Oops. I accidentally grew up.

[WARNING: HALF-BOTTOMED (I work in the schools now) BLOG ALERT! It's bedtime, but I haven't blogged for sooooo long! I'm now writing in accordance with my better mediocre than never! policy.]

So, I now have a stable job, I wear nice pants and button-up shirts (except Fridays I can wear jeans!), I have an official title ("ENL Collaborator"), AND kids call me Mr. Rody. Could somebody please tell me what happened to the old Mr. Ro... er, Matthew? And now it's 10:30 pm and I'm all like oh, it's past my bed time, I'd better not blog even though I haven't for sooooo long! Weird. Rest assured that somewhere buried in this mess of buttons, pomp and collars the old Matthew lives on. Let me tell you a bit about his new job.

As well as I can recall, my last post heralded this new job but didn't really describe it at all. I am now the ENL Collaborator for the entire 6th grade at GMS (and have been for two weeks now (!!!)). What this means (as far as I can tell... No really. My job description is to some degree self-determined.) is that I, to the best of my ability, track the progress of all the recent ENL Academy grads and help them transition to all-English classes. (The ENL Academy is a group of specialized classes that offers English-learning-focused curriculum to kids coming from a non-English-speaking back ground. To them, English is a new language (hence the acronym "ENL"), and thanks to the effectiveness of the program they pick it up pretty quickly. Then they begin making the transition to all-English-speaking classes. And that's where I come in. I check grade sheets, talk to teachers, attend classes and talk to students to who is struggling with what and how I can help. Often I provide in-class aid, but during study hall and sometimes during class I'll take kids to my room for tutoring. Sounds cool, right?

The Pros:

• I now have a regular job with a steady income.
• I get to work directly with kids and with the same kids day after day. I get to watch their progress and forge relationships.
• Often relationships = friendships. Already I get high fives and "Hi, Mr. Rody"s in the hallway. Today one kid chose to confide in me about a relative's recent auto accident. I even get some respect from a few of the rowdy "bad kids," albeit only when they are alone in a room getting tutored by me with no friends around to impress.
• No lesson plans or papers to grade!

The Cons:

• Aside from my one explicit goal - help ENL kids as much as possible - I don't really have a set job description. What means are best? Do I focus on tutoring? Do I try conferencing/intervention to help nip attitude and behavior problems in the bud? Should I spend more of my time trying to make sure classroom material is accessible to those who still struggle with English? Who knows? I do, or have to, I suppose.

Another Pro I forgot earlier:

• I have two sweeeeet co-workers who are my 7th and 8th grade counterparts. They're fun to chat with before school and at lunch, plus they give me tons of advice. Also, basically the entire staff of GMS is helpful and friendly.

Back to Cons, I guess:

• I have no supervision/feedback system. The last time I talked to the principal (other than one "hi" in the hall) was when she hired me. I just sent her a check-in email today for good measure, but essentially there is no-one directly over me. That's cool in some ways (I actually have responsibility and am treated in such a way) but scary in others (I have to call my own shots). Basically my only feedback is when teachers thank me for helping catch certain kids up.
• Forget it. I'm now too tired to keep making lists. The job is a good one. I can't complain.

The Stories:

• Today a kid I was tutoring tried to convince me that the person I'm subbing for used to take him to Taco Bell every day for lunch. Nice try kiddo.
• When I went to one class for the first time, one boy said hey, who's this guy? Another replied oh, that's Mr. Rody. He's cool. He helped me with my math homework. Win. And these sixth graders wonder why they'll ever need math skills... To impress future sixth graders!!!
• Today I was working with a reading group in the hall. One kid (who acts up constantly in class) was actually eager to read and was doing a good job when his pocket started making noises. He soon realized it was his mp3 player. If I see it, I'll take it, I said, informing him that I intended to follow school policy on the issue. It kept making noise. Please, Mr. can't I take it out to turn it off? I began repeating what I had said and then realized that I was essentially telling him to continue being extremely distracting (he was already dancing to his music). Okay, fine. Turn it off, then put it away and then I don't want to see it or hear it... or I will take it away. [Remember all those times when teachers lectured and chided and scolded and it sounded kinda awkward, like they were pulling it out of their bottom? Now I see. Teachers are forced to be master improvisers. It just doesn't work perfectly 100% of the time...]

That's all, folks!

Big Boy Consequences (followed by some unrelated, humorous tidbits)

Sometimes, when big boys make decisions, they have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Last Sunday night, I made a very big decision. I spent almost $400 on a plane ticket and I reserved a week that I could potentially have worked for purely recreational purposes, all in the name of adventure. You might say that I took a gamble and that my wager was financial stability. As I tried to put it in my last blog, I prefer to think that I got my priorities in order and acted accordingly. And as I did this, I recognized that I was taking steps that I could not retrace and that I would have to face whatever life threw me as a result.

Fortunately, the god of Fun decided to step in at this point and reward my decision. Though I didn't get a subbing call on Monday morning, I did get a call from the principal of Goshen Middle School asking if I had some time to come in to talk today. The subject of our little meeting: an aide position that needed filling and whether I could and would fill it. [Thank you Fun God!]

The Back Story: About a month ago, I was still job searching and happened to be playing post-church pond hockey. When the subject of my search for employment came up, one friend (an English Language Learners (ELL) aide at the middle school) told me that one of his co-workers would be student teaching for a few months in the spring and would need someone to fill in for him temporarily starting in March. I sent in a resume right away, and emailed the appropriate assistant principal. And I didn't hear anything back.

Soon I started subbing, and it looked like I could make it on my subbing pay alone. Plus, subbing afforded flexible time off and meant I could maybe go to the Grand Canyon with my friends. I forgot all about the ELL job.

The Present, The Event and The Implications: So, today I had my conversation with the principal (don't quote me on this, but perhaps the first time I've been sent to the principal's office in my life...). She liked my resume (experience tutoring, albeit tutoring college kids), the fact the I knew Craig (my friend) already and my immediate and temporary availability. In fact, my schedule fit almost perfectly with the period of time the other aide would be absent! Except for one little hitch. I brought up the matter of the plane ticket I had just purchased and how if I went through with the trip I would miss the four days prior to Spring Break. Consequences time. [Cue god of Fun intervention!] The principal smiled and in effect said that if I could take the job, then we could probably work something out for those four days. That sure sold me. We talked a bit more about the job description, but it sounded like it was more or less a done deal, pending some paperwork and reference calls.

So what does this teach me? Funny. I typed this rhetorical question, yet I still don't have the answer after staring dumbly at the blinking cursor for several minutes. Okay, put the rhetoric aside and do some soul searching, Matthew. I guess it's satisfying to know that things worked out okay, even though I put myself out on a limb. It could have been different. I might have lived the next two months squeaking by on scant sub calls and living on nothing but the essentials. Or I might have found myself with a good job, but without the allowance for vacation. I'd like to think that I would have stuck to my bold stated principles about prioritising adventure, but I can't honestly say that I would have definitely turned down a great job offer like this...

Maybe I'll just wrap up the lesson I've learned in saying that my friend Christy would quote to me when I was being too realistic and pessimistic about life: "Do what you love and the money will come." The realist in me never liked that phrase because what happens when the money comes too late or there's a day when the money doesn't come? The uncertainty bothered me as did the presumed (by me) permission to blow off responsibility. Now I see that saying in a slightly different light, saying something more like: "Concern yourself most with doing what you love. If your primary concern is money, you will find yourself unhappy and unsatisfied, especially if you are not doing what you love. If what you love to do brings you money, then you are all the more fortunate. If it does not, then you will ultimately have to find a way to survive, but at least in surviving you will increase your capacity to do what you love. And should you perish in pursuit of doing that which you love, then at least your life will not have been wasted on anything less than what was most meaningful to you."

I know that the maxim doesn't always hold. What of the people who have to start surviving right from their birth? Where is their break? How do they even know what they love when all they know is survival?? I have no idea. But perhaps this is the topic of another post. The point I was making above is that I feel good about my priorities, and feel even better about them when life gives me the occasional lucky break.

CONGRATULATIONS! You made it this far in my already-lengthy post! Reward time: Stories! I had a first grade class full of trouble makers today. Rough day but good story fodder... [Note to future potential employers: the use of the word "fodder" in reference to school children was used for comedic purposes only and does not represent my actual views on children.]

-My first task of the day was to help take the class on a field trip to Dominoes Pizza! Yay! Fun times AND I got to make my own 8" pizza for lunch. Downside: the kids were extra wound up when we got back. Furthermore, one little girl thought she would get some attention by downing her entire pizza plus several slices from other kids and then making claims of being "sick" and attempting to throw up all over her table. Fortunately, all she could muster was a bit of regurgitated Sprite, and I called her bluff and let her lie down inside for recess. When we got back she was miraculously cured.

-These kids were baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad today. I take plenty of credit for not laying down the law enough early enough, but I think there were also just too many troublemakers for one me to take care of at once. Some fires I failed at putting out in time: a fight beginning in the hallway, a minor marker war involving both clothing and "teacher [i.e. permanent] markers," several kids pulling structural nails out of a bookshelf, plenty of writing on other kids' papers, and much much more. One teacher said at the end of the day that she hoped my experience didn't deter me from coming back. Don't worry about that. I just hope that my inexperience doesn't deter them from asking me back!

-There was so much to do today that I never got around to writing my name on the board. I got called all sorts of interesting things as a result, most of them close but not quite right. The best I found out from a secretary in the main office, later in the day. Apparently a little girl I sent down to the nurse had informed her that "Mr. Rodent" had said she could come down.

Big Boy Decisions and How I Dealt With One in Particular

I'm in the middle of making a big decision right now. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that I'm about an hour away from finalizing a decision I have already made, and am using this post to enlighten you fine people as well as to convince myself that I really want to make this decision. As my post title suggests, this is no everyday, ho-hum decision. No. This is a Big Boy Decision, and you know it is such because it involves a great deal of money as well as thinking more than few months or even years ahead (parts of this decision significantly affect events more than 40 years from now!). So, behold and enjoy the exposition, plot twist, and rising action complete with riveting solution and conclusion. (I've substitute taught for 3 English classes now, and I'm pretty sure I still bungled that last bit up terribly...)

Some months ago I was still living in Colorado, and thinking that I would continue living there through at least early spring. My dear cousin Erin called one day and proposed the grand adventure of backpacking down into the Grand Canyon. SWEET! I was in. In fact, Colin and I began tentatively setting the the date of our departure from the winery to nicely coincide with the trip date at the end of March. All was well... and going to be even weller!

Then I moved back to Indiana. I had planned far enough ahead to know that even if it took me a while to find a job, I could still survive and pay the bills. I did not however budget a plane ticket to Denver. (To those of you mentally pointing out that the Grand Canyon is in Arizona, not Colorado, yes I know, but Erin lives in Denver and she and her house-mate are my ride AND the whole reason I'm going.)

Relief! Mid-February (old news to those who have read previous posts) I started work as a substitute teacher. Money was (slowly) rolling in. Plus if I could support myself with just subbing jobs, then I could take full advantage of the fact that I didn't have a set work schedule... and take a week off and go backpacking in the Grand Canyon!!! Cha-ching!

Blatant foreshadowing: After subbing for a week or so, I had been getting regular calls and was feeling good about the job. In between bouts of estimating finances I would have conversations with people: "Oh, so you're subbing now. How's that been going?" - "Great, I've been getting calls pretty much every day!" - [surprised] "Oh. Wow, that's pretty amazing. Cool." Was there something I was missing? Was I some super-sub that I got calls every day? (Or was it the peak of flu season?)...

The finances looked good. I made it yet another full week with 4.5 days of work. I wasn't rich, but I estimated that I could swing the trip out West on top of the rent check. I was all set to buy the plane ticket. I started getting excited. And yet for some reason, I hesitated. Was this unrealistic? What if I stopped getting calls? I'd be up a crick! Wait another week... see what happens...

Half a day of work on Monday, a full day on Tuesday... and then nothing. For the last three days of last school week I received no communication from the school system (except my first paycheck). I started to panic. On my second "day off" I spend a good many hours designing a spreadsheet that would track the ebb and flow of my projected earning and spending, with added cells that let me "turn on" optional scenarios - going to the Grand Canyon for instance. Things still looked okay if I got a few calls each week... unless I turned on the Grand Canyon option. Then there would appear this discouraging little "dip" in my chart, which indicated a period of *wince* negative money. And my understanding is that banks don't like negative money...

Friday gave me an extra day to mull over things. It also gave me another zero to add to my spreadsheet, thus diminishing my calculated probability of getting a call on any given future school day. I really wanted to go on this trip.

On Saturday, I reluctantly started playing with the IRA contribution "option" on my spreadsheet. My mother has done a very good job of raising me to be fiscally-aware young man. The wisdom she has imparted on me (as well as some simple math done in Calc and economics classes) has made me understand that $1000 saved now is very different from $1000 saved 10 years from now. So, as it happens, I've been holding onto $1000 in my bank account to throw into my IRA for the 2009 fiscal year. But I haven't done it yet. The reason for this is that while my intricate calculations told me that I could afford to move back to Goshen AND still save $1000 they also told me that I would most likely have to dip into that cash bag once or twice before April - little "self-loans," if you will. Anyway, this is getting lengthy and dull and is totally straying from the whole point of the story. Suffice it to say that the smaller I made the "IRA contribution" cell, the less formidable the dip in the chart looked.

At last, the pivotal question - the question that will challenge our hero to act responsibly and reasonably, though with the full knowledge that this decision will likely set a precedent for future such decisions. This is the Roe v. Wade of my LIFE! Let's hear it: Do I a) head out west in three weeks' time, seeking adventure and fun with friends, contributing little or nothing to my IRA for the current fiscal year, and putting myself in financial limbo in the near future? OR b) decide to stay at home, save most or all of my allotted IRA money (giving me an extra $25-30 Gs come retirement, even assuming a fairly low interest rate), have an extra week to potentially sub, remain assuredly debt-free, ... and watch my friends have an amazing adventure without me. And it's not like I know how many calls I'll be getting in the future. I might be getting tons starting tomorrow! Do you risk potential, minor, future hardship for immediate, assuredly-satisfying adventure? What would you do?

My particular answer to this question began to form in my mind last night after I asked myself this question: When I'm 65, which would I rather have: $25,000 or memories (and pictures and stories) of an amazing adventure had with friends as well as the knowledge that I wasn't afraid to take risks? Wellllll... If $100 was an unfathomable amount of money when I was ten and $1000 was a huge sum to me on my 20th birthday... assuming a logarithmic relationship... Yep, pretty sure I won't really care about $25,000 in another 40 years. (I don't literally think this. What was that word from that English class? Hyperbole?...) But I do think that I will want to be able to look back and see that I took advantage of every great and small opportunity for adventure, for after all, life's too short. (Not to mention, if I do set a precedent for always opting for adventure I may not even live to see the day when I would care about that extra $25,000 anyway!)

My decision was helped along by a very encouraging email from my cousin this morning, reminding me that part of what makes this opportunity so special is the great group of people who are embarking on this adventure together! And again I was encouraged at church today by a friend and Sunday school classmate, coming from a post-marriage/children viewpoint. This person empathized with my predicament and yet initially refrained from giving me direct advice. When asked, this person they would go for it; adventures just get more complicated the older you get. Jobs, spouses, kids... they can all make adventuring more difficult to coordinate. Good to get out while you're young and can!

This afternoon I've been assuring myself of what I decided long ago and didn't have the courtesy to tell myself. I'll be flying to Denver in less than three weeks time and enjoying the heck out of myself. If I manage to come out of the whole deal still in the black, then more power to me. If not, then hey, I'll still survive. And I'll learn a very valuable lesson about what it feels like to screw up and be destitute (temporarily. Please understand that if this adventure required 100% credit card financing I would not even be considering it. It's merely a matter of living life on the edge... of black and red)... so I'll be prepared when it comes time to bite the bullet for the next adventure.

So, the plan as it stands:
1) Hit "PUBLISH POST"
2) Purchase the cheapest available plane ticket from Chicago to Denver
3) See how things ride out and count my blessings either way

Kindergarten Follow-up

Hey, guess what? The little kids didn't kill me! or even make me go totally crazy! It was a crazy introduction to kindergarten, but as my story will soon tell you, it could have been much worse. Behold the tale, in Good New, Bad News format:

Bad News: I got a call to "guest teach" for a kindergarten class today. I was totally terrified of kindergartners!
Good News: Today was Dr. Seuss Day!!! (Dr. Seuss' birthday)
Bad News: I didn't know and so I didn't dress up like Dr. Seuss Characters like a lot of the cool teachers did.
Good News: I got to make ooblec for the kids (and me) to play with!
Bad News: I only had 15 minutes to make 8 pans of ooblec before a room full of 5-year-olds came barging in.
Good News: Another teacher watched my class coming in while I finished up (and was really friendly and helpful).
Bad News: I still got off to a late start.
Good News: I got to read a fun book to my first group of students (the whole grade travelled between classrooms to different book and activity stations).
Bad News: We got done late and the next group came in while I was still reading.
Good News: That's okay, it's ooblec time! Everyone loves ooblec!
Bad News: Ooblec is very messy. It was time to change groups in 5 minutes. I didn't have a sink. I had no idea how I was going to get 15 kids' hands clean in less than 5 minutes with no sink.
Good News: Oh wait, we do have a sink in the class' bathroom!
Bad News: Despite instructions to wipe the ooblec off their hands and into the pans running to the bathroom, the kids managed to get ooblec EVERYWHERE!
Good News: It's okay, when my class came back for the first break they were more than happy to help clean up.
Bad News: Now I have to keep them occupied for a whole hour before lunch.
Good News: (At the teacher's recommendation...) INDOOR RECESS!
Bad News: I hear a little girl say with urgency, "teacher!" as she barely manages to prevent 2 pans of ooblec from spilling on the floor after she bumped them with the bin she was carrying.
Good News: Teacher saved the day! (and the floor.)
Bad News: More story-reading (it gets old after the 3rd or 4th read) and play time, but one kid becomes very difficult and refuses to do anything.
Good News: An aide intervenes and saves the day!
Bad News: The kids got the room messy again!
Good News: Hour lunch break for me!
Bad News: I forgot to bring a book to read during lunch break.
Good News: I'll write a letter to my sister instead. AND after lunch I have more free time when the kids go to gym.
Bad News: I realize that the teacher didn't say when to pick the kids up from gym class.
Good News: An aid tells me.
Bad News: It's in 10 minutes and there's a 50 minute hole in the lesson plan! I have to come up with something to do for the entire time.
Good News: I brought dried peaches for lunch. I use them to tell a story about fruit in Colorado where I used to live. We play BINGO for dried peach slices, listen quietly to a story for dried peaches and line up quietly for more peaches!
Bad News: More stations, groups of kids, reading the same story over and over, and more mess!
Good News: The end is near. The kids finally leave!
Bad News: They left ooblec and papers and crayons everywhere!!!
Good News: Cleaning ooblec off tables is super easy compared to teaching kindergartners. I survived.

News Flash

So remember when I was saying how little kids get crazier as you go downward in grade level? And remember how I pointed out the trend in sub calls I was getting? And remember how kindergarten was going to be today if the trend continued, but I only kinda suggested it because, hey, who's superstitious anyway?

Well I just got a call for a full day of kindergarten.

Also, I don't really know what to think of this, but I had the scariest dream of my life last night - I was in a hostage situation, forced to lie down on the floor with others. People started getting shot, or were pretty close to it before I woke up. I was too scared to run or anything. Then I recognized it was a dream. And I was too scared to wake up from the dream because I was afraid they would shoot me. It was terrible.

So, wish me luck. And I can't say I'm actually worried about this, but if a group of super-crazy kindergarteners holds me hostage with guns, I totally called it!

(But really, I hope that doesn't happen.)

More Stories From the Teaching Front...

or "substitute teaching front," I suppose, since they are pretty different. As I was briefly discussing with my cousin (a 'real' teacher) the other day, I have the wonderful benefit of being done for the day at 2:30 or 3:30. I can go home, unwind, decide I don't want to come in the next day... whatever. If I don't want to deal with little kids, I can opt for middle school or high school only (though I would get less calls), and my lesson plans are usually simple. Not to mention they are made for me.

By contrast, a 'real' teacher makes lesson plans, gets up every school day, teaches most of a full day, stays a little after, and takes papers home to grade on nights and weekends. And they're responsible for the education of their students. On the plus side, they get to stick with a group of students for a whole year, or at least a semester. And they can watch their kids grow and mature, and see them learning, making progress. And if I'm not mistaken, though teaching is an (arguably) underpaid profession, 'real' teachers still make quite a bit more money than me. (Not to say I begrudge them. They earn every penny!)

Seeing how rewarding even substitute teaching can be, I'm thinking more and more that I would like to be a high school science teacher some day. I like being a positive (hopefully) influence it kids' lives and watching them learn. And I think that all the added benefit of becoming a teacher would far outweigh the extra effort and time commitment it would mean for me. Plus, I could totally design way cool labs for kids, and we could shoot off rockets, and learn about the heat exchanges involved in blowing stuff up and...

Anyway, the whole reason I started this post was to tell some more humorous tales that I have drawn from my experience. One happened quite recently. By Sunday evening I had not yet gotten a call for subbing, and so I went to bed (early, due to a long, exhausting weekend) with my cell phone on, sitting on my night stand. I nodded off right away. I was awoken with a start to my phone ringing. It was still dark and I was suffering the shock of coming out of a deep sleep. I set my alarm clock for about 6:30 am, and usually I get calls around then or a little after. Weird. The caller ID said, "Naffy" - not "sub caller lady." Even weirder. It must be important, though, if my good friend Jonathan was calling me this early in the morning. I picked up the phone and said hello. "Hey Matthew, how's it going? So I was going to respond to your email, but then I thought I'd just call and talk since we haven't talked in a while anyway." Hmmm. Didn't sound that important. "Dude, what time is it?" Jonathan's answer: "Oh shoot! I'm sorry! I forgot you went to bed so early!" I looked at my clock. It was 11:15 pm. I had been asleep for 45 minutes. Suddenly the still-dark world made more sense. We set a different time for talking, and I went back to bed for another 7 hours. I woke up at a more reasonable hour and got a call for a 1st grade class. Which brings me to my second story.

3rd grade last Wednesday, 2nd grade last Thursday, and 1st grade today. And what a day it was! (I told myself that I would try every classroom setting at least once before saying I wouldn't do it, but if little kids get proportionately crazier the more they retro-age, I might just have to rethink my Trying Things Out strategy!) We got through their teacher's lesson plans for the most part, but I was amazed at how often I was needed to put out this fire or that - hurting tummies, using the markers they "weren't supposed to," telling on people for using the markers they "weren't supposed to," a sore eye, a broken bag, a shortage of band-aids, approximately 1 million other grievances and another 2 million things that I forgot to do that their teacher usually did. But to save your reading eyes, I'll just tell the story of a bit of reconciliation work done by myself this morning. I'll even cut it down to just dialogue.

Snot-Nosed Little Boy 1: Mr. Rody, he [points to Snot-Nosed Little Boy 2] has my pencil.
SNLB 2: No I don't! It's my pencil now!
Snot-Nosed Little Boy 3: Yeah, it's his [pointing to SNLB 2] pencil because I sold it to him for three [money flashes].
Mr. Rody [to SNLB 2]: Okay, so you have his pencil?
SNLB 1: Yeah, and my mom said that I couldn't give it away.
Rody: [to SNLB 1]: So how did he get it?
SNLB chorus [in unison, with increasing volume]: He took my pencil! Nuh-uh! But my mom said you shouldn't give stuff back that you buy! I want my pencil back! BLAHBLAHBLAH We're little kids going crazy!!!
Rody: Okay, okay! Now everyone calm down! Let me ask you all some questions, and you can respond when I ask you a question, but you have to use your quiet voice. [to SNLB 2] Where did you get the pencil?
SNLB 3: He [indicates SNLB 3] sold it to me for $3.
Rody: Okay. Should you guys be selling things like that in school?
SNLB 2 & 3: No.
Rody: Right, now where [to SNLB 3] did you get the pencil?
SNLB 2: He [indicates SNLB 1] gave it to me.
Rody [to SNLB 1]: Did you give him the pencil?
SNLB 1: Yeah. [Rody gives him a bit of an Are You Freaking Kidding Me look.] But I forgot. My mom said I couldn't give the pencil to anyone.
Rody: Okay. Well, can you [looking at SNLB 3] give the $3 back to him [looks at SNLB 2]? And can you give him [indicates SNLB 1] his pencil back.
SNLB 1, 2 & 3: Yeah. I guess. Okay. [trades occur. students calm down and go back to work.]
Rody: [turns to audience] Wait. Really? After all that? These kids are N-U-T-S nuts!

The Sub that Keeps On Going

Good news: So far I've been working every day! Yay for making money! Since I last posted, I've gotten to try my hand at teaching in quite a number of new settings - a high school weight training class, a special ed. class, a return visit to an 8th grade English class and today (for the first time ever) an elementary school class. Oh boy.

The fact that I am writing these words right now - that I am still alive to tell the tale - is a testimony to my perseverance, but I must admit I had my qualms about teaching elementary school kids. Yesterday I got to return to an English class I had already subbed for (I'm assuming I was requested. Score!), and I revelled in the comfort of familiarity. I knew where attendance sheets were, I knew some of the kids names, I knew the basic structure of the class... And even on my first day in the high school this felt okay. I had just been a high school student myself only 6 years ago. But 3rd grade was a whole new universe to me. I'm not even sure I'd set foot in an elementary school since going to one some 14 years ago...

Fortunately it was only a half day. And the teacher I was subbing for was in the building and briefly stopped by the class a few times. Still, these kids were tiny, and together formed a mob of tiny, kiddie, snotty-nosed bundles of fun (or insanity?). And I was to be the only force preventing hell from breaking loose. I expressed my anxiety over the possibility of this situation to another sub friend and her response was, "yeah, but with elementary school they're all so full of undying love." And now I see that she was right. These kids may be crazy but at least they are still young enough to think that you are the coolest person ever, unlike their older middle school counterparts, who see teachers as the enemy - agents representing the grown-ups' need for them to work work work, all the time! ...

So anyway, cute kids, can be trouble, still respect you (mostly) ... and I'm thrown in a room with them. Cool. Things went well for the most part, but one humorous (and almost disastrous) incident is worth recounting here.

D.O.L. You may or may not remember this from your own grade school days. I do, and I think I even remember liking it. Daily Oral Language assignments are generally short, and they involve exercises in different aspects of writing. Sentence corrections are mostly what I remember and were the bulk of what my kids were doing this morning. And in my lesson plan paper, I had directions that said, "9:10-9:20 - go over D.O.L., sheet should be on overhead." I was proud of myself for even finding the transparency before the designated time. I did not find any sort of answer key, so I figured that teachers were just supposed to know this stuff. I should be reading at a higher level than 3rd graders, right?

We turned off the lights, and I got the kids' attention up toward the overhead. [Okay... here goes. Just don't let them know you have no idea what you're doing and that you haven't done D.O.L. since you were their age...] First sentence. "Who can tell me what we need to do first?" Hands shot up. (This is one thing I really appreciated today. It's so cool to have kids who want to tell you the answer! If only that were true of most older kids too...) "Right, we capitalize the 's' first." The sentence read something like this:

"since you saw your brother now, will you see him later too"

"Who can tell me what we need to change next?" A smart little girl near the front pointed out that "saw" should be "see." [Oh. Right. I knew that. I did catch that, right? Okay, I've gotta play it cool. Think, Matthew. You know how sentences work. Hell, you can write thesis papers!] "Good. And do we need to change anything else? Yes?" A period at the end! "Good. Okay are we all done with this sentence? Yes?" No, it needs to be a question mark at the end. [&$#^!! Okay. You meant to do that. It's okay. It's all part of your pedagogy - see if they can catch it.] "Gooood. Right, it needs to be a question mark because we're asking a question." [God, save me!]

And I did survive - the rest of D.O.L. as well as the rest of the morning. I was constantly reminded of the weirdly imaginative nature of little kids' minds ("Which words doesn't belong: Lettuce, Tomato, Spoon, or Carrot? Good. Spoon, because it's not a vegetable." But Mr. Rody, what if the spoon was made of spinach?! [Good grief.]), but I mostly just had fun. And my faith in myself in dealing with little kids comes none too soon. Tomorrow I'm spending a full day as a floating sub in a different elementary school!

Wish me the best!