Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A 7th Grade Science Teacher

My day was off to a fun start as soon as I checked in at the main office.
It turns out that the online subbing job dispenser made an error.
I accepted my job online at about 5:30am.  I had to hit "accept" a few times, before it would push the job onto my personal job page; this happens sometimes when I click "accept" while the automated system is calling someone about the same job.  It isn't really a big deal, it just means that I have to always double check my personal page before actually leaving for an assignment, since if the person called takes the job, it will over-ride my online acceptance.
Confused yet?  Yeah, the system takes a little getting used to.
Anyway.  I get to the main office, and the secretary was surprised to see me.  Another sub had showed up a little bit earlier for the same job.  Since there was only one teacher gone that day, she hadn't double checked the arriving sub against who the system said would be coming.  So, because I was the one in the system, we went down to the classroom together.  It turned out that this other woman had accepted the job over the phone (which should have closed the post, and not allowed me to accept).  She even said that she had seen the job on her page before she left home.
In the end, I got the assignment, because it was my name in the system.  The secretary felt horrible for not catching the error earlier, and I'm of course left looking and feeling like a jerk for taking the other sub's job.
The other sub was REALLY cool about the whole thing.  I would have been livid.  The secretary and I both urged her to call the agency and ask about what happened.

Much later in the day, one of my 7th grade classes was taking turns reading a section in the textbook.  The topic involved the different way that living organisms are classified.  As you may expect, the word "organism" is shown at least every couple sentences.
One boy, while reading a section, pronounced the word as "orgasm."  Every.  Single.  Time.
I'm pretty sure it was not on purpose, and not a single kid caught onto it.  Even the parapro in the room was too distracted to hear it.
I let the kid finish his section, without correcting him.  When he was done, I pointed out to the class that proper pronunciation is always very important.  I then lead them through a quick verbal exercise on how to correctly pronounce several of the words in the section... including "organism."

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