"Welcome to Hell"

Tee-hee. On the side walk in front of the "better" junior high at which I sub, someone spray painted "Welcome to Hell" in big, red letters. I want to take a picture to post, but I am afraid someone at the school will see me taking the picture and think it odd.

Yesterday I had the best afternoon subbing ever. Most of the school was on a field trip, so I had between 4 and 7 students per class. I subbed math. The first period I subbed, the kids worked on practice sheets. I let them listen to the radio. Surprisingly enough, unlike the other middle school, they wanted to listen to rock or classic rock(!) instead of rap & hip-hop. I was pleased. A high school student who helps in the afternoon came in during this period. I loved her. She wants to be a math teacher, and was asking me all these questions about college, and classes, etc. Then, she asked me if I ever did any modeling. I almost kissed her. I am sort of tall (5'8) and quite thin, but I am almost 30 and don't exactly feel pretty, so her asking this literally made my day! The next class was a general math class, and the kids were having a real hard time with the Pythagorean Theorem. I actually "taught" them. It was fun! And since there were so few of them, they actually paid attention and seemed to kind of get it. The last class was a "challenge" math class, and they were preparing for a test the next day. They had some questions about a few problems, so I started to go over them. I realized they were working with the quadratic formula, and kind of panicked because I couldn't remember the formulas at first (I soon found them on a poster). Then I had to reassure myself I was doing the work right (I was) - this all took me about 7 minutes (oops - I was not prepared, I should have looked over the worksheets before the class so I knew what type of math they were doing so I could easily answer questions). Finally, I was able to go over it with the kids. Turns out their teacher hadn't even introduced the formula to them yet! How are they supposed to solve for "x" in the following equation 5x2 + 3x = 0 (that is 5x squared) without the quadratic formula? They seemed to get it, and seemed to be grateful that I helped them out. Again, I got to teach! Yeah! I left a note for the teacher telling her that we discussed the quadratic formula and that I thought they had more questions. Great bunch of kids (all 5 of them!). I was kind of pleased that I was able to help. I know a lot the my fellow classmates at my university would not have been able to help with math problems.

Tomorrow & Friday I am subbing for health at the same school. I think lots of kids will be on field trips again, so hopefully it should be OK.