what a bunch of...

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what a bunch of...
By tia

gripety gripers have been posting lately! (has the same pre-christmas "bug" that makes our students so wild made us teachers so nit-pickety?) give joane a break.

who among us has not said WTF (i love that; i'm going
to have to use it more often!) about something we were asked to do--whether it was in those exact terms or not or even out loud. *kind of like when 2 days before school started this year, our district big-wigs told my school that we couldn't use the brand-new social studies curriculum that we'd adopted, that we had to use the old one. the old one that the warehouse said they were low

on and could we send those books as soon as we could--a week ago???!*

joane, of course, didn't mean that she wanted to work little and get paid a lot. reality check, if you think that's what she got into this career for. substitute jobs aren't supposed to come with this much responsibility and stress! and it doesn't sound like she's getting a lot of help from "colleagues" since everyone's kind of wrapped up in the reason those teachers are gone--there may even be some resentment toward her for being there.

joane--here are a couple ideas: to find out what they've learned--find a curriculum guide or a scope and sequence (curriculum organized into the order it should be taught) and take a period to go over it with the class and have them tell you what they've done. give them a term "final" and have them write you an essay detailing what they've read/learned. you could give an additional assignment where you allow other "intelligences" to shine--they could create artwork, poem, song, build something, act out...something to represent their learning for the term. you can give them a grade for this.

i'll bet those kids feel pretty lost right now! give them a chance to show what they know.

you're in a tough position--hang in there--remember, how you handle this could mean getting a full-time job! good luck.