Never a dull moment...

...in this neighborhood. When your doorbell rings at 4 in the morning, you tend to get a little worried. Luckily Brian was awake, so he answered the door. At 4am, would you expect anything but the police?! I didn't go to the door, but I guess there were 2 policeman there wondering if there was a 20 something person in the house that was bleeding. Ummmm, we are all sleeping, so I don't think so. Feel free to come in and look. They didn't take us up on that offer, but continued to search outside and visit a few of the neighbors.
(Apparently they had received a call that there was someone bleeding profusely at one of 3 houses.)
But they could not find anything. Supposedly a car that was involved was found about 20 minutes away in another city. What are you doing in this one then!!!!!!
A few minutes later, 2 of the 5 cop cars in front of our house left. I do not know when the others left and Brian said he could still see someone searching the train tracks behind our house. I never heard ambulance sirens, so I am guessing no one was found (or at least not in serious condition).

Have you ever tired to go back to sleep after something like that?!?! First of all, you are looking outside to see if you can figure out what is going on. Then when you finally do climb back into bed every sound makes you jolt awake. By the time you have settled yourself down, it has been an hour and will be time to wake up shortly.

And, if that weren't bad enough, this is not the first time police have been in the neighborhood. The truancy officers have been to a house down the street several times. They are not something i worry about. But the police have been to the neighbors house a couple times. Do you know what it is like to look out the window and see 3 cop cars in the driveway of the house next door, lights flashing and guns possibly drawn?? Makes you want to know exactly what is going on. Is that public knowledge?

If anyone is looking for excitement, come stay with us for a week and you may just find some.

Subbing, Subbing, Subbing

I have finally had a few days off to catch my breath. I have been subbing for the past week and a half. Don't get me wrong, that is a good thing, but it has been a while since I have worked a full week. I have been a preschool parapro, I have supervised in school suspension, I have been in the CD room working with small groups, and I have been a "floating" kindergarten teacher. I have enjoyed all except the in school suspension. I actually thought, at first, that would be easier and more boring than the middle school library. I was wrong, WAY WRONG. The child I was supervising was an EBD (emotional, behavioral disturbed) student and could change moods in an instant. One minute he would be doing his work just fine and the next he would be flipping out about something. And when he flipped out it took quite a while to get him back on track again. Course, I didn't know any techniques that they were using in the EBD room, so that was a bit challenging. I survived, but would not want to do it again-if I had my choice.
The other days went well and it hardly felt like working. Especially in preschool, I mean where else can you get paid to play and color for most of the day. I did have some other "teacher like duties" too, but they were not as tough as controlling my EBD student.
The district is off today for an unused snow day, so I knew that I would have today to catch up on the house work that got neglected by the time I would get home at 8 every night.

oh to be a student teacher again

Ok, maybe not really. I mean all that hard work with none of the pay for it. But subbing when there is one in the room is pretty awesome. This was the case last Friday. I subbed in a 3rd grade classroom and didn't know there was a student teacher in the room until i got there that morning. And he was to the point in his student teaching that he was teaching everything. Again, I was only there to help with crowd control and give feedback as necessary. And I was doing odd jobs for the teacher as she wanted me to leave the room several times during the day. I would have to say it was pretty easy day. And the class was fairly well behaved that I didn't even have to help with discipline, he had everything under control. This teacher is also out on Thursday and Friday of this week, so I am hoping that i could possibly be back there again. Hey, it is more easy money for not having to do a whole lot. I would have to say it is easier than the middle school library.
Thank goodness for student teachers!!

I don't know if I could ever be a mentor teacher. I am not sure that my teaching skill are the greatest yet. Maybe someday i can have the luxury of having a student teacher in my classroom-course, I would need a classroom first!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Between subbing, Sylvan, friends visiting from out of town and the beautiful weather, I haven't had much time to write in the past week or so. Last week, I subbed 3 days and so far this week I have subbed 2. last week I even got a few days in the middle school library, so those were easy days, but tiring. I would much rather be doing something, after all I am getting paid to work. Middle schoolers just don't have book check out as often as those elementary schoolers do.
I am hoping to get more subbing in as the month goes on, I mean there are bound to be personal days when the weather gets warmer, right?!?!
This weekend was full of visiting and reminiscing. Someone Brian and I went to college with and her husband were up from IL this weekend staying with some other friends of ours, so we spend the weekend out of the house-literally. On Saturday, we visited in our backyard since the weather was so nice and then we went out to eat and back to Bill and Kristins house. Sunday we went to Oshkosh to the outlet mall. All six of us and the baby found something during that journey-and accomplished our goal of me finding dress pants and Brian finding shorts. What a great weekend.
I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend again. And hopefully I will get a few more sub days in this week so that i have a reason to want to relax.