first day in Middle School

Well, after not subbing all week (I'm finding out it's not that easy for a new sub like me to get into the rotation) I was able to get into the Middle school today and it went way better than I would have imagined.  I was subbing for a science teacher who's also the head tennis coach and was gone all day at a tennis tournament.

The first thing I am always dying to know is how much stuff did the teacher leave for me to do with the kids.  When I got to school and checked in (I even got to check out a mac book for me to use for whatever) the secretary told me the teacher probably left stuff for me in his classroom.  I went into his room and it was only a few minutes before the first class came in so I was frantically looking for instructions, anything, at least the list of the classes but I couldn't see one thing anywhere around his computer.  Only after a couple minutes of me trying to look all over his desk I realized there was another desk right in the middle of the room and phew - all the instructions were there, with a couple videos to watch with 4 classes, some work sheet for one and even hand notes with what to do.  So the first and second periods of 8th and 7th graders were great and I did everything we were supposed to.  The third period my friend who I met in the hallway warned me about because this class consists of all the biggest trouble makers, behavioral issues kids that they just put into one class so the rest of the classes don't get distracted.  I thought it was a bit strange because this poor class doesn't stand a chance.  There's always someone that just decides to go against the rules, misbehave just because and the whole class keeps getting grounded for things.  I feel bad for some of the kids there that get labeled like that, they're in "that" class.  So there are 2 helpers in the room which was great because they are obviously used to the kids and got them to listen really well.  So since I had the help I almost felt like I didn't even need to be there.

Then another strange thing was that 2 of my periods were made up of 5-6 kids and that was the class I was supposed to teach.  When I asked them how come it's such a small class I got the same answer from both classes - "because we're stupid and can't be in the regular science class".  I'm not sure how exactly the school manages to separate the "slower" kids from "regular" kids but I guess that is how it's done there and it makes you sad when the kids are even calling themselves stupid.  But let me tell you, if those kids were behind the regular kids we may be in big trouble. :)  My 4th period was 6th grade science where we actually got to work on stuff so I was excited.  The work was on their brand new material - converting in the metric system.  I could not believe that was the first time those kids have heard of converting from a kilometer to centimeter.  Some got it down right away, but most of the kids had no clue which way to move the decimal points or even telling a centimeter and millimeter apart on the ruler and were just copying stuff from friends' sheets.  So that was a bit of a sad moment but truthfully I'm not surprised.  I guess you just hope your child gets into an advanced class because there they get at least somewhat challenged.

So my first experience in the Middle school went great.  Some people were telling me how they would never sub at the Middle school but I can't complain and have to say that even though you have some very energetic boys at that age, I really like that age.  You can have more of a conversation with them and they're usually very eager to talk just about anything.  Maybe I wouldn't like it if I was the regular teacher of those kids but subbing for them isn't bad at all. :)