substitute teaching

Chris Knight's avatar

Bit of a setup here: right now the usual work is slow.  So I’ve been supplementing that as a substitute teacher.  The school year just started up here so there hasn’t been too much assignment-wise going on.  For now though it is providing what I need.

And maybe, maybe, a little more.  Today I filled in for an assistant in a five-year kindergarten class.  It was awesome!!!  The teacher said that I did an amazing job!  She said she was definitely going to keep me in mind the next time they need a sub.  I absolutely LOVED it.  This is something I could spend the rest of my life doing.

Well, it was about 10 this morning that the teacher asked me if I’d like to read a book to the students, who are not called “students” but instead “friends” (hey it beats calling them “clients” like I did ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

For now, I’m being a very active substitute teacher.  Which, well… we’ll see what happens from there.  People have been telling me for many years that I would make for a great teacher.  Today was a chance to give it a shot.

So I taught three blocks of high school sophomore honors chemistry class.  The subject of today’s lesson was Neils Bohr, who came up with the standard model of atomic theory.  The students thought it was pretty wild that in addition to being a nuclear genius, Bohr was also an Olympic-class soccer player.

I must confess, I am absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the technology in the average classroom today.  Instead of a TV and a videotape player on a cart, each classroom now has this big touch-screen high-definition set.  I had to get one of the kids to explain to me how to make it work.  The teacher had ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Today brought an experience that I haven’t enjoyed in a number of years: substitute teaching a second grade class at a nearby elementary school. I heard yesterday afternoon that they needed someone to fill-in for a teacher, so I promptly called and volunteered for duty. Subbing is something that I’ve been doing for a month or so now, one reason is that I’m seriously thinking about teaching full-time and am sorta giving it a “trial run”, you could say.

So I arrived a little after 7 this morning, the kids were in the room by 7:30 and their regular teacher had everything planned out. And I had an awesome assistant that I got to work with. We followed things per the instructions… but I also couldn’t resist “improvising” a bit.

F’rinstance, when it came time to do Math, here was a written problem that the students had to figure out:...

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