Subbing

I've been substitute teaching pretty much every single day.  It's so awesome to be getting paid my salary from my other job and getting paid my subbing pay! 

Yesterday I subbed in 1st grade at a public school.  I LOVED it.  I was so excited to teach 1st grade this year and was disappointed when the school closed, so yesterday was great!  In the middle of the math lesson I was teaching, the special ed. aide in the classroom came up to me and asked if I have a teaching background.  I told her that I've been a teacher for 4 years and that my school had closed.  She said that she had been listening to me and that I was doing a great job and that usually when a sub comes in she ends up being the one who has to do all the teacher.  Then she left the room for a minute; when she came back she told me that she had just gone to the office to tell them I'm fantastic and that they should always call me in.  That made me SO happy!  I also got a phone call over the weekend from a sub coordinator for a school I had just subbed at for the first time the week before.  She said that she had gotten a phone call from someone at the school raving about me.  Not that I'm trying to brag about myself; I just like to hear things like that because sometimes I really doubt myself as a teacher.  Sometimes I feel like I don't know enough about what I'm doing or something, so when I hear those kinds of things, I'm thrilled.  Plus, this is all stuff that will (hopefully) lead up to my getting a public school job for next year.

I've always been teaching in a private school and, although those jobs were good, I felt like I couldn't use my college education to its fullest.  Private schools are so different from public schools.  The first school I taught in was a Christian school and, because it's hard to find teachers for Christian schools, the curriculum was designed so that basically anyone could come in and be a teacher.  That was obviously not allowing me to use my college education.  Then I was in a Catholic school.  I wasn't Catholic, so that made it kinda difficult at times.  Plus, the classes were really small, and I really want to have a large class.  I know that sounds crazy, but ever since I wanted to be a teacher, I've had ideas in my mind about my class and my classroom and I always imagined a lot of kids (ask me again how I feel about this someday when I've had 20+ kids in a classroom for a couple weeks...lol).  Being in public schools has been fun.  I've gotten so many ideas for my own classroom for when I have one again; ideas from what kinds of posters to hang up, to management of learning centers, to organization of lesson plans.

This whole thing has been a great experience so far and I'm so blessed to have this opportunity; but I am definitely eager to have my own classroom again!