Friday, September 12, 2003

**Due to a technological error, (ie: I hit the wrong buttons) yesterday's post didn't get published until today.**


Today I was a Special Education teacher. The students were not severely handicapped. They probably had the usual learning disabilities; ADD and ADHD most likely, judging by some of their behavior. But enough. They really were great kids. One class was so focused, they worked continously the entire time. The last class of my day was especially challenging. One student in particular was REALLY chaffing my hide. S/he was super chatty, tried to toy with me, and interferred with the progress with any other student within a 6 ft. radius. Of course, s/he was pretty smart and could amount to anything if only they applied themselves. But s/he found school to be boring. There was even one kid who insisted that s/he did not learn anything at all last year and they were pretty sure they wouldn't learn anything this year. This was not a stupid kid, judging by the Harry Potter book (#5) they were reading. I thought this was very amusing!

After lunch, as I was walking back to class to let the little darlings in, a girl recognized me from the other day and said, "Hi!" She wanted to know who I was subbing for. This made me feel so good, my cold, black heart melted a bit (don't worry; it's all froze again).

So, being a substitute teacher isn't all that bad. At least I'm not blacklisted like a friend of mine. According to a mutual friend, her/his evaluation wasn't too good and the principal didn't really like them, so when it came to the re-hiring s/he didn't get picked up again. They'll probably have a more difficult time getting hired than me. Part of this bad eval, my friend said, had to do with the fact that s/he had a lot of obstacles year last year. They were a roving teacher, moving from room to room, and was given some of the most challenging students in a subject they all hated. Too bad. It is so hard trying to do a good job nowadays as a new teacher, that anything short of an ideal situation is difficult. I had wonderful, motivated students last year and still had a lot to learn about classroom management, grading, politics, etc.

Now I am full of chocolate and food. We'll just have to wait and see what the scale says on Sun. Tomorrow I have dance all day long!

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