My first day back subbing--what a nightmare!

I couldn't have even imagined my day would be so difficult subbing. I actually thought the day would go pretty well and my only trouble may be Aly not treating me as a teacher but as a Mom--we all know the mom treatment can be pretty hard to handle when they are argueing and trying to get their way. However, Aly was a perfect Angel. She treated me exactly like she would treat her teacher. She was a model student, listened to everything I said, sat quietly when she needed to, and did all her work in a neat, timely fashion.

I never imagined that her class could have one of the most difficult child I have came across in my seven years of teaching! The little girl is five years old and will be turning six in October. For privacay sake we will call her Diane. Diane was difficult the moment we walked into the room. She quickly grabbed name tags on the table and started switching them around. Once that was taken care of she sat at her table and would not work on her coloring page. She began bothering other students around her. She would take the crayon and try coloring on their page, she would bang the crayon really hard on her paper, and she would argue with everyone around her. I was already getting exhausted at this point dealing with her.

As a sub you want to try and keep the same rules and routines as the regular classroom teacher. The teacher's form of discipline was to take away minutes from choice time. Choice time happened after lunch each day. So I give her some warnings during her misbehaving and let her know that I will take choice time away. Of course she is begging not to and doesn't really change her behavior.

While we were at carpet time learning about the letter I she is continually poking at her friends and bothering them. I warn her that if she doesn't stop I will be moving her to a new spot. She continues poking and bothering other children so I ask her to move to the letter Z on the carpet. This is when her explosive behavior happens. She is screaming, no I don't want to! You can't make me. I don't have to listen to you. You can't tell me what to do. I tell her if she doesn't move than she will have to go to the office. Relunctently she moves but starts screaming at me, I hate you. I don't like you. You don't like me. You are mean. I don't want you in our class! I tell her that she needs to be quiet or she will need to go to the office. She finally quiets down but sits with her back to me--I obviously am going to pick my battles so I don't even address that.

Her difficult behavior continues at table time. She breaks crayons, peels the paper off, scribbles on others papers again..... I tell her I will be moving her to another spot on the table if she doesn't stop.

Back to carpet time. She wants to answer any and every question I have and if I don't call on her each time she gets angry and shouts out that she wanted to tell the answer. She gets angry and tells me I am stupid. She throws her body on the floor in a tantrum. ( I seriously was trying to call on her as much as possible too so that I could give her some positive attention. Obviously I have to call on other students so she can't have a turn as frequently as she wants)

I am telling you this girl wore me out. By their first recess at 10:00 a.m. an hour into the day I was already feeling mentally exhausted trying to figure out how to deal with her. It had been four years since I had been in the classroom and here I am given a crash course figure it out my first day back. It makes it more difficult when it is not your classroom too. My last school didn't allow time outs so I wasn't sure what the school rules were here. I did find out at lunch that you could give time outs so I was ready to implement those when I came back.

This girl has me really worried for my daughter's educational sake. This girl takes up so much of the instructional time being disciplined that the children don't have much opportunity to learn. Not to mention the bad behaviors they are learning from this girl. In the past two weeks Aly has gotten arguementative with me and has started throwing more fits. I wonder if she is learning these behaviors from this girl.

I asked my daughter if Diane behaves like this for the teacher and she said yes. I seperately asked another student in the class if Diane behaves like that everyday and she said yes. Annette also asked her son for me if that child behaves like that everyday and he said yes. I am going to volunteer in the classroom and see how she acts with the teacher. If it is the same I am going to talk with the teacher and ask if they have an SST (Student Study Team) in the works and if they are considering a one on one aide to help manage her behavior. If something doesn't change I may consider pulling Aly out and letting her attend the charter home school where she attends class two days a week and I teach her the other three. Then next year I can send her back to Gold Oak with the condition she is not in the same class as that other child.

What an exhausting day subbing. I am telling you if that was not my daughter's class I would never sub in there again! I certainly hope they do something to address this child's behavior!