What I learned from the classroom

Two days ago I received a call from the elementary school I work at, asking if I could sub for an associate this week.  I was hesitant to say "yes" as I was fearful of being with a badly behaved child. When I called back to inquire about the student, I was told it would be an easy kid to be with.  I decided I better give it a shot, so I said "sure" (although I only accepted one of the two days they were requesting me for). I was pretty nervous about today, but it actually went very well.  The kid I was with was pretty easy. He was a cutie, actually. I just had to remind him to stay on task a few times was all.

What I hadn't thought about ahead of time, was that I was going to be sitting in a classroom for most of the day...meaning, I would get to see what class is like these days.  I was pretty surprised.  Extremely surprised, really.

Teaching appears to be a glorified baby-sitting job right now.  I could not believe how much time the teacher spent just asking the kids to be quiet and waiting for them to pay attention.  WOW!!   I felt really bad for the teachers (I sat in 2 classrooms). They had their own ways of getting the class to pay attention and be quiet, but the kids just didn't ever seem to want to obey for longer than 3 minutes. These were 3rd and 4th graders. I did enjoy watching the kids try to get each other to be quiet so they could "surprise" their teacher when she came into the room....of course there was the one kid who thought he was hilarious by being loud...his classmates were not impressed.

Something our school does is combine grades. So, first and second graders are in a classroom together and then third and fourth graders are in a room together.  This is optional, as we also have traditional single grade classrooms.  The multi-age thing is fairly popular though.  We have heard a lot of good things about this program, so I was glad I got to check it out today. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to have 2 grades together.  It was interesting.  Just by my observations today (and I could easily be way off from the way the program is actually ran), it appears that the students are taught more "real world" applications, rather than traditional reading/writing/math/science, etc.  I watched them share their feelings and then discuss how to help their friends that were feeling down.  I watched them discuss things they did well at yesterday and things they felt they could improve on today.  I watched them sit quietly and read independently (each at their own level of book), and then discuss how to be better readers (read the text and then think about what you read and predict what may happen). I also attended their math class.  Ummmm.............

So, I've been hearing about this "new math" for a few years now.  I finally got to experience it for myself.  W.T.F?!?!?!?  Seriously. The first problem was 44+57. It took 10 minutes to tell a ridiculous story about how to get the answer.  There's no stacking the numbers on top of each other and adding each column.  Now, we count in 10's and then add or subtract the appropriate number from there.  I was SO LOST!!  I wanted to ask, "could you please pause for a second while I got get my phone to record this???  Because no one is going to believe me when I tell this math story...."  But instead I sat quietly and tried to figure it out.  I mean, I took every single math class my school offered and did very well in them; I enjoyed math!  But this new math is just a foreign language.  I will admit that once I figured it out, it did make sense, but still.....I feel like it takes so much longer to do it this way.

Another thing I found interesting is that they do not have desks.  Instead they all sit at tables together. They also do not have their own supplies, as they all just grabbed pencils, scissors, etc from a container on their table.  I guess it really doesn't matter if you have your own things; it's just different from when I went to school. And the kids don't stay in their seats longer than 10 minutes.  The teachers have them moving from chair to carpet and back very frequently.

Additionally, schools are required now to use more technology.  I have heard that they struggle to find enough uses for technology and today I saw them really stretching their ideas to get technology in.  Like, using a blank page on their ipads to practice math problems, instead of paper and pencil. One teacher used the ipad to draw a name at random to come up and help her.

School just doesn't seem the same.  I kept worrying today that these kids are missing out on a lot of textbook items, but probably they are not.  I mean how many things did we learn that we've never needed to know?!?!

I had a very "blonde" moment today that I better share.  I wore flip flops to the school, but because I have to wear close-toed shoes for working in the lunchroom, I brought my tennis shoes to change into.  When it was time for my lunchroom job to start I went to put my socks and tennis shoes on, only to find out I brought my right shoe and Rylee's left shoe!!!  OMG!!!  I could not believe I did that!!!!  Luckily my bosses were cool with it and let me wear my flip flops this one time (sshhh, don't tell).

A few minutes later as I was serving lunch, James came up behind me with flowers :)  I was surprised to see him, as I was expecting him to come eat lunch with Rylee on Friday.  He decided to surprise us both!

All in all, it was a fun day!  I will likely sub again if they call me to.....until I get that one "bad" kid....

Working bus duty after school with my favorite kindergartner! :)