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Sunday, February 5, 2017

My kids where fine.

Sometimes my students really surprise me.


I was gone last Friday.

I went out of town with the Speech and Debate team.

There were 25 subs in the building on Friday.

We only have about 115 certified staff.

That means ~20% of our staff was MIA.

And we had a Freshmen assembly first thing in the morning.

Whatever chaos you are envisioning, happened.

There were at least two fights.

The sub in the room across the hall from me struggled mightily and to hear the kids tell it, he didn't make great choices either.

The assembly ran almost forty five minutes long.

But my kids were fine.

Like totally chaos free, did what was needed, managed themselves well, fine.

At least as far as I can tell.
My room wasn't trashed.

The assignment had clearly been distributed.

The movie times were recorded as I asked.

I didn't get any other sub notes.

Nothing negative, though nothing positive either.

The weirdly positive thing: not one kid complained about the sub.

No one moaned and groaned about the work.

Really only one person was a nasty about watching the movie and she's like that about everything.

Instead, I got kids who worked well and largely without complaint.

A couple of kids told me they missed me.

That is always nice to here.

I guess I expected some push back.

I get it.

When I am not there, they feel abandoned and uncertain.

Not unlike preschoolers, they thrive on routine.

Any disturbance to said routine causes intense anxiety.

I try to tell them ahead of time when I will be gone.

That seems to help.

But it is unpredictable and I never feel completely confident about what I will find when I return.

Coming back from a Friday filled with chaos and fights and schedule changes to calm:

Very good thing.

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