New Vocation? Weeeeeeeeeeell....

Forgot to post this from last week...

Today was my first day of substitute teaching.  I had been curious to give it a try, though I wouldn't say I had been "chomping at the bit" to do it.  My district says that if you sign up to sub, you have to sub at least ten times in a six month period.  They actually want you to sub every time they ask you to sub, but I am thinking that is not going to happen.  I want to be able to sub if need be, but I don't NEED to do it now.  It's just the most money that I can make in an hour with the flexibility of working when I want to.

I wheeled my briefcase-on-rollers to school, loaded with "Where's Waldo?" books for early finishers; art videos I downloaded during my art teaching years; and several of my sub lesson plans that I sell.

The teacher had left me copies of lesson plans that I had seen over the years with the note that I could choose to do whichever I liked.  Since I was given some sort of choice, I decided to pull out one of my own lessons.  With my own lessons, I know exactly what to expect.

My preschool classes were fine.  I had three of them.  I adore preschool, so I knew that was going to be fun.

My first, second and third grades were okay too.  The teacher didn't leave any info about behavior or IEPs, so I was winging that part.  I did a lot of reminding kids to listen and not speak when I was teaching.  That was pretty constant.

My take away from that experience is that I need to print out my rules and expectations.  At the beginning of class we can talk about the fact that this is Ms. Johnson's class today and that I may expect different behavior than their usual teacher. If I implement my own behavior model, even for that day, the parameters will be clearer than if I just try to guess at their teacher's.