Archive for November 19th, 2008

Fort Worth Renaissance has received its first “pingback,” from another blog. www.floralshoes.com linked the most recent Fort Worth Mom Blog, so we had to go over and visit them in return.  We found a blog which treats how to find the right shoes and how to get good deals — my favorite article was http://floralshoes.com/3-steps-to-shoe-success/ in which the author acknowledges something that, at least, is true for me — shoes have to look good and be in style, but if they don’tfit well or aren’t comfortable, the result is going to be that they stay in the closet, so be careful.

Of course in Fort Worth, those shoes may very well be cowboy boots. The same basic rules apply

My first day of substitute teaching actually went pretty well. The mystery of what they do in school began to be revealed to me. I arrived, as I was instructed, at 7:40, signed my time card.  “Go to room 302,” the secretary told me.  As before, I was filled with a feeling of wonder that they thought I could handle this job without supervision.

I arrived and everything was in place. The schoolroom had laminated apples on each desk with the children’s names on them. and Inspirational posters on the walls. The board was about half full with permanant notes. I also found a stack of teaching guides and a lesson plan on the teacher’s desk. Thank God. Here at last were instructions.

Of the techniques we learned from sub training two ideas stood out — follow the lesson plan and don’t loose control of the class. “If the class is running through the halls, you’ll get a complaint from the principal asking you not to come back,  our sub instructor told us. If you get three, you’re sacked.

“Where are the children?” I asked the teacher next door five minutes before school was scheduled to begin.

“They’re in the cafeteria.”

Was every last one of them eating breakfast at school? Somehow this made me more concerned.

There were three special ed kids in the class, I learned from the special ed teacher who came by next. “You have any trouble,” she said, “You just call me, I’ll straighten them out.” 

By they’re just first graders, I thought. Surely they can’t get into real trouble in frist grade. Then one father walked his son into class, so no, not every child was eating a school breakfast, and five minutes later 21 students arrived in a rush and began putting away their backpacks. As I watched them, doing these rote tasks, putting books away, and led them in the pledge of allegiance, it was like the wind of teaching instinct — because I’ve had 16 years of education, I am, like all the other teachers, a college graduate — picked me up and carried me and I knew that I could do it.

I followed the lesson plan. I gave a little extra attention to two boys who I noticed had their desks placed at opposite ends of the room, but kept getting together even so. Near the end of the day, the kids were finding it harder and harder to listen and do their math. And these two boys finally went too far and I put them on “yellow” on the discipline chart. 

They were frightened. I kept them back at recess for five minutes, as you’re supposed to with students under discipline. I told them that if they found a way to avoid trouble for the rest of the afternoon they would be returned to green. One of them, who had huge eyes like Claude Rains, was particuarly anxious that no report go home about his behavior. And they made it. At the end of the day they were switched back to green

I wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do. But the sub is lenient, I’ve learned. If she can be.

“What do your parents do if you come home with a bad discipline report?” I asked the class as we got ready to leave.

“Give me a whippin,’ one boy said. 

I was sure he was speaking metaphorically. Nevertheless, no one got a report on my day teaching that class. And the special ed lady never had to come in. So I guess I succeeded. I was exhausted, and when I got home I had dog trouble (I’ll try to post on that tomorrow). But overall, I had changed from someone who thought she might not be able to sub to someone who knew she could.