kindies

i spent my day doing end of the year testing on kindergarteners. yeeeesh, there's a lot of testing to do on the lil fellas and gals. i think i could it in my sleep now. but it's a necessary evil, to determine who is ready for first grade and who needs a little more time to fully bake. ;) i never thought i'd love kindergarten, but they're rather endearing, really. i spent two months teaching kindies at the beginning of the school year, and i rather miss them now. good thing i'll be spending a lot of time with them over the next couple of weeks :D gives me a chance to get my fix of sticky hands and sweet smiles.

easy peasy

Today was one of those rare, easy days. It was the first day back after spring break, so no one called in sick. I spent the day helping the music teacher prepare for the Big Spring Musical. We spent hours ripping sheets apart to make mummy wrappings. Then we fitted kids for togas. You'd think that would be mindless but you have to make sure the big kids dont get the little sheets and the little kids dont get the big sheets. All in all, it was definitely an easy day. Hmmm...wonder what tomorrow will hold? ;)

its been awhile...

so i haven't updated my blog in, well, forever. and life has certainly changed since the last time i posted.

i am now a Building Sub, which means that i go to the same school every day and sub for whatever teacher is out on sick or personal day. i LOVE the building i'm in. it's in a lower-socioeconomic area, and is very small. there are only four SpEd classrooms in the building: two Severely Emotionally Disturbed (SED) and two Cognitively Disabled (CD) so i dont get to work with the population for which i'm training to teach. but that's all right. i've only got one more year to get my licensure, and then MY OWN ROOM! woooot!

i'd almost forgotten about this blog, and how much i enjoyed it. it was cathartic, blogging about my experiences as a substitute. i'll have to try and keep up with it again. ;)

A Trip To Holland-author unknown

note: This is one of those things that have been passed around, particularly by special educators. It was written by the parent of a special needs child, author unknown. But, I think it's such a good analogy for the journey of special parenting, that I think it's worth posting here.

A Trip To Holland-Author Unknown
The experience of raising a child with a disability


When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks, learn some handy Italian phrases and make wonderful plans. It's all very exciting. After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there has been a change in the flight plan. They have landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, filthy place full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It's just a different place. So you go out and buy new guidebooks and you must learn a whole new language and you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. It is just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But, after you have been there for a while, and you catch your breath, you look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Rebrandts and tulips. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that experience will never, ever go away. The loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you did not get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

a horse is a horse, of course, of course....

unless your name is "Ed" and you're just a horse's ass.

i worked with a real idjut yesterday. i was subbing at one of the middle schools...7th and 8th grade, Special Education class. my first period i did inclusion with another sub, whose name was Ed. i'm sure he had a last name, but he never introduced himself to me, even when i intro'd myself. someone told me what his first name was later. so he greets me at the door, i explain who i am and who i'm subbing for. he shows me the lesson plans, mumbling the whole time bout "not wanting to glue and cut and paste" and announces we're going to go with his alternative lesson plans. those entail watching the original movie version of "Hercules". yeah. that really matches the lesson plans of rotating groups, one of which reads to themselves, the other works on the computer reading program, and the third works with the teacher on a poem created by cutting out words and phrases from the newspaper and gluing them (gluesticks not liquid glue, btw) on paper. how tough can THAT be???? not very, really. i tried to explain the process to Ed. but he cut me off. he just would NOT listen.

but, Ed couldnt get the VCR working, so he had to go ask for help. well somewhere along the way, someone told the office that he was watching a movie because the teacher hadn't left lesson plans. the teacher was in the building in a meeting. she came FLYING into the classroom, threw a box across the room, and demanded to know why we weren't following her lesson plans. i just raised my eyebrows and mouthed, "He's an idiot" yeah, so not professional, but whatever. she'd just thrown a box at the man, and he was stuttering his stupid excuse for watching a movie. the teacher leaves after her hissy fit, which included turning off the TV and shoving the lesson plans in his face. he looks at me, still sputtering. one of the kids made a smart comment bout the whole thing. i said, "as clever and amusing as that was, it's not appropriate. ok, everybody go to their rotations." and in five minutes, the class was doing what they were supposed to be doing. Ed looks at me and says, "You didn't tell me you knew what we were supposed to do." "Well, I tried. But, this is your classroom, and I'm the inclusion teacher. I'm not going to override you in your own classroom." "WHY DIDNT YOU SAY ANYTHING???" i was SO proud of myself, i did NOT raise my voice. instead, i said, "I tried to tell you, but you cut me off."

now, part of me had felt sorry for Ed. until he tried to blame me. and furthermore, he never thanked me for getting his class back on track. then, we ran into one another at lunch, and he told me that the rest of his classes weren't as good as the first class. and they just didn't "get the assignment". he went on to say that Hercules would have been a lot more useful than what they were doing. turns out that his movie, and he takes it with him, so that when he doesnt like the lesson plans, he can use that as his "alternative". sheeesh. you, Ed, are what give substitutes a lousy name.

and, yes, i know that working with idiots is inevitable. but i do NOT have to like it. :)

eight days a week...........

okay, so its been eleven since i've posted. my brain has definitely fried. i'm in one of those funky places in life where i've got so much going on, i can't decide where to start unraveling the knot, so nothings getting accomplished, which is putting me in a blue funk. arggggg. hate that. but, anyhoo, here's some of what's been going on in Sub World lol:

last week i was in one of our poorer buildings; i believe i've referred to it before. all students there are on free lunches. free lunches are determined by income levels. most of our buildings average about 15% free lunches, and another 10% on reduced lunches. have i mentioned that i live in an economically challenged area??? we used to be a booming area, til our industrial base moved out. we have pretty high unemployment right now. the building i was in is predominately hispanic-latino. out of twenty students in my class, fifteen were hispanic-latino, three were african-american, and two were caucasian.

at recess, the girls were discussing their hair (one had elaborate finger-waves, the other had intricate braids, and the rest had clean, well-kempt hair that included fancy barretts and hair doodles) i was standing just outside the conversation, so they ended up including me. i told them that i'd once had finger-curls, for a fancy-dress murder-mystery party. they were laughing at that, and talking about my hair, and how pretty it was. the one reaches up to my temple (where i have a LOT of grey) and says...."Miz C, you gonna dye this soon? coz you'd be real pretty if you got rid of the ick." *SNORT* you've gotta love kids that say exactly whats on their mind, really. and she realized that that might've been rude, so she said, "I didnt mean nothing by it, I just think you'd be real pretty if you don't look so old" ROFL....keep going, honey, that hole you're digging just isn't deep enough yet. i had to laugh, though, because i KNEW that she meant no harm. those girls take their hair SERIOUSLY and they were just giving me lil tips yanno. not really what i normally expect from fifth graders, but, what the heck......made me feel like one of the girls. ;)

free and easy

ok, so today wasn't as much fun as yesterday. it was one of those days where i nearly felt guilty for getting paid, the day was soooo easy. i was once again covering teachers while they went to IEP and/or retention meetings. but the way the meetings worked out, the teachers weren't gone as long as scheduled, so we'd end up being in the room together. and of course, between music class, lunch, recess, and special activities, i didn't really have any teaching to do. of course, it balances out the days that i should get hazard pay...like when small children goose me during Circle Time lol.

and, one of the teachers gave me a certificate for a FREE credit hour to my uni! YAY!!!!! teachers get these certificates worth credit hours at the university or college of their student teachers. then, they turn around and sell them for cash. this teacher only had one credit hour, and hadn't been able to sell it, so she GAVE it to me. folks, that's about $500 worth of freebie. i just couldn't believe it. i kept asking if she was sure, and offering to pay her for it. wow. nothing like the kindness of strangers. i'm still flabbergasted. (i'd never met this teacher before in my life! we're in the same field, and were discussing my uni, and she just offered it to me!!!!) and, extremely grateful. wow.