Today I was a P.E. teacher, at least eventually I was.\u00a0 As it turned out, today was also a special testing day with a special testing schedule.\u00a0 My first task as a P.E. teacher was to administer a two hour long practice reading and writing exam for the new Common Core standards.\u00a0 The students would spent two hours on this test tomorrow as well.\u00a0 According to the rather vaguely worded instructions, I was to read something to the students as they read along, except it didn\u2019t state what that actually was.\u00a0 After a phone call to the office, it was confirmed that I was to read all 10 pages of this packet!\u00a0 Other teachers were calling to ask the same question, but they kept calling my phone because I was using the English teacher\u2019s classroom for this test \u2013 He was in charge of this test, and he had a first period prep, so he was in the office coordinating this thing.\u00a0 I wish the other teachers had known that!\u00a0 Anyway, it took me about 45 minutes to read this, coughing much of the time because I had allergy issues and because my throat was dry from reading out loud so much.\u00a0 I was also trying not to be dyslexic, which is increasingly difficult as I read.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help that there were several impossible-to-pronounce people names and a few vocabulary words I have never seen before (other teachers at lunch made the same comment).\u00a0 There was no direction about what to do after I had read all the content, so I put them to work re-reading it and highlighting as they went in preparation for tomorrow\u2019s essay.\u00a0 I discovered later that this was the correct thing to do.\u00a0 While being bored, I looked through all the pamphlets that I hadn\u2019t distributed; on the very bottom were the instructions for the test that the teacher was supposed to read to the class!\u00a0 What a stupid place to put this!\u00a0 I had to read this to the students.\u00a0 It had all kinds of background that would have been helpful BEFORE we read everything.\u00a0 It also stated that the last hour today was for brainstorming, mapping, pulling supporting quotes and creating an outline, all the things I had told them to do, since these are the things I would be doing if I were taking this test.\u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow, they\u2019ll have two hours to create a rough draft and a final draft of their essay.<\/p>\n
After that initial two hours, plus a break, it was time for first period.\u00a0 With a two hour chunk of time gone, each class period would now be 40 minutes long.\u00a0 This worked out great for me because the lesson plan called for girls, then boys to run a one mile run today.\u00a0 The P.E. teacher had arranged it this way for a normal 50 minute class period.\u00a0 I would simply \u201cdawdle\u201d to get to the track and then have the boys and girls all run at the same time.\u00a0 It sort of worked; though counting laps was a lot harder with 40 people running by instead of 20 at a time.\u00a0 I had the kids then tell me their final time after everyone was done, which took about 10 minutes.\u00a0 If I took my time in doing all this, we\u2019d be back in the locker room at the perfect time.\u00a0 Alas, I was too efficient for three of my classes and they had to hang around for about 10 minutes\u2026 and many of them didn\u2019t, they just left to go get water, which seemed reasonable except that the other P.E. classes would see my kids going to the locker room and assume that it was time for them to go, so they\u2019d go as well.\u00a0 The normal P.E. teachers were able to stop their groups, but there was another sub who wasn\u2019t able to, and she got mad at me for releasing my kids early.<\/p>\n
By the end of the day, I was sun-burnt (even with sunblock!) and tired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I was a P.E. teacher, at least eventually I was.\u00a0 As it turned out, today was also a special testing day with a special testing schedule.\u00a0 My first task as a P.E. teacher was to administer a two hour … Continue reading