I am developing a good start up routine. As I enter the office to find out to which room I will be heading, I stop by the teacher mailboxes to pick up the attendance sheet that was returned to the mailbox the day before. I know I'll need it to take class attendance.
It is great morning exercise as I head up to the fifth grade by walking up three flights of stairs. (I do note, however, that I will also have to walk down three flights to pick up the class in the gymnasium and then turn around and make the trip back upstairs in 15 minutes.) I am pleasantly surprised to find a large room with lots of windows, desks neatly organized, activity areas clearly marked. And, even at the fifth grade level, there is a large area rug for morning meeting - thank goodness desks and chairs don't have to be moved for the 15 minutes in which students greet each other.
When a well-behaved student is in charge of organizing the meeting, things run smoothly. However, 15 minutes into my day I get a sense of why the teacher may be absent. Every student in the class is either sneezing, coughing, sniffling, or blowing their nose. And yes, I do mean every single one. I am further alarmed when I begin turning over some chairs and a student yells out "don't touch that chair and then touch your eyes! - X*** touched that chair and he has pink eye!" Oh my, thank goodness I see that every table has hand sanitizer on it. I encourage students to cough into their elbows and to wash and sanitize their hands. I get the sense that I will end up being heavily medicated by the end of next week. I don't know how I can manage to avoid the germs that are running rampant in this room.
This is a great fifth grade class. They take the spelling test in stride, they then move into the math review and then eagerly attack the math quiz. The teacher's notes clearly state "they are to do the quiz on their own - they will not need any help and they are not to use any of their reference notes." This information is of great help to me as a student approaches me to indicate that she "cannot make sense of question #5." Unfortunately, neither can I! Instead of admitting my ignorance, I fall back on my notes at hand "I'm really sorry, but I'm not able to help you, you'll have to do the best you can." Phew!! I dodged the bullet on that one.
As it only takes 25 minutes to fill the 60 minute time block, I have enough previous classroom experience to reach for the teacher's manual and to pull out some interactive math activities. Always a popular activity, calling students to the white board and having them write with erasable markers is a great way to keep them engaged. Even better, though, is when the teacher leaves you the password to the SmartBoard - kids love using the technology, even if it is only to draw. Most every sub-day plan, however, begins with the words "No matter how much they tell you they can, students are NOT to touch/use the SmartBoard." Oh well, maybe some day they'll trust me, an adult, to access the board. Until that day, I'll happily use the white board and let the students go crazy using the markers. At least it keeps them engaged!
So much of the day is taken up by moving through the building. Up the stairs to start the day, back downstairs for recess/lunch, upstairs to the classroom to pick up library books, back downstairs to the library, upstairs to the classroom for transition, pack up their things and put chairs on the desks before heading back downstairs to their Encore Class at the end of the day. These fifth graders will have pretty developed leg muscles by the time they reach high school.
With all this walking up and down I'm glad I carry a water bottle with me. And as I learned early on, it is always helpful to befriend the school secretary. She is the keeper of the bathroom key and she can either make your life miserable or be your best friend - truth be told, I'd rather have her on my good side. The next time I get called to go in and sub, I think I'll bring her a box of chocolates.
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