A Lesson Learned

I was scared at first but I think subbing for middle school agrees with me-- as much as it could. Of course having only done three days (all in the same district) doesn't give me much to base my opinion upon. But of those three days none of them have been bad and mostly manageable. I haven't tried high school yet and my elementary subbing experience is even more limited than my middle school. I like that I get a new group of kids every hour which also helps me learn throughout the day and if a student is being problematic (although these have been really good kids!) I'm confident that for one hour I can maintain order.

Today had an unexpected element: the MSU basketball game. When I was in middle school (or college for that matter) you could very easily live your life completely oblivious to the college basketball team but here I had students politely begging me if they could watch the game. "They have it on in the library" they would say and they would say what other teachers had the game on... at least they had it on mute. One student really lead the way on this, the type that could charm the socks off a snake. The computer lab was next door and he had gotten permission from the computer lab teacher to have a viewing over there. I was on the spot. I call the lab teacher and he confirms that their regular teacher wouldn't have a problem with it so long as the kid were being respectful to me and suggested that I have them quietly on task (reading) for a given amount of time to let them earn watching the game for the last fifteen minutes of class. The game was an event, one that even the folks in the office were talking about (and watching on mute) so I decided to go with the flow on this one-- it helped that the kids were nice about it the whole time, even when it was really looking like I was going to say no.

I knew I had little Michiganders and that keeping them away from the game would be like taking away air-- it's that big a deal!