How not to be naughty

Here's a tip for any students who are reading this and might want to do something naughty when there's a substitute teacher: Don't give a wrong name to the teacher when you get caught and he writes up an infraction. Because it's entirely possible that the substitute will be back two days later, and have the real student whose name you gave in one of his classes. Then the substitute can go and talk to the teacher he originally subbed for and the vice-principal and get everything straightened out, and you will get a lot more than an infraction; you will be suspended. This is exactly what happened to me this past short week of teaching, and I am not at all happy about it. Fortunately, both students who had to serve undeserved detentions, the teacher, and the vice-principal were all very understanding and forgiving about the whole thing. When I found out who these students really were and told the story to other teachers at the school, I got lots of rolled eyes and exclamations of, "Oh, yeah, those two," or words to that effect. I gather I'm not the only teacher who's had a run-in with them.

So, I ended up with a half day on Monday of wood shop, which started out with a couple of very fidgety and rude liars giving me the business. Fortunately, it went uphill from there. I did enough wood shop in high school that I can handle myself and the equipment there, and I helped out as best I could. Tuesday was drama and video production. Video was easy, I just let them do their thing, while in drama we got to play some improv games. I think one class could have played Freeze Tag for hours, they were very good. They even let me jump in a few times. Wednesday, back to the first school, and I "taught" science and math. But since this was the last day before the long weekend (this district had set aside Thursday for a teacher work day, and Friday was a day of since Veteran's Day is Saturday this year), and periods were short because of the Veteran's Day assembly, and they were all done with units anyway, I got to show them the first few minutes of October Sky instead. Yeah, that was a really hard day... The other district I work in had school on Thursday, but believe it or not, nothing came up, so I ended up with an extra day off, which works for me.

So now, how goes it on the job front? Very interesting, as it turns out! It seems that the district where I curretnly live and get the most work had a computer meltdown or something over the summer, and they lost a lot of files — including my current application. So when they got my fax Monday morning, they called and let me know that I needed to fill out a new application. Yikes! So I printed that out and my general application file (it has my résumé and scans of my transcripts, certificates, and letters of recommendation) and managed to get an hour off from tutoring that evening. I rushed home and filled it out, wrote a quick letter, and shoved it all into an envelope for Laura to drop off Tuesday morning. Whew! Everything came in and was fine, but then it turned out that the local high school job was statistics, which I'm not very good at at all. Oh, well. Still, there are some long-term leave replacement jobs coming up, and the personnel office knows I want them, so this may pay off soon after all.

Nothing lined up for the coming week yet, although the science-and-math teacher I worked for on Wednesday may need me again Monday, which means I'd get to see more of October Sky. Well, it's a good movie, I don't really mind.