Substitute Teacher Organization (Part Two)

Last week I talked about including a substitute folder for your subs so that they have all the important information at their finger tips as soon as they stop by the office. If your division doesn't happen to have these folders (and it's my guess that most do not) there is no reason why you can't make your own version of this.

Here's what one teacher did for her subs this last year 

She had a binder with all the important information I might need throughout the day (including some extra lesson plans if need be), all her remotes and everything were in the area, and I basically had to search for nothing. It was very handy

What Parents Need to Know About Roblox

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Roblox.

If there is one thing I know about Roblox (which before looking at this poster was the only thing I knew about Roblox) is that it is very popular amongst elementary aged kids.

You can find this free to download from National Online Safety

So what did I learn about Roblox?

Roblox can you earn you money.  This one is interesting to me because with the whole E Sports stuff around (did you see the news article of a teen winning 3 million playing FortNite?) it isn't something that I would really encourage... surely it can't be a good sound job for forever... but for an 8 year old... have at it.  Anyways, apparently if you create something in Roblox appealing enough you can earn Robux which if you earn enough of can be turned into actual money through a PayPal account.  Interesting.

Otherwise, it has a lot of the same stuff as other online things have these days.  

There is a chat option that can be disabled (and likely should be if you are young)

There are in game purchases (although the game is free to play).  So be careful and don't have your credit card linked to your child's Roblox account.. or link it and maybe don't be so surprised if one day there is hundreds of dollars of purchases on it from Roblox.  Whoops.

You don't have to show everyone your social media accounts in Roblox and you can hide them from everyone (which I would think is a good idea).  I mean, you run into a problem with another player on Roblox and all of a sudden they are giving your grief on Twitter and Instagram too.

Since users can create their own worlds in Roblox it is hard to monitor what exactly happens in all those worlds... some worlds may have things you don't want your son/daughter to see so be vigilant and report anything inappropriate.  

In my opinion, out of the games and social media platforms that I have reviewed so far (WhatsApp, Twitter, FortNite, SnapChat, Instagram, and YouTube).  This one seems like it could be (and I could definitely be wrong having never played it before) the most innocent. Likely not perfect, but if I had a child or student begging me to play or be on SOMETHING and I had to choose one thing... this would be it (so far).

Last week I talked about WhatsApp

This Week OFF From School

This week was a bit of a doozy from being off from school.

It started out with a bit of a tickle in my throat and the occasional cough to being accompanied by a headache... and just as the last of the achy head left I started to cough a lot more and by Thursday I woke up without a voice.

It was a rough week.

BUT, I still managed to get a bit accomplished.

I picked the last of our rhubarb (for now) and made a double batch of rhubarb muffins (some for our Bible study group, some for family, and the rest were for my husband to enjoy). 

the last of our rhubarb

rhubarb muffins

I've been pretty insistent that I'm not going to let our garden food go to waste this year and so far I think I've been doing a pretty good job!

I found some discounted steaks (because they were about to reach their best by date) and turned them into some 4 packs of slow cooker steak fajitas that I promptly stuck in the freezer for the next few months.

steak fajitas for the freezer

I walked to Winners and found this gem of a dry erase calendar. 

I was pretty bummed when I realized our new stainless steel fridge would not work with magnets and I was not sure how I was going to cope without my magnetic dry erase calendar (which I write on what we are eating so that I know what to take out of the freezer).  So I used a regular calendar and put it on the wall in our dinning room for a while but now I've got something much MUCH larger and I'm pretty excited for it!

We stayed back from the lake this weekend to get some stuff done around here.  Which meant we FINALLY cleaned out the garage and took a load to the dump (and by we I mean my husband).  It's been pretty full of drywall and doors since we did our renovations nearly a year ago so it was nice to get that cleared out!

Once again my illness set me back a bit in the walking area... this week I managed to get in 20.59km which is pretty good but still nearly 10km off from my goal of 30km in a week.

Substitute Teacher Organization (Part One)

There are lots of ways you can be organized for a substitute teacher but of course there are going to be those times that you wake up in the morning just not feeling well enough to go into work... at this point you have a few options (if you didn't prepare for the day the previous day that is) 1) Email a quick plan and hope the substitute can find everything 2) Head in before school starts to write something up and organize what the substitute will need or 3) leave them to figure it out for themselves. 

As a seasoned substitute teacher I've seen all of those.. and in my few years of teaching I've only ever done the email a plan in (otherwise I've always prepared for a sub the day before... because sometimes you just know tomorrow will not be a great day if you come in).

A way to help you (and your substitute teacher) if you aren't able to prepare in advance is to make a substitute teacher folder. In one of the divisions that I sub in all teachers make one at the beginning of the year and sometimes they are filled in a bit better than others... this one didn't have a lot filled in but she also had a substitute binder in her class so I managed to snag a few pictures because there was so little to cover up). Substitutes pick up the folder at the office when they sign in so they have it right from the get go.

Front of sub folder - important info about the school

inside sub folder - important info about the classroom and students

Anyways, some important parts of the folder would be:

1) Schedule

2) Duty times/places

3) Location of different places

4) Beginning/end of the day routines (like do I have to go pick up the students somewhere?)

5) Student allergies/behaviours

Then there is also a part of the folder to insert pages... typically there will be some info about the school, a class list, and sometimes if the teacher is really prepared some suggestions/pages to copy for student work if needed. I don't think I've ever actually had to use these pages (and it's kind of rare that I'll find them in there anyways) but it's an excellent thing to include just in case you are ever away!