What??? Horrendous snow, teacher gets stuck in a snowbank on the way to school and they call in the reserves..... The day did not start out so well for the teacher and as I walk into the office and pick up the "Emergency Folder" I see paperwork titled "Legacies of Feudalism: Japan and the Shinto Religion" ... I know that for me, the day may not go much better....
As I pass out the paperwork, the overall response is that "we haven't studied this!!" And as I pull from my reserves and tell them what every substitute in trouble says "just do the best you can," the floor monitor walks in and asks how things are going... After some shuffling around and frantic cell phone calls that go unanswered, the floor monitor happens to find a practice quiz which covers their work to date. Then, in response to their questions of "are we going to watch a movie", they hear "No, you're going to take a quiz!"
To fill 45 minutes of class time, they are given 33 fill in the blank questions (with the answers given below, they just need to know which item to fill in on which line). As you can guess, it doesn't take the full 45 minutes. But, we also find the News of the Day and This Day in History statistics and discuss them as a group. They've never heard of THE BIRTH OF A NATION....I wonder how many of them will take time to look it up? I hope they do look it up, they should know that part of history and the impact that story had and continues to have on our population.
I am again impressed with the number of students who come from Russia and that region of the world. Do they not realize that it may not be appropriate for them to speak in Russian to each other while they are taking a quiz/test? hmm.....
A blessing and a curse: I am blessed that this teacher leaves a detailed seating chart - I am therefore surprised to find a student in class who is not listed on the roster nor in the seating chart. As I try to determine both first and last names, I realize that this student has only been in school two days. Did he really think it would endear him to the other students if he wore his pants belted at his knees and everyone can read the HANES printed around the top of his underwear??? As a substitute, shouldn't I know if that is considered appropriate classroom wear? Obviously, the other students would never speak up. I DO, however, know that hats and hoods are not allowed, as I ask him politely to remove his NYY cap.
And last but certainly not least, it will come as NO surprise to other substitutes, that an electric pencil sharpener can be the curse of any classroom. I've found that it is best to give up the first 5 minutes of class to have all students line up to sharpen their pencils rather than have 24 interruptions to class time while students go one-by-one to sharpen their pencils and see just how long it takes the substitute teacher to get fed up and rip the plug out of the wall... Better to pull the plug than to rusk stabbing someone with a sharpened tip...
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