Adventures in teaching 1st grade

Monday morning I was awoken to a phone call for a half day subbing assignment in a local high school. I got up and was almost ready when my phone rang again letting me know that that job had been canceled. I was offered a job teaching middle school P.E. which I promptly said no to because I am pregnant (and I am not a great P.E. person). She then offered me a first grade job which she said "would be more low key." I didn't have much time to think, and against my better judgment said yes...and pretty much immediately regretted it. After some hemming and hawing about whether I should call back and cancel, I decided to go with it and make the best of it. I would live through one day, even if it was awful.

So I arrived at the school 30 minutes early to make sure I'd have time to look over the lesson plans and try to figure out what was going on. I was given a 2 minute "tour" by the secretary and informed that the school operated as a "school with no walls." I knew that would mean some interesting things. As it turns out the school is divided into about 8-10 areas which each have about 4 classes in each, separated by filing cabinets. The area I was in had two 2nd grade and two 1st grade classes. I already was feeling overwhelmed that I wouldn't have my own area to confine the kids and that plenty of other teachers would be able to hear what was happening in "my room." I also was discouraged to find that the first thing that the teacher said was that her classroom had a lot of behavior problems! How fun!

The kids started arriving at 8:30 and immediately I knew I was in trouble. I gave them their morning work, and was hopeful that they knew what s-blends and f-blends, etc., were because I knew I wasn't sure I could help them with it! =) We then tried to figure out what they wanted for lunch, and then tried to move on to our "morning meeting." As the plans directed, I had them "line up on their numbers" and after some pushing, shoving, arguing, and lots of tattle-taling the kids were lined up on a piece of red tape. We walked the 20 feet to a different area of the room where we had some introductions, the kids shared about their weekends, and we talked about the dates. The kids couldn't sit still, weren't quiet, and there was so much noise from the other rooms that I didn't think I could make it. Thankfully another adult walked into the room and said that she was one of the tutors and would I like her to come and help! Absolutely...she knew some of the little catch phrases the kids were used to and could help get the kids to sit "criss-cross applesauce" and "act like 2nd graders in 3..2..1". She was a real lifesaver.

Here are some of the highlights of my adventure filled day:

• Marisa shared that over the weekend she acted like a grownup and drank grownup chai and had grownup cookies. She also later wrote in her journal that her dad had told her that he thought she was popular enough to get her own cell phone soon. (I have no idea if that is true, but I had to keep from laughing as she read it to me.) She also liked to pretend that she was the teacher and boss the kids around. One of the boys said, "Marisa, you don't need to be our teacher."
• I realized how hard getting kids in a line can be when they all want to be up front and when the boys are pushing and shoving each other and then telling me all about it.
• I haven't had to tie my students shoes in a long time...and did it many times during the day.
• Had to help the students come up with a list of words that had the long u sound...thankfully the tutor was there for this part, because I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. The kids were also pretty good about coming up with a list. I was impressed.
• Jayden kept misbehaving but would deny it. He was breaking other kids crayons, stealing things and not cooperating. When I would talk with him and ask him to "take a break" (as the teacher had directed) he would refuse to move. What do you do? I am used to being able to call security to remove a student, but didn't think that was quite appropriate here.
• One little boy, Eugene, was obviously VERY smart, but didn't want to do any of his work in the morning. It literally took him 30 minutes to copy "Over the weekend I..." into his journal. Finally he started work in the afternoon after he could do some math.
• Josh was whining because he had to write 5 sentences in his journal and he "had to do that all the time" and that he "didn't do anything over the weekend". It literally brought him to tears. Any suggestion I made he said "I don't want to write about that."
• One of my highlights was that I got a 45 minute break while they had lunch and recess--thank you Lord!
• After lunch the kids were to have "quiet time" where they read their own books. I expected them all to silently read to themselves. Well apparently that means they all read out loud to themselves. I had so many kids complain that "he's reading too loud" and Marisa "couldn't even think it was too loud."
• I had forgotten how big a deal it was to talk about bathroom stuff in elementary school. Thankfully we had a one-person bathroom right off of our room. The funniest thing for the bathroom happened about an hour before school ended.
• Joyanet (boy) went to the bathroom, left the bathroom, re-entered the bathroom and finally finished
• A girl went to the bathroom
• Eugene went to the bathroom and promptly came out saying that there was a BIG mess and water on the floor.
• Joyanet finally admitted that he had "spilled"
• Eugene had to monitor while Joyanet cleaned up and promptly came out and told the class that it was pee on the floor (I am not sure if this was true or not)
• Eugene finally got to go to the bathroom and was in there a LONG time. (the rest of the class was up with me discussing some amazing animals)
• Eugene returns to the class loudly declaring that the toilet is overflowing because he had to poop really hard!
• I ran to check and thankfully it wasn't actually over flowing, but was very clogged
• Let's just say it took a while to get the class back in order, and I was able to call a custodian after they went to P.E. to come and fix it

Needless to say, I was exhausted, appreciative of elementary teachers, and firmly decided that I won't sub below 6th grade again. It is funny to think about it now, but I don't plan to repeat this anytime soon! I am not used to tying shoes, dealing with bathroom issues, the constant "telling" on each other, pushing and shoving, students crying multiple times a day, whining, and the constant battle to get them to sit still! I'll take texting, dating drama, kids that are taller than me, and high level content any day!