Kindergarten Sub

Kindergarten class. You would think it would be easier, right? Twenty-five six year olds...all with new boots and sneakers. How do I know? Because each child told me so as he or she showed me shoes. Okay, so I made the mistake of saying how cute one little girl's boots were. Suddenly everyone had on new shoes and boots. The problem? I had only been there ten minutes. 3:15 was a long way off, and I had much to do before then. We have full day kindergarten at the school where I substitute, a full day of teaching and keeping the peace in class.

You need to re-think your substitute practices when substituting for kindergarten. To keep students focused on the lesson, I usually engage them in conversation. However, when I engage young children in conversation or simply ask a question about the story I am reading, I get the answer I'm looking for and then; "Guess what?"

Now this is where I should realize that it is time to move on with the lesson. But I'm a softie for the angelic face of a child. I say, "What?" This is my mistake. Once you allow one student to tell you "what" the others want to also. The really funny thing is that all children seem to have the same "what" story about an aunt, neighbor, or mom who fell while shampooing the dog in the bathtub when the phone rang and the baby cried, and the mailman came with a package requiring a signature.

That was in the morning. After lunch, I tackled social studies. Thanksgiving is coming. What are the students thankful for, the teacher wrote in her lesson plans. Ask students and write their answers on the easel page after reading two Thanksgiving books. Twenty-five children, whose names I did not know, fidgeted on the carpet during and after the stories. I attempted to keep their attention by asking questions about the drawings in the book, but each time I asked a question, the child added a codicil about someone shampooing a dog.

I also didn't realize that some children do not know how to spell their names. And that these names are creatively spelled. I couldn't spell them either. Nor could I understand the pronunciation. So I asked the students to return to their tables and get their name tags and then come back to the carpet. Now I could spell the Ra'shons and Ny'Urias, the Maliks and Seamuses.

What am I thankful for? I'm thankful that I do not have to try and accomplish lesson plans with these students every day, although I'm sure I would get better at it as I went along. At least I would learn not to fall into the "what" trap. And never compliment a child's clothing. God bless all teachers and substitutes everywhere. Enjoy Thanksgiving with your families.

Readers Rejoice!

My camping blog "Camping with Kids" will be featured on The Motherboard Facebook website on Friday, November 5, 2010. Please pass the word.

You readers make the sun shine and the heart sing. Thank you so much for reading my blog.

You can access the webpages here:
www.facebook.com/TheMotherboard and
http://campingwithfivekids.blogspot.com.

Art Class

I revel in the artistic talents of others. Artists. Even their penmanship is beautiful. What I like to place into words, they can create in images. It is a God-given talent that I do not possess. That's why I get so excited to substitute for an art class. I get to appreciate the artistic talents of the teachers through their classrooms. In both high school and elementary school, the classrooms are full of color and information. I learn about artists and art periods and get a chance to admire budding artists-in-the-making.

My job is to keep the students moving forward in their art projects. These projects can be as complicated as three-dimensional clay figures with structural supports or acrylics on canvas that students have enlarged from smaller charcoal drawings. Or they can be colored pastels or pencils on heavy paper. Whatever the project, it is an interesting vehicle for me to engage each student in conversation. And I do.

Engaging students in conversation about their art projects allows them to understand fully what they are doing and helps them to place into words any frustrations or complications they've experienced and questions they might have as to how to perform a specific component of the artwork. I encourage them to question their fellow artists in class. The students experience self-confidence as they explain to me how they have created their pieces and how they made a particular detail.

I give specific comments. "I like the shading you've given to the palm trees; the effervescence of the sea is striking; the flattened pebble-like scales on your clay fish are distinctive; the combing of the clay makes the bust really look like fur." In elementary school, I like to watch the smile pop out on the budding artist's face as I point out a particular feature of the artwork I notice, something that makes his or her drawing unique. These conversations allow students to be artists.

Art permits students to explore their imaginations and offers them an outlet to produce the images floating around in their minds. I truly believe that the arts are important in elementary and high school education. Just look at the annual art fairs at schools and the crowds who enjoy them. Art allows for interpretation of the general into the unique. Do you think art is necessary to education? Why?

English Class

Grammar. Literature. Essays. Writing devices. Story plots. I am in my own personal Heaven. English class, whether I am diagramming sentences with grade school students or reading complex text with high school students, I am having fun. I told you I'm a grammar geek.

With the elementary grades, I assist the students with creating vivid, exciting sentences for their spelling words or stories. To keep their minds dynamic, I suggest the students think in specifics rather than generals. In a third grade class I substituted for, we did a few spelling words together.

I wrote a general sentence on the board using the spelling word "swoop":

A bird swoops down to the river to catch a fish.

Then I engaged the students to give me particulars, to paint a vivid image of what they were thinking about.

What kind of bird? Was it an eagle, a falcon , or a terradactyl?

Did it have talons? [This gives me a chance to increase their vocabulary, if they don't know this word.]

Where was the bird before it took off? Was it on the top of a cliff, a mountain, or a dead tree?

What's the name of the river? Was the water wild, turbulent, or tranquil? [Possibly new vocabulary here again.]

What kind of fish did it catch? Picture it in your mind, I tell them. Was it a largemouth bass, a trout, maybe a salmon?

Our final sentence for the spelling word "swoop" was:

The eagle swoops down from its nest on the bare cliff ledge to rake its talons through the tranquil water of the Colorado River and snatch a rainbow trout.

At the high school level, I get to expand my mind a little more. There is so much great literature out there that I haven't read. I've learned to look for deeper meaning in literature, be it a novel, poem, or play. And I do so enjoy a story with a profound plot, something to contemplate. No, I don't find everything. I make discoveries in the text right along with the students most times. I can place the story or poem in its historical context for students, explaining--when the teacher leaves me notes or when I know--the culture and timeframe of the story or poem. I clarify plots and character actions that I notice for the students.

Even in English class, I learn something new, be it a new story or new vocabulary or a new way to present a concept. This is what makes substitute teaching exciting and challenging. I just need to make sure that my insight and information are grade appropriate.

The Grade School "Brain"

Have you ever encountered the grade school "brain"? Each class usually has one, and this time it is usually a boy. You know the type. The boy who doesn't need to do the assignment left you by the teacher like the rest of the class because he already has more work accomplished than the teacher requires. I was substituting for a fourth grade New Jersey history class and the students were in the midst of finding ten facts about their particular city or town in New Jersey. Luckily, I knew some information about most of the places the students had chosen because the class couldn't use the library or computers that day, like the teacher had planned, as there was a "Battle of the Books" debate.

The students' desks were arranged in clusters of six desks each. As I walked around the room checking each student's list of facts, or lack thereof, I found "Frankie" playing with his Silly Bands, chattering away, instead of working on the project. The other students in his cluster of desks had their lists out, but they couldn't help noticing the goofy shapes and colors of Frankie's Bands spread out all over his desk. So I approached Frankie's desk first and asked him to please put away the Bands and pull out his project.

"I'm finished," he declared while still rearranging his Silly Bands on the desk. "I have 18 facts--more than anyone else."

As I walked around the desks in his cluster, I asked him to show me his facts. Without disturbing a Band, he pulled out his cryptic page of notes. His town was Haddonfield, a historic luxury town located in South Jersey. I asked him if he had any further information about the Indian King Tavern Museum, and he promptly pulled out a small stack of computer-printed information about Haddonfield. Looking for something constructive he could do so as not to distract those around him, I suggested that he write a few facts about the Museum in sentences. He sighed, replaced the Silly Bands on his wrist, and began writing.

I continued to roam the classroom, filling in some details about Lucy the Elephant in Margate and Victorian Cape May for students at one cluster of desks, and historic Campbell Soup Company in Camden and Frank Sinatra of Hoboken at another. I instructed all students to write in complete sentences, using specific details that they had discovered in some of their research.

When I next noticed the "brain," he was back to manipulating his Silly Bands on his desk. I checked his sentences, and we added some detail about the architecture of some mansions in Haddonfield using his computer notes. We still had about twenty minutes left of class, and that's when I remembered the "silent reading book." This is a personal choice book each student carries around from class to class. If a student finishes work early, he or she is to read a book, quietly. If a student is silently reading a book, he or she is not distracting others in the class who need to finish an assignment. This comes in very handy when you have a grade school "brain" in your class.

Teaching Foreign Languages

As poor as my Spanish and French speaking abilities are, I forget how much more I know than those I am substitute teaching in middle school or high school, so that when I conjugate a verb on the board in a foreign language, the students always ask me what the words mean. You see, I am still an English Grammar Geek, no matter what language I am teaching. I conjugate verbs in the same fashion:

I speak --------------------- we speak
you [informal] speak ---- you [formal plural] speak
he, she, or it speaks ------ they speak

In the plural first and third person, in foreign languages, you need a male and a female "we" and "they." It is nosotros [plural male "we"] or nosotras [plural female "we"] hablamos, "speak" in Spanish, or ils [plural male "they"] or elles [plural female "they"] parlent, "speak" in French. There doesn't seem to be a subject pronoun "it" in some foreign languages because objects as well as people have a gender. La voiture is female "car" in French and el coche, male "car" in Spanish.

Now back to my grammar geekiness which makes me think of sentence construction regardless of the language I am speaking or substitute teaching. Nouns and adjectives need to agree in gender and number in foreign languages, whereas English usually has one form for most adjectives. One dress or five dresses, "red" remains the same form, no singular/plural, male/female forms. Additionally, you wear a "red dress" in English, but in Spanish or French it is a "dress red," as in une robe rouge [singular female "dress" and "red"] in French or des robes rouges [plural female "dress" and "red"].

Because of all this geekiness, the language teachers try to request me to substitute for them, especially the French teacher as French was the foreign language of my college years where I wrote French essays and research papers, but that's another story. To keep myself fresh, I do any grammar worksheets with the students. We work together many times, I explaining the grammar placement and rules of the foreign language and the students assisting with the vocabulary. Like any other task, I find that if people, or in this case students, see that you are willing to work right alongside of them, they are more willing to put their best effort into the assignment.

Now if only the students could understand things, or rather the words naming those things, as having a gender. In English our indefinite and definite articles "a," "an," and "the" have one form and negate gender. In English, our books are not male and our windows, not female. Windows, I tell the students, are just perceptual openings that sometimes allow a cool breeze to blow about the cobwebs of my mind.

The Noise Level

Can I keep every class quiet? Notice that I used the adjective "every" in the preceding sentence. Therefore, the answer to that question is absolutely not. I am a substitute, not God. Besides, the mix of "outgoing" personalities negates a hundred percent score, even a 60/40 score. What I can do, with the more difficult classes, is to keep the volume down to "small party" level and not "mass hysteria" level. How do I do this? By walking around the classroom...constantly. And perhaps standing in a group of students' space. You see, they don't want me to be a part of their conversation. I do not wish to be a part of their conversation. In fact, I am trying to tell them, both in words and through actions, to have their conversation later, like after classes or at lunch.

This type of student conversation is different from the necessary student conversations of math classes when one student assists another with class work, but even those conversations need to be kept to a low conversational, or rather instructional, volume. And those students understand, although they may need to be reminded from time to time. No, the personal conversations are the ones that interrupt the flow of education in the classroom, for there are usually several personal conversations going on at once, and they all seem to compete for listeners. These conversations interfere with my relaying the educational instructions to the class and then my individual assistance to various students. I literally can't hear myself think.

However, administering tests is different. There I try for about a ninety to ninety-five percent control. How? Again, by walking around constantly, watching everyone's eyes, standing in a student's space, or if necessary, sending a student and test to the internal suspension room or principal's office for the test duration depending upon school rules. As a last resort, after quietly telling students in an area to keep their eyes on their own papers but meeting the student in question's eyes, after showing the good student how to cover his or her test paper, I may need to take the test from a student and inform the teacher of the situation and let that teacher decide the next step. Luckily, students learn to understand that I mean what I say, and cheating is almost non-existent. I bet you noticed that I said "almost." I told you I wasn't God.