Week 9

Okay this time I totally spaced so it's okay if you need to deduct points. Thursday was my first day subbing and it went great! Honestly nothing too exciting happened. Every class was in the middle of a project so when students came in before the bell rang they went straight to work. All the classes were pretty quiet and well behaved for me. I felt like overall I did a great job, but there were two things that I'll remember for next time. 1.) a student asked me if he could go to the nurse about 10 minutes before lunch. I didn't even ask why but instead asked if he needed a pass and he said no and left. Obviously he needed a pass and I definitely should've at least ask why he needed to go to the nurse but lesson learned. 2.) Then in some of my later classes I was having difficulty keeping students on task. I would go around to the students who were sitting on their laptops or doing other school work and ask "So how's your project going? Showing me your sketches!" and they'd get flustered and get back to work for the most part, but some other ones I could not get to stay focused. There were some legit reasons, like their piece was still in the kiln so they couldn't underglaze it or they couldn't resin set and that was the last step in their jewelry project, etc. but others had work to do but weren't doing it. I'll have to be a little more firm next time. Overall, it was a super smooth day. Then yesterday, I woke up at 3am vomiting. I tried to call the automatic sub system to cancel my placement so it could find another sub to call and notify them of an opening at 5 am, but I had not been given my sub ID number so I couldn't log in. I went back to sleep and got up at 5 to get ready to go to school since I didn't want to leave them with out a sub. 30 minutes into my drive I was holding back nausea and thought I was going to have to pull over. I realized there was no way I was going to be able to sub for a whole school day so I tried calling the main office at Fishers to let them know I wasn't coming in at 6:30 but their office opened at 7 so I couldn't get through to anyone. I pulled over and opened the sub handbook I was given and there were no other contacts available that early in the morning. So I started driving home and called at 7 and let them know I was sick. Then, when I got back to my apartment, I emailed the district sub coordinator who hired me and wrote "Could you please send me my sub ID number. I woke up early this morning vomiting and I tried to call the Aesop system to report my absence today At 5 AM but I didn't have an ID number. I had to wait until 7 to call the main office at Fishers. Please send me my ID information so I can avoid this situation in the future. Thank you, Maria Pairitz" then she responded "Maria, I get to the office at 5am daily. You could have just emailed me and I would have taken care of it???" which made me cry because I already felt crappy about having to cancel and then this woman's tone in her email seemed to say I was stupid for not thinking to email her at 5 am. I responded "I didn't know anyone was in the building at 5 am. If I had known I would've emailed. It won't happen again." I then forwarded the emails to my mentor and said that I felt this woman was rude for no reason and Ms. O forwarded it to Fisher's sub coordinator and to the art department head. The sub coordinator for Fishers called me and said everything was fine and they found a sub and that she's sorry about my correspondence with the other woman and then Ms. Osborne sent me this super nice email.

So I'm grateful that I'm working with a really nice, caring group of people and I'm glad I made the call to turn back and go home because I then spent the rest of the day puking and being stranded in a bathroom at Fishers all day would have been miserable. So that was my week.

Mom update: She had blood work recently done and her kidneys are below 20% function so she is officially being put on the transplant list so things just got a whole lot more real in my family. The same day she turned in her letter of resignation instead of waiting until contracts to go out and saying she's not renewing it.

Again, sorry for the late journal. I was just so deathly ill all day Friday that I spaced but you already gave me a pass last time so I'm totally okay if you need to deduct points.