f r e s h s t a r t

Thursday, May 29, 2003

 

I'm having such an interesting time with this substitute teaching thing. I'm working for the Lansing school district, which is fairly large (Lansing is the capital of Michigan). Schools that serve different areas of the city vary widely demographically.

Each teacher goes about leaving instructions in a different way, teaches their class in a different way, and maintains discipline in a different way, so I never really know what I'm getting into each morning until I walk in the classroom door.

I've been working in many different types of classes, so my methods with dealing with the same problem have to vary accordingly. For example, this past week I've subbed for some great high school Spanish students, some fifth graders who were not interested in doing their work, and a class of severly mentally disabled teenagers. A problem that I've had in each of those classes is students getting up and wandering around the room while they're supposed to be doing work, but the strategies I would use to get one kind of student to get back to their assignment wouldn't work for another.

I'm learning a lot, but it can be a pretty stressful and exhausting job.

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