another dee-lightful sub. teaching experience...

I started Tuesday afternoon trying to find myself a little jobette on Wednesday, when I discovered that day on my calendar was completely blank. I'd tried to leave the end of this week mostly uncommitted, thinking (a foolish mistake on my part)M that I would be working in the floral shoppe. But as things worked out, the schedule was for even less hours than the paltry number I usually get: hardly worth taking off my pj's and putting on the green shirt. And since I had all this time on my hands, thought it should not all that difficult to locate some work as a sub. teacher. Wrong. I called and called and called, and the recording kept tellling me: 'there are  no jobs available', and I checked and checked and checked on the web-site and the 'no jobs available' kept popping up. So I gave up and went to bed, jobless, thinking - oh, well, I'm sure I can get some stuff done in the yard. Anything to avoid doing house work.

Then I got up really early on Wed. morning, to get to the computer before the system started calling to fill job vacancies at 6:00 a.m., but still: no jobs available. I meandered around the house in my pj's for a while, puttering, with no reason to get dressed out out the door. Resigned to not being productive in the sense of getting paid for my effort, though I still think hole digging and weed pulling great therapy.

So the phone rang, offering a sub. job as a para-professional at a school on the south side. I always hesitate to take the para. work, as it pays so poorly - often thinking it is not worth the effort to get the income of around $50 for a day, plus driving clear across town, and likely aggravation of unmanageable kids. But the alternative is to get much less than the going rate. It actually pays $65, but after you loose 1/4 to 1/3 to Uncle Sam - and consider that the school system is running about two months behind from the day you do the work, until you get the payment, it just doesn't seem like much.

But I went, and spent the day in a K. classroom. I don't think they learned anything at all. The only thing I notice them being even semi-skilled at is they could usually put their little five-year-old heads down on the table when the teacher told them to do it. We had assembly, then we had lunch, then we went outside on the playground (probably the highlight of their day!), then we watched some counting videos. Then we all left for home.