Just when I think I've taught it all...

Over the course of my subbing career, I think I've "taught" just about every subject there is, including welding, auto shop, home ec, band, and choir.

Today, however, I got a new one: Forensics! Since finals are coming up, about all I had to do was be the warm body with a pulse as they made final preparations for their presentations and the final exam, but at least I can say I've taught it.

Okay, I've got to check out this book

My lovely wife Laura always finds interesting links for her blog. One is about a new-ish book, The Case Against Homework. Sounds interesting, and if Laura's serious about checking out of the library, I'm going to read it, too, methinks.

One giant step...

Thank goodness for long weekends, especially when there's no tutoring on Monday. (I do not know why we get Memorial Day off, but not any other holidays during the school year. Good grief, this year we even had to work on Halloween! Can you imagine how many kids actually showed up?) Not only did I clean out the gutters today, I also went through my huge pile of teacher stuff and got it all sorted and organized. The good news is that I now have quite a few current letters of recommendation (and even a few older ones), with more coming. I also found, to my surprise, a mostly positive evaluation from my last contracted job (the one where the year started off with a seven week teacher strike and never really got any better from there), and a few other items that should help in the job hunt. Tomorrow, I'm teaching junior high math at the school up the road, and the video production teacher is going to have a team recording me teach, so that ought to be a good addition to my application portfolio. So very soon here I should be able to finally get going on applying for jobs! Let's hope it works...

Coming soon to a theater near you (I hope)

It looks like math geeks have a big-budget movie adaptation to look forward to, although more likely it's going to play festivals before going to DVD by this time next year. So what is it? Take a look right here.

Close encounters of the teacher kind

Two interesting encounters this week:

• I was substituting elementary PE earlier this week, and one student asked, "What's your first name?" I gave my official needs-to-know answer and replied, "Mister." She was persistent, however, and asked, "Are you Eric?" Turns out that she'd gone to the same tutoring center I wok at evenings, and remembered me.
  
• The other night at the grocery store, the bagger asked, "Aren't you Mr. Gjovaag?" (Extra props to her for getting my last name right, since I usually go by Mr. G.) I have been her sub a few times at one of the local high schools. My wife grilled her on what kind of teacher I was. It turns out I'm a good sub, but this student wisely didn't commit to what kind of teacher I am.
  

How not to teach math to girls (or anybody else)

My lovely and talented wife, Laura, always finds the most interesting posts for her blog. This one, however, I thought was particularly appropriate for this blog as well. Rebecca's "Adventures in Applied Math" blog is just what is advertised. This entry from Friday sure gives some good advice to teachers. Once you read the entry, be sure to keep going and read the comments as well.

A fun week teaching

No, this is not going to be a recap of my whole week. I'm done with that, as I doubt you want to read them, and I'm not really interested in writing them. But I have had a terrific week. I've had interesting jobs (albeit perhaps with too many videos), the weather has been terrific, and I've just been really happy to be a teacher this week. I'm also feeling more confident about my chosen profession, and that I can do it. (Now I just need time to deal with the application process...)

Has anything in particular helped this situation? Well, yes, actually, and thank you for asking. One day this week (Tuesday, I think), I was subbing for an elementary music teacher. From what I gather, she's been pretty sick lately, and has had a lot of subs. Most of the classes were fine, but I did have one sixth grade class that was a little loud. There were several students who came running to the room, and so I asked them to go back to the end of the hall and try again. One of them had to do it five times before getting it right! Once everyone was in, I had a really tough time to get everyone sitting down and listening. It got so bad that I finally gave up, and asked them to step back out into the hall and line up again. I then gave them very clear directions of what I expected: facing the front, hands to themselves, and mouths closed. I had to go up and down the line a few times to deal with pockets of resistance, but in the end they did it, I let them in, and they sat and listened to me — exactly what I and just about any other teacher would want them to do. As they were filing in, I heard one of them say, "Thank goodness, we have a competent sub today." That made my whole week! I've had several students tell me that I'm their favorite sub, but I'm always paranoid that they're saying it because they think they can get away with stuff (even though I don't think they do). Both students and teachers assure me that that's not the case, but after my experiences in the year of the strike a few years ago I'm still paranoid. But that "competent sub" comment makes me realize that I'm doing it right. I am also proud of myself for doing it all very calmly. In the past I might have lost my temper and raised my voice a bit, but this time I was very matter-of-fact about it. It's taken too long, but now I really feel like I can be the kind of teacher I want to be. (Now all I need is for a district to agree and hire me.)