Law of Gravity

The topic for the day was writing a summary, so for the seventh graders' warm up, they were to write a summary of their favorite movie. You'd think this would be easy, but several didn't have a favorite movie or didn't like movies, or some such. But once I took away the onus of it having to be their very favorite,  most found something to write about. I asked for volunteers to read out their summaries without telling us what movie. And for the most part we knew what the movie was just from the summary. There was Toy Story, X-Men, Spongebob Squarepants, The Lion King, and several other movies that weren't at all surprising. I may have mentioned a time or two that sixth periods tend to be different. They can be wild. But I've got a good group, and I'm not allowing wild, so this group is just kind of strange. There are a couple girls who act way more mature (and seem to have a good head on their shoulders) than I generally get in a seventh grade class. I gave t...

Back in my retail days (at the evil toy store), I worked for a time in the cage where they lock up all the video games. (They got rid of the cage in the latter days of my employment with them.) It was a small booth where we constantly were filling the shelves only to have the games (and other electronic stuff) sell. We'd get trucks in. We'd place the newly arrived merchandise on the shelves. People would purchase things, and we would hand them out to them. It was a decent system most of the time. But, it was retail, so from time to time, we would get new items in that didn't have room on the shelves. Or we would get shipments and it would be so busy we didn't have time to put them away. At those times, the floor of this very narrow booth would fill so one could barely walk back and forth to get stuff. When I'd arrive some evening (I was in college at the time) to find the booth piled with boxes, I would play a game called Find the Floor. The object was to get every ...

I'm still in that middle school English class I started off the year in. There's a reason I don't do these sorts of assignments all that often. They are hard slog. I have three periods of seventh graders. They've been lovely. A little squirrelly, sure, but for the most part they've been fine. The eighth graders, however... This day was going a bit better than some others, but the group at the back thought something was hilarious. "They're laughing at you," a girl informed me. Because, of course they were.

Friday was picture day. I've never before experienced picture day. The English teachers usually aren't out for it, I suppose. I can't imagine why... I vaguely knew we had to go to the cafeteria. I thought I knew the way. As I had first period line up outside, I saw another English teacher leading her class. I told my kiddos to follow them. Turned out, I would have totally gone to the wrong side of the building if that other teacher hadn't been there. Then she clued me in that I had to pick up cards to distribute to the kiddos. (The teachers are so helpful. They really are.) These cards had bar codes on them that the photographers scanned. That gave the computer enough info so the students' ID cards could be printed out immediately. After that, I became an old pro fast. By sixth period I knew the drill. I instructed the two kiddos that didn't have cards (the card system was great, but these things are never perfect) to bring their schedules as the photographer ju...

I'm slowly getting up to speed in this middle school English class. During the first full week (the first week of school was just Thursday and Friday), one of the major things I worked on was establishing some sort of routine. I don't have a lot of resources. There weren't many supplies left in the room from last year. (I've been slowly acquiring things. I learned who the keeper of the dry erase markers and paper clips is. So, I've gotten a few necessary supplies thus far.) The one thing the room did have is a working projector. And the teacher in there from last year left behind his laptop. Well, it's the school's laptop, but he didn't return it, so I commandeered it. But the laptop was buggy. There was some antiviral software that needed to be renewed, and getting logged in was a trial. I got help from the technology person, and things seemed to be working. The first couple days the computer asked for a restart a few times. I suppose since the computer...

It was the first full week of school. I am covering a "vacant class" until they are able to bring in a teacher for the rest of the year. I have three periods of seventh grade English and two periods of eighth grade English. Because of this, I got to do something I've never gotten to do before. I got to go over the syllabus with the students. The next day, the eighth graders had a writing assignment. (The seventh graders did too, but they are way more cooperative than the eighth graders. Good for me, bad for the blog.) They were to write a letter of introduction. It's their first writing assignment of the year. Every day I've tried to have a list of what they'll need for the day written on the board for them. (Some days I'm able to, others not so much.) On this day I had that list up. They needed a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. I explained the assignment. They got to writing. Only about half way through the period, one boy said he was finished. That...

Yesterday I whined about getting stuck with a vacant class. But this wasn't my first rodeo . Even when the sub caller told me it wasn't a vacant class, I prepped for the day as if it was. And that saved my butt. Because while there was a school-wide activity prepped for the first day, there wasn't one for the second. I decided to have the kiddos interview each other. It was a simple activity. I prepped ten questions for them to ask each other. Then I gave them a sentence frame to insert their partner's answers into. Finally, everyone got a chance to read their sentence frames out loud. The seventh graders did very well. The most popular wish was to ask for more wishes. I was surprised how many students considered Alfredo their favorite food. One student told how his partner had gone to Ohio over the summer. The partner clarified that he had actually gone to Idaho. The eighth graders... Yeah. Um. They finished interviewing each other. That was cool. However, we did not ...

When I write next year's end of year post, I get to write this sentence: I did cover the first day of school (and this time, it definitely does count ). The thing about the first day of school is, teachers tend to not miss it. There are very few events that would pull a teacher out of class on that very important day. (One year a teacher took her daughter to start college. Another teacher missed because she was on maternity leave. Those are the only events I can think of.) This means, when one is covering the first day of school, one is generally covering a vacant class. Vacant means there is no teacher assigned. No lesson plans. Nothing set up. Thrown in on the first day with no support... So, when I got the call the day before the first day of school, I asked. "Is this a vacant class?" I was told it wasn't. Okay, so technically it wasn't. In actuality... The official teacher is on a leave of absence. His replacement (long term sub) couldn't start until Mond...

The other day as I was clearing out some old papers, I found some blog posts that I'd never posted. I wrote them down with the intent of putting them on the blog, but then... I suppose something more interesting happened that week. That's my only guess. "But if I get another referral, I'll be kicked out of school." He should have thought of that when he refused to step outside and stay outside when I told him to. "If I get another referral, I'm going to be sent to my dad in Texas. I don't want to live with my dad. He drinks." And yet, when I asked him to stop talking so I could go over the day's assignment, he couldn't manage it. "I can't get another referral. Could you make this a warning?" And what were those three other instructions? The "stop talking"? The "step outside"? The "go back where I told you to go"? And what about continuing ot talk after I said he'd get a referral for disobeyi...

I'm not great at detecting lies, but sometimes the kiddos are obvious. Today's #ThrowbackThursday post is from February 22, 2008 , but I remember it well.  Today I covered a 7th grade world history class. I needed a silent room. I was not getting it. So, I warned them: "I will take down the names of those who continue to talk." This only works when I cover some teachers. This was one of them. They fought me on it for a moment. I stared down the few whose names were going to be on my list. Then one of the girls (the talkers were all girls in this group) told me to write down her name. "I'm Amanda," she said. She offered up her name way too easily. I was suspicious. I checked the seating chart. Sure enough, Amanda sat in that seat. But she did not look like an Amanda. She did not feel like an Amanda. I was sure I was being lied to. Twenty minutes later (I had gotten my silence, so I didn't need to make my list) two other students were exchanging words...

It was Monday of the last week of school. The eighth graders were on a celebratory field trip to Knott's Berry Farm . The teacher I was covering was one of the chaperones, and I was left with all of his seventh graders. Mr. S had one period of middle school leadership, one period of middle school theater, and two periods of English Language Development (read: English learners). As his leadership and theater classes needed a different sort of room, he traveled to a more academic classroom for the ELD classes. The room he used for his ELD classes housed health classes the rest of the day. It's the end of the semester, so the health classes are currently studying sexually transmitted diseases, something first period gleefully informed me of. (I knew this already, so I shrugged it off.) The classes' assignment was an essay about what goals they had for their summer vacation. And they were less than pleased to be writing. And sixth period... They were terrible in the usual sort ...

Seventh grade science. It was a one-off period for me, and it appeared that the teacher was only out for that period plus the following. The kiddos were supposed to be working on study guides for their finals. Being seventh graders, they came in from lunch a bit wild. I warned them to sit in their assigned seats. But, I got howls from various kiddos that their seats were not vacant. One small, timid boy informed me someone was in his seat and would not give it up. So, I went to intervene. The girl was downright rude about it. She was new to the class, in her assigned seat, and the boy was a snitch. Some profanity was sprinkled in to this whole thing. The boy did get his seat. I got a glance at the girl's paper so I could let her teacher know who was so difficult. (The seating chart was far from accurate, which is probably why the teacher had hidden it from me. That's a whole other story.) I kept an eye on Yesenia for the rest of the period, but she kept it to kicking with her t...

The girl was sort of watching a video. Her computer sat on a nearby desk. She leaned over, watched something, paused the video, and then sketched something on her paper. Upon closer examination, I saw the video was instructions for how to draw a gun. And that's what she was drawing on her paper. I moved on. The boy was watching an episode of Ellen . I caught a glimpse of the show topic. I moved on. A second boy was watching a basketball game. Me: "What should you be doing right now...?" Seventh grade English. Their end of year projects were to create a slide presentation (as a group) and a "creative component" (as individuals) on a topic about protest and activism. The first girl's topic was Black Lives Matter. The first boy was watching an interview with the Parkland survivors. Other topics included #MeToo, women's rights, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and human trafficking. Clearly the second boy had been goofing off. Having computers in class for resear...

I've been struggling with this post for days. It still might not make much sense... It was Thursday. I was covering the Mandarin class. No, not that one . Different school. Apparently Mandarin is a thing now. At least for this school district. That morning, I woke with a sore throat that went into full blown head cold for the holiday weekend. (If you noticed that I wasn't around the blogs, that was why.) It turned out to be not a bad day. Which is a good thing when one is starting to feel miserable. However, I was warned about sixth period. They were the "interesting" group. When the teacher told me this (Ms. L was there that morning as she was chaperoning a field trip to a local temple), I took a look at the seating chart (with pictures!), and I did recognize the students she warned me about. Jake was one. I did get to chide him on pretending to be Steven. When the other students overheard this, I informed them that Jake preferred to be called Steven. And I told Ms....

I had the same classes all last week. Seventh grade world history. Advanced. (Their teacher was the chaperone for the annual Washington, D.C. trip. So, out of town and hopefully having fun, but working, too.) The "advanced" means they were the good kids. While they were not 100% on task (they had computers--their assignment was online--so some played more games than did work), they were not doing the sorts of things that generally make for good blog posts. On Thursday, their acceptance letters to be in a leadership class next year were delivered to period four. So, with my trusty seating chart, I passed these letters out to all the kiddos. There were only about ten. Passing back papers is harder for me as I don't know the kiddos. Generally, I just call out names. They raise their hands. And then we meet half way. But, as I knew I had the class all week, I had made myself seating charts. It made roll go that much quicker. And it was useful in keeping track of who was who, ...

I had the same class all last week. Seventh grade world history. Advanced. Their teacher was on the annual field trip to Washington, D.C. I believe I've mentioned that subs have been in short supply this year. More often than not, I'm covering a different class on the teacher's prep period. Mr. F's prep period was fifth. Around third or fourth period, I'd get a call from the secretary telling me what class I was going to cover for that fifth period. Monday it was an English class I'd covered before. Easy group. Tuesday it was a very small special ed. class. On Wednesday, she called to tell me I'd be covering a math class. And I groaned. The teacher's morning was co-taught. The teacher's sixth period was pretty good, actually. But her period five... I wrote about them . Well, kind of. They're the ones that somehow managed to make a room smell of marijuana. As it turned out, the teacher was there to start off the class. (She had an IEP meeting that...

Middle schoolers, in general, are terrible liars. (There are some masters of deception, but mostly they just can't manage it.) Seventh grade math. Second period. I was taking roll via a seating chart. But because seating charts (especially in middle school classes where teachers are constantly moving kiddos) aren't always 100% accurate, I was calling out the names of those I was marking absent. "Jake is not here..." "He's here. He's sitting over there," a student let me know. But when I looked over at Jake, he claimed he was Steven. He was sitting in Steven's seat. "So, it's okay for me to mark Jake absent," I said. Usually that's enough to make the student give up the game. Not Jake. Nope, he was willing to be absent to be Steven. (Turns out that Steven was suspended, so he was marked absent anyway. And no, I didn't mark Jake absent. It seemed silly to do when I knew he was there.) Needless to say, Jake was a difficult stud...

Seventh grade math. Sixth period. They did not want to come into the room. Because it smelled. Middle school classrooms generally have an awful odor. I expect mustiness or body odor or someone passing gas. But that's not what caused the stink. The room smelled like marijuana. (I only recently learned what marijuana smells like. Call me naive. This sort of thing was not in my experience. But someone pointed it out--the upstairs neighbors partake--and now I realize it wasn't always a skunk in the neighborhood.) I assumed the smell came from outside, but the neighboring classrooms weren't reeking. I got a whiff of it before fifth period started. Someone was smoking outside at lunch? Fifth period had been difficult. I spent most of the period circulating the room. Keeping the kiddos on task didn't happen. I worked on keeping them seated. You'd think I would have noticed someone smoking in class . Considering the smell in sixth period, apparently not. It was so bad, an a...

Some days... It was Friday, and my day up until that point had been fairly uneventful. I was asked to cover an extra period (naturally) for sixth period, and it was next door. I had a chance to talk to the teacher before she left. Ms. M apologized for the class. There were only seventeen of them, but they had way more energy than anyone should have at the end of the day, she said. They weren't out of the ordinary for a middle school class. They wouldn't settle to let me give instructions. There was the boy who thought he didn't have to sit in his assigned seat. Well, three boys. I had to stop the video four or five times because they were talking. And getting anyone to read the article (this was after the video)... They'd read when I insisted, but it took them forever to comply. After taking way too long to settle them (again) for the next reader to go, I had just had it. They could answer the questions and finish the reading on their own. They did, but they did it way ...

Subs have been in very short supply lately. Things have gotten so bad that nowadays when I'm told there's a co-teacher, I don't expect them. (If there are normally two teachers in the room, the office is sure to pull the sub to cover for a class with one teacher who is out. If both teachers are out, they'll replace with one sub.) So, even though the eighth grade English class was co-taught, I was expecting to be the lone adult in the room all day. Another sub arrived before school. However, first period wasn't co-taught. She explained she was only covering first period for the co-teacher. I had a brief flash of optimism. Would they period sub the co-teacher? But then I realized they had to cover her first period as she taught that class on her own. Second period was the teacher's prep (and I was sent elsewhere). I was surprised when a neighbor teacher showed up for the next class. (The sub shortage is so bad most full time teachers are covering a class on their ...