Subbing away

I had a two day stint as a substitute in Economics. All seniors. All pretty much well behaved. It was actually a lot of fun, but I wished I could have helped them better. Economics is definitely not my thing!

This is my usual intro, "Hello, I'm Mrs. Johnson. I am the mother of seven children . . ."

At this moment there is the usual round of gasps. I then go on to tell them where my kids are attending school and that up until last year we were homeschooling. I then make a sweet speech about how great high schoolers are and then jump into taking the roll.

The teacher that I subbed for this time has a bathroom toilet seat with the cover for the kids to take to the bathroom for their bathroom pass. I think it's a marvelous way to keep too many kids from wandering out to many times to the bathroom while there's a sub in charge. But I discovered very soon that they were leaving the toilet seat and cover in the hallway and continuing on to the bathroom, and then picking it up again on their way back into the room. I caught three of them doing it.

The third one was aghast, "How did you KNOW?!?"

"Well," I said calmly, "I'm the mother of seven. I see through walls."

"Dude, she knew when I left the toilet seat in the hall, too!"

What can I say. It's a gift.

In an effort to get to know the kids better, I came up with a 3x5 card questionnaire. I passed out cards to each student and asked them to put their names on the cards and answer four questions about themselves:

1) Favorite movie

2) Favorite gum

3) Weird or unusual thing about you

4) Life motto

Then, I read each card and the class was to guess who that person was. That way I got to know how well they knew each other while getting to know them myself. It was a hit. One of the classes wanted to do it again the next day, so we did. This time I asked them:

1) Favorite food

2) What they aspired to be

3) If they could be one person on the planet for 24 hours, who would it be?

4) Dream vacation OR If they had one million dollars and had to buy one thing, what would it be?

It was fascinating reading the answers and listening to the responses. In the manner of small towns, some of the kids have been together since preschool, so some knew each other very well. But there were others that weren't as friendly with each other, so it was a good way to get them to talk to each other.

Any ideas for more questions for other classes? Anyone, anyone? (Ferris Bueller reference there . . . been thinking a lot about Ferris Bueller lately!)

Tomorrow, I have another full day of substituting. This time it's in special education resources. Not entirely sure what that means, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow. Keith has tomorrow off, so he'll be able to see if he can do anything about our little van that we're borrowing. PLEASE PRAY FOR THAT VAN'S QUICK RECOVERY! We need it badly. Keith has a lot on his plate tomorrow while I'm at work. He needs to make sure that after school Keri Lynn, Kristofer and Kathleen all get to the bus at church to go to the weekend choir festival. Also, Kade has a slumber party that he's attending, so he needs to be packed and ready to go right after school. All of this has to be done while Keva's coming home from school. I'm still not sure how we're going to work out all of the details at the time of this writing.

And some of you may be wondering how I'll be getting to work since Keith will be using his truck and fixing the van that I've been driving. The last two days, I've hitched a ride with Cheryl, the youth pastor's wife, who lives down the road from us and who also works at the high school. So as long as I get jobs at the high school, I'm covered for rides! Whew!

I've got to go and fill out a bunch of medical release forms now. I've put it off long enough.