I’m putting my feet up for a little bit before I head out to Jason’s Birthday Bonfire  so I figured I’d update you a little about my week. It was like my first really busy week in like months .. work-wise. Shoot I just realized I never blogged about my trip home last weekend .. maybe I’ll get to that over this weekend Anyways .. Monday I actually programmed, which is huge for me. I’ve had a mental block for awhile when it comes to programming, I’m sure it all goes back to when I was fired over 3 years ago .. but whatever the deal is I just couldn’t focus enough to learn new skills. I started helping Drew with his super cool website back in June, Nikki did her part and I seriously slacked for months. Every few days I’d pull up all my code, and stare at it, not being able to make the first step work. Well I’m proud to say the site actually does something, finally. It may not do it right, or work all the time, and its full of bugs .. but its a start. And now Mike is excited to help .. now I feel like things are actually going to get moving on it. 

The rest of this week I subbed. For 3 days I was in an ESE art class. The description on the job said ESE Language Arts, but it was just regular art. I really don’t like subbing for art classes, usually there’s not enough structure to enforce any sort of rules. Those of you who know about my ‘incident’ last year, that happened in an art class. Art class is supposed to be fun, you’re supposed to be able to talk to your friends and interact and bounce ideas off each other .. but with a sub, that escalates into shear madness in seconds flat in even the best of schools. Now .. add in the ESE (or exception ed) factor .. which is actually more like drop out prevention in this school, and its just pure chaos. You know you have a bad class when the CUSTODIAN is warning your sub about your class. The librarian said that all those students should be in jail, they’re all criminals. Little did I know she wasn’t kidding. 

I actually think I managed the classes fairly well, there were no fights, some kids (actually the majority) did work, and usually I had things under control. Day 1 I only had 2 classes that I struggled with (out of 6), day 2 I only had 1 class with issues and by day 3 it was smooth sailing (of course I bribed them with candy the last day). I talked to alot of the kids trying to figure out why they were in this class and what their problems were. Most of them were over 15 years old (this was 7th & 8th grades), there was a 16 year old with a 5 month old, another girl who told me she had been held back 3 times in her life, pre-first, her mom died when she was in 3rd grade and then they tried to skip 4th grade but she was too far behind. Next week she’s moving to the ‘bad’ school for fighting and what not. The worst was a 17 year old who’s been at that school for 5 years (its a 2 year school), who kept telling me he’d rather be in jail then to draw in art class (he then did the assignment for me, but wouldn’t put his name on it) .. I ended up talking to the real teacher this morning who informed me that he’s been in jail a few times and is in this school as some sort of probation deal. So .. some of her kids really did belong in jail. I told her how I made it through the week and she actually gave me a hug she was so proud of me I can’t imagine teaching those classes for an entire year

Today I happened to have another ESE class, but they had a test scheduled so it was actually easy, and boring. But the way my day started out was kind of interesting. Earlier in the week I took a walk with who I thought was the substitute coordinator for the school. He got me some paper for my class and listened as I told him about my background (some subbing, programmer for a few years .. just sent in my paperwork for my temp. cert .. etc) I was just rattling on, making conversation. Turns out he wasn’t just a sub coordinator, but a dean, an administrator and basically the jack of all trades in the school. When I checked in today, I had a strange classroom on my schedule that turned out to be a tech lab. I hung out there, nosing around in projects and looking at trophies. They had lego robotic setups, strange little cars built out of all kinds of material .. half the class looked like a shop class, the other have a regular classroom. Anyways, he ended up coming to the room and when I told him I couldn’t find any sub plans, he said that I was there as a ‘meet and greet’ he actually scheduled me to meet with another teacher who teaches what I’d be certified to teach .. so of course I jumped to conclusions and twittered away thinking it was a job possibility Once I got to talking to the other teacher she just wanted to pick my brain. She has a competition coming up where the challenge is to build a website, but neither she, or her students know HTML .. so they’re learning together. I listened to her project and gave her some tips .. I hung out for 2 classes. So it looks like I might come in and help her students after school learn some of the basics of building a website for this competition. Which is still pretty cool in my book She also has a digital photography competition in the future .. she was seriously excited that we were introduced .. and to be honest I am too I think it could be alot of fun to help teach kids about things I really know, even if its volunteering.

But the real bottom line is that there is an administrator who knows my skills and background, recognized that their school needed that help, and put me in touch with that teacher who was ridiculously happy to meet somebody like me. It just makes me feel like that school really likes me and wants to keep me around And eventhough the classes I taught this week were not just mentally draining, but physically too (literally on my toes all day long) .. it was a really good week. Now I’m going to bundle up for Jason’s bonfire. I should have pics this weekend