Back to Work!

So this was the first week it was possible for me to sub . . . and I worked two days this week! Yay! Not only that, I'm booked for one day in October, two in November, two in December, and one in January - the money's rolling in now!!! :-) Okay, maybe not so much . . . but this is definitely an improvement. Even just working once a week would be, among other things, a financial miracle for us. Woot.

Thursday I subbed at Millville. It was fun, but kind of overwhelming. And I'm so glad Drew was there too, because holy crap that school is confusing when it comes to finding your way around!! I'm probably still going to be getting lost at the end of the school year. The first group I worked with were little terrors . . . well, the boys were. The girls were pretty good. Sadly, we only got about halfway through the lesson because I kept having to bring the boys back on task. I think they could tell I had no idea what I was doing. Then the last thing I did was hall monitoring - that was weird. And I felt really short when these fifth graders walked by that were almost as tall as I was.

The hall I was in had one of those huge maps of the world. I was looking at it idly and I noticed that something about Russia just didn't look right. It was too big. And I was pretty sure I could see the word "soviet" in there, but it was all spread out like they do with big countries and I was too far away to tell for sure. So toward the end of my hall monitoring time I wandered over to the map. No Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia . . . it had the good old USSR. And Yugoslavia. And Czechoslovakia. (did I get that even close to right?) That one was really weird for me to see, because I distinctly remember the day my fifth grade teacher explained to us how the Czech Republic and Slovakia had split, and yesterday they were one country but now they're two countries. So I had to find a date on the map. Guess what date I found. No, seriously - guess.

1989. Crazy, no? That map is older than my little brother. My little brother who is a high school graduate. Talk about outdated materials!!! This is why the one thing in politics that makes me mad is education cuts. (the main reason nothing else makes me mad is because I don't understand it . . . seriously. any and all Washington talk is completely Greek to me.) I mean, come on! You give kids materials that are twenty years out of date, and then you expect them to have a thorough and accurate education? Umm . . . not happening. I am firmly convinced that this is the reason for Miss South Carolina a couple years ago. Obviously it's no wonder that Americans are so terrible at geography - on the off chance that they actually look at a map that shows more than just the US, it's probably from a time period they don't remember, either becuase they were too high on *insert popular drug of whichever decade here* or too young.

Anyway. This one wasn't supposed to be a rant. Friday I was at North Park. And I did more or less absolutely nothing. Good times. The lady I was subbing for was supposed to be giving her kindergarten kids a test, so Aunt Loretta tested them (and how convenient was it that we were in the same place almost the whole time?! Score!) and I got to color all day. Well, watch them color. Good times. It made me want to break out the coloring books I bought in Florida . . . I haven't colored in ages!! So I did. Yay!!!

So here's hoping to a lot more subbing gigs in the future. I like this game!

Luke-ism for the week: so last night we were talking about babies . . . I think we'd been watching some silly baby videos on youtube or something. Anyway, he asked me if all babies like peek-a-boo, and I tell him every baby I've ever met does. And he says, "So it's like all babies come with peek-a-boo pre-installed?"

P. ost S. cript
In case you didn't get my reference earlier. I love the look on Mario Lopez's face at the end. He's this close to absolutely losing it!