substitutes

now normally i have excellent luck with substitutes, or at least am not in the building where i know all the problems....but today....

1st period the sub was late. she took the job last night, no excuse. we start at 8:35 for crying out loud. my teacher assistant got the class started. then 2nd 2 kids and the teacher assistant came down to ask, "what are we supposed to be doing, cause the class is crazy. they are all listening to music, etc." well, apparently, the sub lost the instructions and didn't know what to do. the directions were on the board; the grammar packets were in the basket by my desk. . . seriously, figure it out. I went up there and by the time i got there the students had found the work and passed it out and started working on it. 4th, apparently they didn't do anything. 5th, they hunted down the grammar packets and did it themselves because she told them she didn't know what they were supposed to be doing. 6th, nothing...that is when i found all this out. i went up there 7th, passed out the packets myself and got them started. most of them were doing their work between blaming this girl of being pedro's (another kid in class) girlfriend. go figure that. oh and they tagged my board up...mostly in dry erase markers, partly in regular markers.

what did my sub do today? she make some excellent pencil drawings because she is an amateur artist. did she attempt to make them do their work? did she check or worry about what they were doing? you know the answer to that i'm sure.

so this is my quandry. i *was* going to let them watch a video tomorrow if they did the grammar packets efficiently today, but most of my classes didn't do them and those that did didn't get them till the end of the period (except for 7th). though i shouldn't punish the students for the sub being crazy. i'll just make sure that she doesn't come back to my room. i was visably angry today when i went up there after school, but i didn't say anything to her about it. i asked what they did and she said she didn't know what they were supposed to be doing and she lost the assignment page. i wouldn't be so upset about it but i was in and out of my room all day and she didn't ask. she said she didn't know where the packets came from, they just appeared. :)

on a happier note, the conferencing is going very, very well. most of my student are actually very very close to passing and many of them could make 3/4 on their essays if they work at it. so the day wasn't a complete bust.