Friday was the last day for the Seniors at [City Withheld]  High School. This is a school that I have subbed at many, many times, including a couple long-term jobs.  This year's Seniors were Freshmen when I first started working there.  This is the first time I've ever really been able to see a class through their entire high school career (even ...

I subbed today for a Social Studies/Gym teacher. Most of my gym classes today played soccer.  I guess this was injury day.  One girl pulled a muscle in her leg.  One girl twisted her ankle.  Two boys tried to catch the ball with their face.  Luckily there was no blood or broken limbs. The seventh grade history class had an awesome ...

I subbed today in a senior English class. We watched Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  At the same time, there was a strong thunderstorm going on.  On more than one occasion, a climatic scene in the film was punctuated by a BOOM from outside.  It was pretty cool. Also, apparently this is ''Teacher Appreciation Week.''  I didn't think ...

I subbed in a business/computer class the other day. Computer classes might just be the single most boring class to sub for, especially when the kids are good.  All day the kids sat silently and typed away. In fact, this may have been the most interesting part of the day... Student: ''Hey, is this vocab sheet double-sided?'' Mr. ...

Today was exciting. I excepted a job posting to teach high school US History.  When I arrived at the school this morning, I found out that, despite what the job posting said, I was only getting a half day's work (and pay). Something similar to this happened a month so ago in this same district.  I had planned on registering a very firm ...

Last week I had two separate assignments as history teachers.  During both of those assignments I was asked to sub for a gym teacher on what would have been a prep period. The first day I was in a very large class being co-taught with another gym teacher.  She was there that day, so I just needed to supervise.  The class was having a ...

I’ve been stewing on SLOs since January when legislation dictated that value-added teachers (reading and math grades 4-8) would now be required (as of 2014-2015) to have 50% of their evaluation based on value-added. I attended an SLO training in January, but left feeling….unsatisfied. So many of my questions were answered with “That’s an LEA” ...

Yesterday I subbed for a high school biology teacher.  It was the last day of the trimester, and two of the four class periods were taking an exam. About 10 minutes into first period, when all the kids were silently working, the feeder crickets in the back started to chirp.  It was so perfectly timed that at first I thought a kid was playing ...

I recently subbed for a band director.  I had both middle school and high school classes. The middle school band got to watch a movie.  The picked The Land Before Time.  A large number of them (mostly boys) laughed loudly when Littlefoot's Mother died.  I know they were just trying to show off how ''tough'' they are, but it was still ...

I subbed in a brand new school today. The place was huge.  After the secretary took me to my classroom, I was worried that I would never find my way back to the office.  I also had to take the kids down to the library for my first class.  Since I had no idea where that was, and I didn't want to show weakness, I just said, ''alright guys, let's ...