A List of Things I Learned While Subbing - or

A List of Things I Learned While Subbing - or - Thank You

Teachers have fantastic taste in books.

Connecting with s difficult student will save a day's worth of arguing.

Colleagues genuinely want to help.

You all spend too much money on your classrooms. Case in point I remember subbing in a portable where the teacher had brought in table lamps, a few comfy chairs, and lots of cushions. It made the place glow with roomy warmth.

Field trips are insanely stressful.

Teacher's aides are the most valuable ally, and really underpaid.

So are teachers.

Dismissal time is like a brief daily vacation.

PE should be done every day.

There are many ways to format a discipline system, but without student buy-in the implementation of it is a waste of time.

This is also true when there is not consistency.

Kids want to learn.

I once taught in a first grade room where the students knew how to sing every poem in the book "Ride a Purple Pelican". I thought this pure cheese until I saw the enraptured faces of the kids. When they were done a starry-eyed little girl said "Our teacher taught us that." in the way you might inform your friends your are in love.

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But in my Reality

Friends tell me I look great post pregnancy. "Thank you." I say I think "Its just because my boobs got huge."

Happy Ruination Day!

On top of being Good Friday this is the day Abraham Lincoln was shot, the Titanic struck an ice berg and one of the worst storms in the dust bowl hit. Gillian Welch wrote about it . For various reasons this has been the year I have needed the Resurrection to be real, which means I also need Death to be real. One with out the other is cheating. Today is the Day of Death. I used to wear black every Good Friday from my Holy roller days in college to my moody contemplative days during my 20s. I made Holy Week play lists and contemplated the crucifixion. The one Holy Week practice I have maintained is reading T.S. Eliot's "The Four Quartets" every Easter season. This year I have found an extra measure of comfort in it as I have read it as a love letter to suffering. Everything is transient. Nothing really sticks around and to get better first we must get worse. I attended a funeral of a respected spiritual leader recently and the man who gave the homily read from The D...

The Shirt

I was going to write chronologically. Forget that. Memory is not chronological and to make it so would require me getting paid to do this. Also today I put on a shirt that is a loaded gun of memories about one student in particular. When he was placed I was told he was a major behavior. He didn't like female teachers, in part due to his own mother's erratic behavior. In fourth grade he practically lived in the office. I had a strategy with kids like this that worked about half the time, give them space. I figured if a student was having a hard time in me class it was my responsibility. With potentially explosive students I would make it my goal to be as non-reactive as possible. Sometimes this worked, but took so much emotional energy I ended up being super reactive with other students in the class. I would learn later how to be a non-reactive teacher in general, but this year was really a teaching class for me. This child taught me the most. I will call him Frank for the...

Megan's Blue

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