Teacher, Teacher

• As it so happens, the school needed some substitute teachers the very first week of classes, so I was called into action much earlier than I had expected. It was my first time back in a secondary classroom setting since I was sitting at the desks themselves! I was scheduled to sub for one high school and two 6th grade classes. The high school class was a breeze because they all knew exactly what they were supposed to do. The 6th graders, on the other hand, were a little harder to handle. Since it was only their second day in middle school, they were still learning the ropes so it was much more of just keeping them contained as opposed to actually teaching them anything. I survived by drawing on my summer camp counseling experience, some residual knowledge  that must have rubbed off from 3 years working at the School of Education, and overall some pretty well-behaved students. I even managed not to lose any! Although I didn't have any rosters for attendance, so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Having many teachers in my life (wife, aunts, family, friends, SOE colleagues), I already had a lot of respect for those who choose this profession but I have even more now. To do this 180+ days a year and actually help the students learn is something only the strong among us are capable of.
• We were also able to use some reusable produce bags at the store tonight. All produce has to be bagged and weighed in the produce section before checkout in order to keep things moving along at the register. In the States, we had moved away from using the plastic produce bags but that's not allowed here so we're glad we were able to find an alternate reusable solution.