I Survived My First Substitute Teaching Assignment!

"Substitute Teacher" by Omnitarian, for Shirt.Woot

I spent all day Friday and today as a substitute 6th grade Language Arts and Social Studies teacher, and I lived to tell about it! 

I was filling in for one of Lars's teachers, who left me very detailed plans for both days, tidy little seating charts, and sticky notes of encouragement.  I got to read a short story to the Language Arts classes on Friday, which was fun for me and held their attention.  The worksheets and almanac activities that came after that, well, not so much.  For some bizarre reason, this year's sixth grade is about 75/25 boys to girls, and the boys all have LOTS TO TALK ABOUT.  CONSTANTLY!  I finally broke out my iPad and pretended to videotape the class, panning the room as I narrated like this: "Hello, Mrs. Regular Teacher, this is your 5th period Language Arts class!  This is how they behave when you aren't here."  It's amazing how quickly they settled down when they thought their every move was being captured on video.  After all, I might not be able to instantly put a name to every child whose mouth was running or who might have been smacking the kid next to him with a ruler, but their teacher knows exactly who they are...

Other than talking out of turn and minor silliness, they were a pretty well-behaved bunch.