I’m not a sports fan at all, but as a kid’s ministry leader and former substitute teacher (if not a parent) I can find certain actions by kids cute.  This was a speech done at the opening day Red Sox game by a 5-year old boy.  He was very articulate, and great memorization (I would guess it was memorized) for his age.  Warning- you might be offended if you are a fan of a certain New York team or if you dislike strong language (not f-bomb strong, but fairly close) coming from a child’s mouth, though he only uses such language once I believe.

Since I was unable to deliver it vocally, I will post it for posterity.

I would like to first thank everyone in the three shows I was in for making me feel so welcome this past year.  I want to thank all my directors; Virlyn, Beth, and Travis.  I want to thank everyone sitting at my table:

• my parents for putting up with me which is not always easy
• my brother for recommending me to Virlyn for St. Louis
• Megan and Carol for their unfailing support
• Lisa for telling me to go “where my talent is appreciated”
• and my wingman, Chris, who is always there behind me in EVERYTHING and who, if you did not already know, has created a whole new website for the Village Players.  THANKS PAL!

I also want to thank everyone I have had the pleasure to work with on and off the stage over the past year.  Working with such a fantastic group of people has made the past year Wonderful.  I want to especially thank Greg, Dawn, Mary, and Travis who have all been there since last January.

OK… so maybe it is a good thing I was not expected to give a speech.  I would surely have been given the music cue to wrap it up long before I was ready.

7:15.  That’s what time a sub has to be at the junior high schools (still called that even though they are on a middle-school system- I guess they didn’t want to change the letterheads 😛 ) in the district I was in today.  That means being up before six.  At least I had a solid night’s sleep instead of constantly waking up like I often do.  Once I got there, it turned out this teacher had a class that started ten minutes before the regular classes.  Say what?  Fortunately the plans said another teacher was asked to run this class so no problem not being able to completely go over the plans.  The one I was subbing for was also a traveling teacher, which in this case could be called class-on-a-cart.  This teacher had a class in a different room every period.  One class even had two different rooms- more on that below.

So I got to the room with my cart and the teacher who was supposed to take over (surprise to him!) just said that I could handle this and just ask if I had any questions since he would be in and out of the room.  Well then, I had to look at the plans again after all.  It really wasn’t hard like he said.  All I had to do was pass out quizzes they had to complete, inform them of their class/homework assignment once finished, and then monitor them.  Fortunately I had second period off to look at the rest of the day.

The next period was communications, basically a speech class.  Well, they were good at speaking all right- to each other in conversation that is.  They were completing an assignment as well, so again no teaching- just monitoring.  The next two classes actually lasted for a period plus another half-period.  Being math classes this was a bit odd.  This is actually why one of the classes was in two different rooms.  They spent one period in one room, then had to move for the next period.  I would gather the regular teacher in that room doesn’t have two periods off in a row to allow us to be there for the full time.  To get the half-period the students actually sacrificed their study hall half of lunch to have the longer math period.

Where does the small classes part come into play?  Well, you three who actually read this blog ( 😛 ) already know special education classes can be smaller.  Well, two of the math classes were such classes- the first had about eight students in it.  Most of them worked well, but there were two girls who thought they were in that communications class and chatted pretty much the entire time, sometimes with others across the room.  At least they did some work so I was able to put up with it without sending anyone to the office.  I left a note about this of course.  This was the first of the two special-ed math classes.  The second, get this, had two students.  That’s right, just two.  They pay for a teacher to teach a class of two students??  I would really like to know more about this but as a sub for just the day I really only know what’s in the notes- nothing about it there!- and from what I might pick up from other teachers, but I didn’t want to be nosy.  Oh well, some things just remain mysteries.

Until tomorrow then.  Time for me to sleep…

Well, that is just what half the class did today.  Literally.  The flu is just knocking everybody down for the count.  Okay, the class size was only six students being a special education class so half the class was only three students, but that is still very high statistically speaking.  Plus, the teacher I was in for was out due to the flu as well.  When all was said and done, there were practically two adults per students, and apparently from what I was told the three that were out were the most *ahem* challenging students.  Apparently it wasn’t just this class either.  In the afternoon they combined our three students with another class’s two students for speech, still less than the full six students of the one class!  Wow.

As one can imagine this turned out to be a very easy day.  So easy that a couple of the assistants just decided to disinfect the room in hopes of avoiding more illness.  As for me, I helped a little bit with calendar time and yoga (very low-ability students due to their disabilities) and colored.  Yes- I colored some pieces of a game that would be cut out, laminated, and added to the file-folder game collection.  I’ll tell you, there are days where they just don’t pay me enough, but today wasn’t one of them.