Class 3L

I've spent the first three days of this week supplying in a Year 3 classroom. I was working on my laptop on Monday morning, just thinking that I probably wasn't going to get called for the day, when the phone rang at 10 am. Apparently the teacher went home sick mid-way through the morning. I dashed out the door and, following TimePlan's directions, caught my bus and made it to the school for 10:45, just as the kids were coming in from recess. I didn't have more than two seconds to look at the math lesson that he left before they were coming in and needing to be taught...so I taught the lesson on the fly, looking at the plans regularly to see what we were supposed to be doing next. The rest of the day went like that, keeping half a step ahead of the students. Thankfully the TA was pretty available to me for most of that time--she splits her time between the three Year 3 classes--and she was a big help.

The kids in that class were a handful. Few of them are deliberately naughty, but they seem like a classful of ADHD students who can't sit still or be quiet for two seconds. I felt like I spent the entire afternoon yelling at them to shut up. I stayed until 4:45 marking papers Monday, which is expected of all supply teachers here.

Tuesday I got the call at 8 am that this same school/class needed me back again, so I made it for 8:55--just time to glance over the English plans before it was time to bring the kids in. After taking the registration (their word for the attendance), I took them down to the gym for assembly--which they have every morning--and then returned directly to the classroom to spend a few minutes going over the game plan for English with one of the other Year 3 teachers. During English I was just about tearing my hair out with this little freckled, red-headed imp named Lewis, and was very grateful when one of the other Year 3 teachers was willing to keep him in her class for the morning. At lunch Tuesday, I talked to 3L's previous teacher, who said it took her until Christmas last year to get them to listen to her. Tuesday afternoon went mildly better, I was starting to get the hang of this "lessons on the hop" thing, reading through the lesson and finding the necessary resources (or improvising) during recess for the next period.

Today, I got called at 7:45 and was able to make it to school with time to spare. I finally felt like I was starting to get the hang of the routines--how to mark down the dinner registration (these kids all have the option of buying a hot lunch every day), remembering to send the attendance down to the office and all the other little details. I also felt like I was finally remembering most of the kids names today, rather than just pointing: "Yeah, you." Since most of the kids had not returned their spelling lists from home today (or yesterday) despite repeated reminders to do so, I decided to do the spelling interactively today and just get the kids one-at-a-time to come up to the whiteboard and write down one of the spelling words. I had a great moment at that point, where I just felt like, "Yes! I am enjoying myself, the kids are engaged and learning...good times." Just before lunch, we had a really good discussion about respect, and the children were far quieter than I have seen them before, or since. After lunch, I taught R.E.--which stands for Religious Education--and the theme was on sin, and the bad things we do, connected to John the Baptist baptizing Jesus (baptism being a sign of us being made clean). Kind of a heavy--I was glad for my years of Sunday School background, or I think it would have been a rather difficult lesson to teach. It is impossible to imagine such a lesson being taught in a public school in Canada. To end off the day, I was to teach an ICT (Information and Communication Technology, for my friends/family who aren't techies) lesson on the important components of a card, involving using the computer to make a card. Not having had any time at all to get on the school computers and do any exploratory work beforehand, I was very grateful that I have had Microsoft Office on my laptop the last year and have done enough work with it to feel relatively comfortable. I took the kids into Publisher and got them started. Not having planned anything, nor having the capability of showing anything on a large screen in the lab, I just walked around and helped pairs of students figure out how to change the font, the picture, the layout and design of their card. We managed to get them all saved in the 3L folder and them organized in time for the 3:05 bell.

It's been a steep learning curve this week, but I have definitely learned some useful things from it. Hopefully for the kids's sake their teacher is back tomorrow. Cheerio...