Tales of a Second Grade Nothing

I subbed in Spencer's classroom on Friday.

He was SO EXCITED and it was fun watching him shine. When we went out to get his class after the morning bell rang, he said to everyone "yep, my mom's the sub today. It's gonna be AWESOME!"

Very cute.

So for the first hour of the morning, I was supposed to give the kids their spelling and reading tests as well as their comprehension quiz. This would normally be no problem but Spence's class is a dual-language immersion class so all of this was supposed to be done in Spanish.

Yeah that part? That was a problem.

An aide was supposed to come in at 9 to give the tests but she had failed to show and by 9:12, I was starting to panic. The kids were all sitting quietly in their chairs, pencils out, privacy folders up, so I decided to stall a bit and have them quietly do some reading, thinking that the aide would appear at anytime.

9:13.....


9:24.....


9:37......

"Spence! Come here! Run to the office and find out where Ms. Sickles is!" This was done very quietly as I didn't want to lose the appearance of control in front of all those kiddos.

Spence came back and informed me that they had no idea where she was, which was very, very helpful.

At this point, I left the classroom, yep, left the classroom, and ran down the hall to Juan's room (Juan being one of three brothers who teach at our school and who are completely stellar in every way) and said help! help!

He sent his aide to my room and by 9:41, testing was underway. We finished just in time for P.E. so I'm counting the morning as a success. We didn't get a single other thing done from the morning's lesson plan but hey, me speakey no Espanol.

So I'm watching these 22 kids take their test, thinking how sweet they all seemed and how I was glad my son was among them when the aide caught a girl cheating. A girl, people. Aren't they too young to know about this? Apparently not, cause there she was in all her cheating glory. CHEATING. IN SECOND GRADE.

Well I never.

I was beyond shocked. How do they know how to cheat in second grade? I mean seriously, not that I'm admitting anything here, but I didn't know how to do that crap until high school. I couldn't believe it. Must be one delinquent but highly intelligent dual immersion kid making a bad choice. She probably just wanted to see if she could sneak one by the ol' sub. NOT ON MY WATCH, SISTER.

And then I caught another kid cheating. This time a boy.

They both had their homework paper folded into neat squares and had them placed on the edge of the shelf in their desks where they could see them clear as day.

After we took their papers away and told them they both earned a big fat ZERO, we finished up. Later in the day I found out that one of Spencer's classmates had been suspended the day before for bringing a BB gun to school. And then there was the kid who put GLUE in another kid's hair. But whatever.

So I'm subbing again tomorrow but this time I'll be at the high school. Where it's safe.