Friday's musings

It's been awhile since I've written, mainly because I've been busy and tired. Most of the time, my brain is pretty fried after marching kids through math all day long, and then following it up by fighting the vicious snarl of traffic all the way home after school. I'm cruising into my last week of this month-long job at a middle school, so I'm feeling a bit reflective on this Friday.

It's hard to believe I'll be back out in the mix again pretty soon, doing god knows what, god knows where. I've gotten pretty comfortable where I've been at, so I'm going to have to get used to the ringing phones, the rituals of checking subfinder and mapquest, and getting up earlier. Lately I've been getting away with sleeping in 'til 6am, which feels downright lackadaisical compared to the 5am hustle I was doing all during fall. I will definitely miss the power of knowing names, situations, and so on.

Some of the things I've learned in the past month, just for the record:

#1 I've had a pretty solid middle school math review. I can't recall the last time I thought about the Pythagorean theorem, but I can tell you right now, it wasn't any time in recent history. The same applies for almost everything else we've been doing in the past 3 weeks.

#2 I have decided that I definitely prefer 8th graders to 7th graders. Sometimes 7th graders are just a shade too trifling and immature for me. 8th graders can be bad as well, but it's in a slightly different (and to me, more bearable) way. I think I definitely prefer 6th grade and 8th grade of the middle grades. I sort of remember this about student teaching, but I couldn't be sure at the time I was getting the full experience (due to other factors in the setting). It's funny because I didn't think I'd enjoy 8th graders much but they're not nearly as bad as I remember, and it seems like most of the multigrade assignments I've had in middle schools this year, the 8th graders have been the most fun to work with. If I ever end up in a middle school setting, I'll have to try to either do multi-grades (since ESL is a multigrade experience), or just sixth or eighth grade Language Arts. A stand-alone 7th grade class is probably not for me.

#3 It feels darn good to be appreciated, and I've been getting a lot of it lately.

#4 One of the nice things about this assignment is that I've had a chance to test drive some curriculum ideas and learning strategies that I've been working on for a long time now. I'm good at thinking up stuff, but as a sub, I rarely have a chance to do any actual teaching, so this job's been nice in the sense that I have a lot of freedom in this area. I usually have a "topic" that has to be covered, but how it gets done is entirely up to me, since no instructions were left. I've really enjoyed putting my ingenuity to work for a change, and testing it out on real kids.

#5 This has been a very challenging assignment in some ways, so I feel like I've learned a lot in the process. Most of the material that I'm teaching is only vaguely familiar at best, so I've had to really stretch beyond my familiar little comfort zones of the humanities. It's kind of reassuring to know that I can jump in and do it, and thrive.

Next week is my last week before the job comes to an end, and I go back out in the mix. What will I be doing next? Who knows...it could be just about anything really. With subbing, every day is full of the unexpected. A couple of weeks from now, I could be just about anywhere in these two counties...at any grade level, in nearly any subject, with nearly any group of kids imaginable. It's mind boggling sometimes.

I had this conversation with a 7th grade boy the other day that really illuminated something for me about why I actually enjoy subbing. It occurred to me that all I'm really doing is reliving my own school experience...more schools than grades is about the best way I can describe it in 50 words or less. As a child I went to a new school almost every year. Why should my adult life be any different? And if I successfully survived that as a child, why would that aspect of substitute teaching be difficult to deal with now? I'm still playing the military brat role, even if that reality show technically ended years ago. So it's time to think about packing up my bags and getting ready for the next "duty station" if you will.