Life of a Substitute Teacher

the first day of school

Well, today was the official start of the year where I teach. The pace was really slow, and so far I'm enjoying it, even though I know that it will quicken soon.

Seeing as it was the first day of school, nothing much happened. We really just took the two band through the syllabus, did some class lists, fought with Gradebook, and organized music. Half of the eighth grade band now has lockers, and the other half will have them on Tuesday. And I just realized we didn't enter attendence (that I know of) for the eighth graders.

Babysitting 101: How do you keep a schoolful of kids in check and away from their lockers until 7:50 am? You and the rest of the teaching staff form a human barrier of sorts and tell students to wait in the fieldhouse until the bell rings. And I also discovered that the first week of school holds many schedule changes for the students. Many. About twenty students in a five minute period before school tried to go to the guidance office for schedule changes. Also, the other part of this meant SCT re-creating the CNN footage from Hurricane Dennis when Anderson Cooper kept yelling "Get back, get back!" because as soon as that bell rang at 7:50, it was SCT yelling for me and two other teachers to get out of the way quickly as a hoarde of students came running through. Small world though, as one of the teachers that stood with us at the time is the son of one of my father's former co-workers.

High school's time went easily, except there were a couple of upperclassmen who sat in the back and kept talking. SCT kept going, however, they were finally getting so loud that I went into the back and stood right behind them. The students didn't quite know I was there at the moment, so I crinkled a piece of paper within earshot of them and as soon as I did that, they stopped talking. However, I now know what group of students to watch for in rehearsals.

The eighth grade band is so far my favorite group to work with though. SCT introduced me to them and they gave me a huge round of applause; maybe I'm going for the wrong grade level. SCT even mentioned that the middle school band teacher (ECT from here forth) was in a phenomenal mood. The only real problem came when we were taking attendence. SCT needed to ask what instruments each student played so we could figure out instrumentation. Well, there is a boy who plays flute in that band, and when he said he was a flutist, five male percussionists started mocking him. I then said "I don't know why you're teasing him, I think it's cool. Do you know how many professional flute players are men? Lots." They stopped talking instantly and I immediately earned the respect of most of the band. The rest of the rehearsal was spent assigning lockers and watching the students. I got a chance to talk to that boy flute player again, and he's latched on to me now like a puppy. It's cute and I can tell that he probably has a small crush on me now, but also really annoying, because I still like my personal space. Oh well.

One other thing. How many people does it take to put together a set of marching quads? So far, two band teachers, and the school's head engineer. Three. The drums came without good directions to put them together, so we've been trying to figure out how to attach these brackets to the holder. Well, the brackets don't attach to the holder, they attach to the drums and go between them. Three brackets, four drums, and three people thought for the entire week until today that we were missing parts.

Really good day overall, looking forward to tomorrow.

posted by Amanda @ 4:20 PM