Second Day of Work!

Two days after my first day, I got a morning call for "Instrumental Music" at a school in the next city over. I was pumped! I had put together my lunch the night before, my bag was ready, I was in the zone. I looked up the school's website and read about it. Smaller, older school with a high number of transient students. Okay, I can cope with that.

I get there and get sent to a portable. Fine for a shy person like me. I don't remember the exact schedule, but at one point I had to go to the neighbouring portable to pick up a grade 6 class. I was to remind them to bring their class laptops (the grade above them, also working on the same assignment, had board-issued Chromebooks). I remind them, I see them, we walk back to the portable. I hand out the sheets and explain the assignment, and get

"Do you have a pencil?" x 25.

What the?

"You didn't remind us to bring a pencil!"

Are you kidding me?!

My response?

"I didn't remind you to put on shoes either but you figured that one out."

Grade 6's, and they were surprised they might need a pencil.

Apparently though, I did not learn my lesson. Later in the afternoon I had to go upstairs (man, this was a hodgepodge school. Bizarre layout due to many additions) and bring down a grade 4 class. We got to the portable, I got them doing their work, and same thing! No one had a pencil. Someone went back to their classroom and their teacher found them a box of pencils so they wouldn't have to go through all the desks.

Unsharpened pencils.

We found two pencil sharpeners (one was mine but I think I left it there). However, do you know how much work actually got done in the 30 minute period?  That 30 minutes has to include travel time.   They were working on labelling a picture of a ukulele. They had nothing to tell them what any part was though, just the part names to write on a sticky note and stick on to the picture. Sticky notes do not stay sticky all that long and many of them looked less done by the end of class than before they came in.

A kid in one of the morning classes started talking to me about his love of music and playing drums/bass/piano. He seemed to be a bit of a metal head loner and asked if he could still come in at lunch like he normally does. I said sure. We had a great chat while he played a bit. I didn't know most of the bands he talked about but I could see his enthusiasm and that he needed that interaction. And it meant I didn't have to go sit in the staff room alone.

I had a last period prep, so I was ready to go when the bell rang. Of course, I waited a few minutes so I didn't look so eager to get out of there. I went to the office to return the key and chatted with the secretary for a few minutes. I noticed a very large binder (4") labelled "Court Orders and Permissions". I had never seen that before. I know you have to list the people allowed to pick up your child, but other than kindergarten, kids are usually just let outside. There might be a teacher on duty at the doors to keep an eye on things, or in a kiss and ride, but they don't have any way of checking the legality of every pick up. It really saddened me and I went home, very grateful to not be included in a binder like that.