I shoulda cancelled

Thursday, April 27, 2023

***Disclaimer*** This is just a big bit of whining about school today. You can skip it.

About a month ago, I picked up a lang arts/critical thinking sub job. Tomorrow I start nine days at the same school for the math teacher I love subbing for, and I thought if I was in the building the day before that started, it could only be a benefit. I was in contact with the math teacher over the past couple weeks and we have everything organized. I realized it wouldn’t matter if I was in that building or not today. I thought about cancelling. I decided to cancel. But I didn’t actually cancel. Then it got to be only ten days away and I felt bad that I hadn’t already cancelled and thought it would be crappy of me to cancel after having the job off the market for weeks. I didn’t work last Wednesday when Keith had his surgery and over 30 jobs went unfilled that day. I thought that meant this job might not get picked up and I would feel guilty about canceling (not that I could know if it didn’t get filled…).

Lang arts/critical thinking jobs always have plans that go something like this: Have the students think and work independently on an assignment that has wishy-washy directions/expectations. That just never goes well for me. What goes well is when there is math to do. Look! Ten problems. They have specific steps and actual answers. That is easy to work on. Wishy-washy is not easy to work on. Today’s plan was for the kids to work on biography notes for a changemaker.

Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks (we share a birthday!), Clara Barton, Oprah, Barack were among those chosen as people who made changes to the world. There was also a Youtuber. I’m not impressed with the teacher who said that was okay. I was less impressed with the kids working on it. They were done in less than 5 minutes. Their bibliography consisted of one of his videos. Their research told me that his life leading up to changing the world was North Carolina. His changing of the world was he gave $10,000 he made off youtubing to a homeless person. His quote was “My oveacing is to money away for I die” (although it took the person who wrote that several minutes to piece together what he had written because he couldn’t read it and neither could it. I suggested he may have missed a word or two. He insisted that was the quote. Did it make sense to him? No, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t right). That was it. It was done. I tried really hard to get the two kids to explain how this guy was changing the world. Apparently, he is giving $10,000 to everyone who needs it – according to them. Mmmm. Nope. Not happening (according to me and their lack of ability to show me anything that said that). Trying to get more information was not happening, because they were done. They had finished the work. I tried to show them how to actually answer the questions that were being asked, but they just screamed at me that they were done. I gave up.

Other things I did not like that kids did today…

Insisting that the seating chart is wrong; insisting that they can sit wherever they want.

Singing loudly in a baby voice, then saying they had to do that because it was their expression of self.

Coming in 6 – 8 minutes late for class because they were “busy”, and I better get off their backs.

Asking why do they have to pronounce Thompson in the usual way because it has an H and what is wrong with me that I pronounce it that way?

Repeated yelling, “what’s that behind you?!”

Tipping chairs over and then saying, “It wasn’t me.”

Tearing up other people’s assignments.

Rocking chairs and hitting the tables so other students can’t work.

Walking to the pencil sharpener (for the third or fourth or fifth time) and turning off other kids’ computers

Yelling “I’m gonna piss myself if you don’t let me go to the bathroom,” without ever asking to go to the bathroom.

Watching videos without headphones (over and over and over and over again).

Borrowing equipment then leaving it all on the floor, saying, “It wasn’t me.” (rulers, scissors, etc)

Asking what the assignment is 40 minutes after class started (and it wasn’t just explained by the teacher yesterday and me today – it’s on the board).

Draping themselves across tables

Throwing other kids’ binders and chromebooks on the floor

Pretending to trip on a cord and crashing into a table to knock everything on the floor.

Talking loudly about how your changemaker is a terrorist and no one can tell you you can’t do that topic.

BEING INCREDIBLY LOUD for no apparent reason

Responding “Yes, I can do this,” to whatever I asked them to stop doing.

I’m not terrible at what I do, so I worked hard to help some of them be successful and I sent some to the office. I was just really tired of the fact that every class did their very best to be disrespectful and to avoid doing what their teacher had asked them to do.

Then I read that McDonald’s started having Big Mac sauce in little condiment cups today, so we had to have McDonald’s and I had to have little condiment cups of Big Mac sauce. Why? I have no idea. Because I can.