Aethetics vs Excess

This particular post is inspired by the building that my new evening job is on. The John Jaqua Activity Center for Student Athletes. It's a brand new building on the UO campus, built by Phil Knight of Nike, for giving academic aid to student athletes.

The building is gorgeous in a modern archetecture crazy way. The pictures give you a basic idea. However, this building was REALLY expensive. Really. Phil Knight won't stay how much, but lets just say there's a hand stitched yellow Italian leather couch in the lobby. In education, especially colleges, I love how the space is beautiful. Graceful, stately, comic, the buildings are part of the joy of attending. No one wants to go to a school that looks like a prison (anyone seen Springfield High School?)

However, when does making a space beautiful and interesting cross the line into excess? I'm not sure if the Jaqua building crosses that line, but if it doesn't it's darn close. Thoughts?

Getting their money's worth

My mom warned me before I ever started subbing that some principals are super picky about making sure their subs stay all the way until the end of the day, even if they are doing NOTHING. I was very careful about that at first, but after spending some time at the same schools, which were happy to allow me to leave as soon as I was finished, I relaxed and accidently got myself in trouble.

Well, in trouble might be a little strong. At a school I subbed at a few weeks ago, the bell rang, I cleaned up the room, finished up my notes, and headed to the office to check out. I thought I'd spent a fair amount of after school time to make it seems as if I was doing stuff, so I'd only be leaving a few minutes early, but because this particular teacher's schedule had two free periods at the end of the day, I judged wrong. I arrived down at the office a full 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave and was told that I was supposed to stay until 3:45. She ended up having me stand outside (in the cold and rain) until 3:45 or the rest of the students were gone, whichever came first.

This annoys me.

I get it, you're paying me for 8 hrs, you want me to work for 8 hours. But the pure stupidity of having a person sit on their ass and do nothing (or alternatively read a novel) is ridiculous. I see it more like you are paying me to do the job of subbing for this teacher, the hours aren't the deal, it's the job. Do the job, get the pay. This is especially silly because in this situation I had already asked if the library needed help, I had asked the office and they had nothing except supervising space that was already supervised. If I'm an actual teacher who has actual planning and meetings and other things to use for that time, that is logical. A teacher who leaves early every day should be making the time up some other time. But as a substitute, there is nothing I Can do to help the teacher I'm covering for. In fact, even organizing or cleaning or grading, which might initially appear to be helpful tasks, might actually create more work for the teacher. I know that I wouldn't want a sub that I didn't know to do any of that for me, I want to look at my own students work, and do my own organizing.

Yes, the school deserves a full day of my time, but if you're going to make me stay after the work for my teacher is done, they better have something for me to do.

This is my opinion, what do you guys think, am I being reasonable? Is it ridiculous or commonplace for a school to expect me to sit and do nothing in my classroom instead of go home when I'm done.

Does a sub get paid for doing the job, or working the hours?

Things I've learned

After a few months of subbing all over the place i have learned two things that are absolutely HUGE to me.

1. Students are dismissed when I dismiss them. In my classroom students will work until the bell rings, when the bell rings, they will sit quietly until I dismiss them. Period. I don't want students controlling when they leave my classroom, this is a privileged that can be saved for college. Having me dismiss students isn't JUST about power, it also allows me to dispense any last minute reminders or announcements, and make changes to information that I've perhaps given out later.

2. No lining up at the door. In the event that I do ask students to clean up before the bell rings, they will not line up at the door, they will sit in their seats (unless it's the end of the day and I have to put chairs up, in which case they would stand behind their chair), and then they may leave when I dismiss them. When students start crowding up by the door it limits my ability to make any last minute announcements and encourages stampeding.

It's this sort of management stuff that I find I am learning what works, and what's my style every day I enter a new classroom.

Things have been brewing... an anecdote!

I've been jotting down blog topics for a couple weeks and haven't found time to type them, so I apologies for the quickness of these posts.


The Friday before school started back up after the new year I went out for a friends birthday to a bar, I ordered a drink and some food and wasn't carded. This isn't terribly surprising, though I did notice. I'm 24 and tend to look/seem fairly mature (or so I thought).

What was weird, was Monday morning I subbed at a school I hadn't been at much. I woke up late, and didn't have time to pack a lunch so I was stuck eating school lunch, not the end of the world. I finished eating up in the staff room and headed down to the cafeteria to return my tray. As I was leaving, one of the aids approached me and said "Are you a new student?"

This was at a middle school, yes at age 24 I was mistaken for a 6th, 17th or 8th grader, within DAYS of not being carded at a bar.

Apparently I defy recognition by looking both over 26 and under 14 at the same time!

Over Parenting

The Dangers of being a Helicopter Parent

"Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader's race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed off to college."

Don't be trapped by fear. Check out the article, it's excellent.

Musings: Reflecting on working in a SPED classroom

In the education front this week has been interesting, I subbed for the same teacher all week, a SPED teacher out in Creswell. It was a reading/writing SPED class and it was a fascinating experience. Some SPED teachers are horrible, they're impatient, they say things to kids that I don't think is appropriate for SPED kids ("If you were smart, you would do this..."). They jump to conclusions about what students are doing, and why they are doing it. And most of the curriculum is BORING. I don't really blame them in some ways. The kids can be infuriating, and it's really frustrating when you tell a kid what a word means, and he asks again what the same word means in less the five minutes. And you can't know if he's being lazy, if it's part of his disability, or if it's something that has been conditioned into him because of ineffective educational procedures. I do feel like I've gained a greater understanding for students who are learning disabled. I have one friend who is pretty much the only person (that I know of) that is learning disabled in a more severe way then just being dyslexic, so interacting with these students gave me a new insight. Also fascinating, and challenging, was the variety of levels within the class. They may all be at the same level of reading (or nearly the same) but the who gambit was there from highly intelligent otherwise (think Eli) to kids who are developmentally not all there, to kids who are just plain dumb. I would never pick SPED to teach. Never be my first choice, but I'm not nearly as afraid of it as I was before.

Well, I didn't get a job.

Despite the fact that I had several promising and engaging interviews I was not hired for the 2009/2010 school year. Fortunately, in the line of work of teaching, not getting a job doesn't banish you to the world of part time service or food industry jobs, no you have the opportunity to substitute teach. For some a way of life, for other their greatest fear, right?

I signed up with all the local districts, I printed business cards and spent the week before school started driving around to different schools where I had an 'in'. And then, when school started, I waited. And just when I was starting to get discouraged (and really worried about where October's rent was going to come from) I started to get calls. Since that first call, today is the first school day that I haven't had to sub somewhere. I have worked in 7 different schools, with ages from pre-school to seniors in high school. I've taught music (quite a lot actually), art, science, math, English... and I have learned more about my values and classroom management as a teacher then I had in a full term of student teaching last spring.

Walking into a classroom and commanding control and respect and accomplishing the goals that the teacher has set down for you is a very rewarding challenge. Thus far I seem to have been fairly successful and have gotten positive feedback from the teachers I've subbed for. Most of the time I've enjoyed what I've been doing, being in different classrooms, schools and with different age groups. I've also really enjoyed the fact that when the school day ends, I clean up and go home. No planning for the next day, no grading, no worrying about how I'll make up for lost time or take care of an issue, or anything like that.

The one aspect of subbing that I don't like is it prevents me from doing much planning in my own life. For the most part, I won't know more then one or two days ahead of time if I am going to be working on a certain day, so I can't make plans for my own life, or plans with friends. Since I am normally such a planner, this leaves me floundering a little when I wake up in the morning and there aren't any calls for the day. But somehow I think I'll manage.