Back to the school entries- it’s been too long.  Before I continue though, one of my friends mentioned that I have been too general with my district descriptions, that she is always wondering which district I’m talking about.  I have been thinking about how to refer to these districts because I want to play it safe so any wondering eyes from those districts don’t lock on to my posts and figure out who this is in case I post something I shouldn’t.  I could of course refer to the districts as A, B, C, and D, but that would probably get to be just as confusing.  How about I come up with some better descriptions:

♦ Hometown district = the district in which I live, presently my favorite district I might add.

♦ Near-city district = the district I work in that is closest to the big city, Chicago, to where I live and bears a few similarities.  This is the district that has the really tough ELL and BD classrooms.

♦ Next-door district.  Of course, there is more than one town next to me, but the ones to the north, east, northeast, and southeast of me I am not signed up in at the present time.  Two are too small, and the other two called me so rarely I didn’t sign back up with them.

♦ Supersized district.  This district has a lot of schools.  It encompasses one entire town plus parts of at least three others.  It of course isn’t as big as Chicago’s school district, but what is?  Besides which I am not signed up for that one of course.

With that out of the way, I was in near-city district today doing something quite crazy- I returned to the classroom I had big problems in just a few months ago.  C will be glad to know that this is officially a BD/ED classroom, no LD kids to be found, unless they are also BD or ED (behavior, emotional disorders).  I was in my full faculties when I accepted this assignment just so you know, tired but not so much I didn’t know what I was doing.  I reasoned that there were unusual special circumstances last time- all four teachers/assistants were sick the day before, and I was one of two subs that day.  If you think young kids need consistency, these kids are like autistic kids in their such need.  They just broke down without it and I happened to be one of the targets that day.  So, in full figurative battle gear I headed to the school this morning, expecting anything.  I was early, got a look at the plans, talked with the other teachers, then read a book until the start of the day.  Fortunately I was the only sub this time.  The kids arrived, I waited for the explosion, then.. nothing.  It was actually a quite pleasant day.  One 8th-grader was absent for the first few periods meaning I didn’t have him at all which turned out to be a good thing as when he arrived it was apparent he remembered last time and got visibly upset if I just talked to him.  As for the rest, they had no such problem even if they did remember last time I was there.  Also making for an easy day, two of the classes involved just listening to an audiobook while the kids followed along (and they did, I guess S.E. Hinton is a hit with them), and one class was a single girl watching a movie.  The other two had potential for disaster as they actually involved my input and/or teaching, but the other teacher smoothed things out before they happened.  Kudos to her for using her planning time to keep watch as I led reading a story together before they could get a chance to work independently, which is what they are most comfortable with.  The other two, assistants, were off in watching the ones in specials at this time.  The last class was tutorial, and because this is the last day of the week (Good Friday tomorrow) the ones who did well that week got to watch part of a movie.  The other teacher took the ones who didn’t earn it to another room.

You were looking for a, err, more exciting day, weren’t you?  Admit it!  Sorry I had to disappoint you

How about the other three days this week?  Well, I subbed for art in hometown-district yesterday, special-ed math the day before (same district), and, lessee…  oh yes- Spanish in the near-city district on Monday.  All days went very well.  The Spanish lesson, oddly enough, was actually social-studies lesson on Latin America rather than a lesson or worktime on actual Spanish.  At that school the 6th-graders don’t take Spanish so it was all 7th and 8th.  They also don’t do industrial tech which leads me to wonder what they do instead of these classes.  Art was movies for all followed by a little drawing.  5th grade had the most problems but the rest of the day went well.  The only real thing to report for the special-ed math day was 8th grade at the end of the day- they were so quiet and really worked- was this really 8th grade in April (the start of 8th-grade-itis, a common condition in those who know they will be in high school in a few short months).  That and there was a little mess-up at the end of the day when I found out I was supposed to bring the 8th graders down at 2:00 for an assembly.  Couldn’t they have announced it at 1:55 or something?  Oh, well.  They only missed 15 minutes of it.

For the other two districts I haven’t worked much in them as of late.  Next-door district continues to have next-to-no assignments available for some reason and supersized district actually canceled the last two days I signed up for.  Thanks a lot.  At least they didn’t do it the morning of so I was easily able to get other assignments.  Speaking of canceling, I wonder how long it will take to cancel this next one I signed up for?  This isn’t bitterness talking, but reality.  You see, it’s a three-week assignment.  Yes, you read that right- three weeks.  As a noncertified sub, they are sure to pull that one away when they realize what happened.  I have my suspicions it wasn’t even meant to go up on the system.  Perhaps another sub canceled the assignment by using the system instead of calling the school.  I will be genuinely surprised if I still have the job come next Friday.  I am more than willing to do it-  I just don’t think the district will let me.  Anyway, make your wagers and I’ll keep you posted.

I think…

New post coming soon- I hope.  I have a couple of things I want to post, but I’m really tired just now.

When one goes on a trip, they all go.  I really need more readers for my blog.  Sigh.

Well, on the lighter side is a look at some weird computer keyboards I just read about on another site.  Here are just two examples:

Just click here to go to PC Worlds’s article and read about these keyboards and more, including one for the Trekkie in most of us. 🙂

This is sort of a serious poll for me.  As you know, a while ago I started using pictures/graphics to head up my posts.  After a bit of time, I was told they were causing problems for some so I changed the theme template to solve the problem.  However, this still doesn’t answer a question I was wondering about.  Being on a computer with a desktop resolution of 1920×1200 and using a broadband connection to the internet, I personally have no problems at all with the graphics I use.  However, others may not feel the same as lower desktop resolutions such as 1024×768 are far more common, and not everyone is on broadband yet.  So when I ask this question I guess it can be interpreted in two ways.  First, the physical size of the graphics: I try for a width of 600 and a height usually of 250-350.  Does this take up too much screen real estate?  Second, the file size.  I try to stick with jpegs as it is both a standard and has smaller file sizes than bmp or png.  However, they can still be too large and take a long time to load as a result for those not on broadband.

Due to the nature of this poll, I have refrained from adding a header graphic to this post.  Please answer honestly and give explanations if you wish.  While only one of the options actually asks for an explanation, please feel free to explain any of your votes.  Thanks.

[poll id=”2″]

I hope you don’t mind my not-so-good attempt at dressing the site up with a decorated header…  🙂

I have been doing a lot of catching up on TV shows lately.  This has eaten into my available time to write in this blog.  That, and my interest is sort of lagging right now.  I now have several DVDs I checked out of the library in addition to several hours of TV shows I still haven’t watched.  I also checked out Mario Kart DD for my Gamecube.  With all of this expect my posting to continue to be like this for a while.

As for work, my week had some interesting moments.  I subbed for 7th grade science on Monday.  Not a lot going on there.  Six classes of handing out books then letting them do an assignment out of them.  Mostly good classes.  Tuesday I subbed for 6th grade math, staying on the analytical/logical side of the brain.  This teacher had math classes at three different levels, two classes of each.  All were similar in going over homework, my answering questions, and the starting the next section.  Some actual teaching!  I will have two days of 6th grade math at another school at the end of next week.  I saw a former student from 4th/5th grade ministry on Monday at science, and I hope to see one next week who just started this year at the school I will be at.

Wednesday I found myself in the elementary school right next to the middle school I will be doing math at next week.  The level was third grade.  The day started out with the smell of electrical fire near the classroom, though there was no fire as far as I could tell.  This turned out to be sort of an interesting day.  This is the only school I know to have a vocabulary special- a teacher comes in to teach vocabulary- and they had that in the morning.  Now, music, gym, and art are standards, and I’ve also subbed for an elementary social studies teacher.  There was a Japanese special at another school, but this is the first school where I’ve encountered a vocabulary special, though not the first classroom I subbed in where they had this special.  A couple of months ago I had five days in second grade at this school, and some of those classes had vocabulary as well.  Moving on, they had MAP testing, so that killed another 45 minutes or so.  It ended early so we played Sparkle using their spelling lists before finishing the morning with a language arts lesson.  After lunch they had a “holiday store.”  This is similar to a book fair, but instead of books the students could buy cheap gifts.  The rest of the day was typical with reading groups, math, and science.  Nothing interesting like labs, just book-work for the most part.

Thursday and Friday were both music days.  Friday I subbed for an elementary music teacher.  These are always potluck days as to which grades I will get.  It turned out I would get two classes each of kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 5th grades.  Almost all with different lessons of course.  1st and 2nd played music insrument bingo, 5th did a science tie-in lesson about bones using an old black spiritual song about Ezekiel and the dry bones, which turned out to be a review lesson since they had already done it before.  Oops?  We just made a little competition of it.  Kindergarten had the only real new lesson.  They learned about the difference between a lullaby and a march- fast vs. slow, loud vs. soft.

My other music day, Thursday, was actually a very odd class for middle school.  There are schools that have divided up the year for certain classes into quarters, fifths, and sixths.  This school has the year divided for a set of classes into, get this, eighths.  That’s right- each class is just four weeks long, and for 7th grade at least (8th grade actually has this class for a full quarter) this was one of those classes.  That’s not the most unusual aspect of this class.  That would go to the focus of the class- African drumming.  I have not heard before of this sort of specialization in middle school.  College, maybe high school, but not middle school.  Anyway, the classroom of course was filled with drums, mostly more modern renditions of African drums, but also a few more traditional models.  Also, bells and rattles.  These three instruments make up African music (at least Ghana, the country in Africa the video focused on) I learned from the video.  Yes, with this sort of specialization comes the usually correct assumption that the sub will have no idea how to teach it, so the video is the standard staple of the sub for this sort of class.  Unfortunately the video was only 20 minutes, leaving me to fill in the rest of the time.  So, we went of the sheet they filled out and then I let them play silent ball for the rest of the time.

Well, that’s my week in review.  We will see what the future of this blog holds.  I am toying with the idea of starting another blog at some point where I will attempt to write a story a little bit at a time.  Maybe write a choose-your-own-adventure like I brought up in Taylhis’s blog 🙂 .  For now, just an idea.  We’ll see if it goes anywhere.

What does a sub when it’s Thanksgiving week and three of four districts he’s signed up in is off all week? Catch up on TV of course 🙂 . For the fourth district it is near impossible to get a job off the web when few show up (teachers must have been told to not take this week off if possible) and it’s the time of day when the system calls subs as well as shows the jobs on the web. When trying to select such a job it is locked 95% of the time because the system is offering it to someone over the phone at the same time. So, as I tried this morning I finished yesterday’s paper (I’ll go out sometime later today to retrieve today’s paper currently laying at the end of the driveway), viewed a few more themes for this blog, and ate some breakfast. I think I like the theme I am now using, so barring any annoying bugs this should be the one. It has a static width optimized for 1024×768 it looks like, meaning there should be no gap issue with my readers- why did only one mention it by the way? Surely others encountered it unless only the one uses Internet Explorer- regardless of the window size and there is now only one sidebar making more room for pictures. Those with browser window sizes less than 1024 wide should see a scroll bar at the bottom since the theme width is locked, but the sidebar is on the right so that will be the first thing unseen. The window will have to be pretty narrow I think before you start having to scroll to read the actual posts. I really hope this is a good one because my options are quite limited. Three-column doesn’t work because I like to post images, a lot of the themes are static optimized for 800×600 so that would limit the image size again, and many just don’t appeal to me.

Back to subbing, I expected to have Wednesday through Friday off, but I was really hoping to work today and tomorrow at least.  There is still a slight chance for an afternoon job today, and a chance of course for tomorrow for the time being so I might yet make some money this week.  If I don’t though, there is a pile of recorded shows dating back to the beginning of the summer.  Why I didn’t watch the summer shows I don’t know, but they’re there along with several fall shows.  I would really like to replace all the VCRs in this house with DVD writers one of these days, but money is tight and the other member of this house is quite comfortable with video tapes and wouldn’t know what to do with recordable DVDs.  I set up my little DVD/media player for her to watch some shows I had downloaded, but for now she is skipping them and watching her own backlog of videotaped shows instead.

Speaking of a backlog on shows, I am down to reserve #12 of 32 on season four of The Office at my library, on three copies so I should hopefully have it by Christmas to watch.

Just trying new themes out.  Don’t be surprised if things change a bit daily as a take a look at some themes.  I know a couple I tried before had bugs so even ones that look good may change.  Now that I post graphics, I am trying out two-column themes to make more room for them.

My three day assignment that was cancelled earlier this week would have been at the school I wound up at today.  You can say it turned into a one day assignment I suppose.  Oddly enough, the teacher I would have subbed for was the “team teacher” in two of the classes.  In those classes I of course acted as an assistant, but I did get to teach four classes.  I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by and I mentioned the three day assignment to her and she told me she just rescheduled because she didn’t like taking days off in October.  I didn’t ask why, but conferences are around this time I think so that’s a possibility.

So the four classes were run pretty much the same way though they were actually two different levels.  The regular math classes were working on percent markups and discounts.  Given a cost and a percentage, they had to determine the final price.  The other two classes were algebra.  They were working on graphing equations and determining solutions from the graphs.  I actually got a high complement in one of these classes.  One of the students told me I taught this better than the regular teacher.  I didn’t know what else to say but to just thank him.  So…  Besides the last class having a couple of characters in it (I expected it, being a class of just eight students, and one of the regular classes as opposed to algebra) it was another pretty good day.  First period was one of the two “team teaching” period, so Just watching for the one period and seeing things not in the plans definitely helped here in keeping with the routine though I suppose being eighth grade they wouldn’t have had a tough time adjusting to a different routine if necessary.

It is now the start of a three-day weekend and time to get some rest…

Figures, to use a word Jamiahsh did on my last post.  Why do I use it?  Well, because the tech never showed up!  That’s right, no call, no nothing.  And get this- I called Comcast and they said the appointment was canceled!  What??  Actually, that was the second time I called.  The first time I called the representative was helpful and even gave me a $25 credit on the spot for their tardiness.  She then got in contact with the local dispatch and I was informed they would call me with an updated ETA.  As I said, they never did.  Now I need to wait until Friday. Sigh.  I am actually at my church right now using their wireless to write this.  I wish the local office was as customer friendly as the 888 number…

The above post was actually written two days ago, but for some reason I must have hit the save button instead of the publish button.  So, now that I am online again I thought I might as well post it.  Today the tech came (according to him he wasn’t the right tech- the one who had this job was tied up at another job- but who cares, I’m back up!) and I showed him the bad spot.  Ten minutes later, after a couple snips off the bad section and a couple of connectors put in place to join the ends, I am back in business.  Well, I am going to catch up on some news now.  I’ll post again later.   And thanks Taylhis on the update on C.  I did get the email, and read your comment on the last post.  I am glad the problem has finally been identified and is being treated.  Prayers that the biopsy tests come back negative.