading from the required text\u2026 which meant that I would have to get the required text.\u00a0 I thought I had an older version of that text, but I was wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019ll order a used copy on Amazon tomorrow.<\/p>\n I am NOT taking a sub job tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today may go down as the longest day ever. The day started with Barbara and me going to the polls to vote.\u00a0 We were the third and fourth ones in the door at 7AM.\u00a0 I then dropped Barbara off at … Continue reading