Tusky Valley Middle School seems to be the place for me to substitute. Today I was supposed to be science, but instead covered tech classes while the tech teacher helped administer PARCC testing.
In this technology class, she has two classrooms, one being a computer lab. For most periods, students were working on building a car-like piece, aiming for low friction to see whose would roll the furthest. Two of the classes were to work int he computer lab on designs in a CAD like assignment, which was very cool to me.
I again had lunch duty and again the students in the tech classes would lose focus and were quite chatty, but there were no major incidents in this classroom. After the PARCC test was finished, though, I was moved to the science classroom that I was originally assigned.
Unfortunately, I got to spend the rest of the day (about two hours!) with the sixth graders who had just gotten out of the PARCC test. They were quite stir crazy and very unfocused. They were basically supposed to work on a project where they use various objects to try to create a visual of a healthy meal, but mostly bounced all over the classroom, rolled the one cart around, talked loudly, teased each other, begged to turn Pandora on, and played hangman.
This end of the day really tested my patience and resolve and I did not manage the classroom well at all, but I felt that they had just spent some six hours taking a standardized test and they should be allowed to let off some steam. I basically tried to manage the chaos and keep them from destroying anything. I think it worked. Mostly.
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