It’s Summer!

This has been an amazing week of subbing. Three absolutely great days in a row – when one is usually just a total win. I happily went off to elementary school art this morning. You remember the art from a month or so ago? Same teacher. Um…turned out to be a not the same day at all.

I didn’t have the fifth-grade yellers, but I had the fourth-grade runners. Hard to know which I prefer…

I had the third-grade worriers. “I don’t know how to draw a wiggly line.” I just stood there and looked at the kid. Um… “What if I don’t do it right?” “Heeeeelp me.”

I had the second grade bezerkers. I don’t even know how to describe them. They came in on fire – ‘WE ARE GOING TO SEE A CANINE!” I instantly knew the police dog was coming (at 2:15. I know it was going to be at 2:15 because I was asked eleventynine times “when is 2:15?”). There was also a problem. Their teacher had told them that if they got a good report from the guest teacher (me), they would get to stay outside after the K-9 left. BIG TREAT. I thought that would help the day go well.

It did not.

They immediately started by shouting at each other to behave. Not great, but we could deal with that. The next problem was our one-hour assignment was to look at a list of 40 positive attribute words and have each of them pick four that described themselves. For an hour. Obviously, I knew that wasn’t going to take an hour, but the regular teacher hadn’t been so sure. She suggested if I had extra time, I do something else with them. Since they were my last group, I spent most of the day thinking up and discarding ideas. I had a couple things ready.

After stretching it, and directing attention in a variety of other directions, and putting names on papers, and picking the four words, it took about 6 minutes. At that point, there was one boy (who I assumed had to have an IEP, because his behavior was really, really out of the ordinary. I was very careful with him throughout the hour. After class, I learned that no, he does not have an IEP) was melting down for no apparent reason. Everyone else was shouting at someone (usually far away) to stop misbehaving because THEY WERE GOING TO GET TO STAY OUTSIDE. It was not great. I was wearing my Forky shirt (Toy Story 4) and they had been very excited about that, so I decided we were going to draw pictures of animated characters that we liked. “BUT WHAT IF I DON’T LIKE AN ANIMATED CHARACTER?” We survived. The teacher arrived to pick them up and they were in such chaos just standing at the door, she asked them if they deserved to stay out after the dog left. About half of them yelled, “NO. We were terrible.” Then started pointing fingers at each other. THEN they suddenly realized that they were not going to get the reward and back pedaled. “YES! WE WERE FINE.” She looked at me. I said, “They sure didn’t earn it, but I would never for a second judge you for letting them out to run off some of this energy.”

I also had the adorable kindergartners. They are much taller than you expect, and then as soon as that soaks in, you find some really tiny ones mixed in there. One of the little guys looked me right in the eye as he marched in and announced, “It’s summer.” I answered, “Yes, it will be summer really soon. It is going to be really warm next week.” He stopped. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “It’s summer now.” OK!

We painted landscapes in all the classes but the crazy second graders. I considered it as a backup plan but dismissed that thought 3 minutes after meeting them. Fourth graders were learning about foreground, midground, and background. The others were just doing the same thing, because I think the teacher thought that was an easy thing to do. (NO JUDGEMENT. I’m all about writing an easy lesson plan.) I gotta admit, I was surprised to get a painting day. I kinda thought painting was off limits to subs. The painting itself went fine, amid the running, the worrying, and the adorableness. The kindergartners were by far the easiest. They followed directions, they took the assignment seriously, they didn’t run, they didn’t scream, they said nice things to each other, (your picture is very pretty, I like the way you draw lines, I think you made a good blue), and they said thank you a lot.