Great Experience, but...Feeling Old!

Today, I was a substitute for a 7th grade Learning Support Teacher. (Yes, that is outside my area of certification, as I am K-6, Elementary-certified, however, when a school is in need of a substitute teacher and can't get one in the cert. area necessary, they'd much rather have any certified teacher, than none at all.) Learning Support is considered Special Education because the students need support for difficulties in learning (usually in reading and writing--due to speech and language, sensory, and neurological disorders, among others). I was mostly in a self-contained LS classroom today, where small groups of students came to me for Social Studies and Reading. However, I also had to go to two Inclusion classrooms for Math & English. Inclusion means that the LS students are included in a regular education classroom with other students for certain subjects of the day. As a LS teacher in an inclusion classroom, I was to monitor the LS students and provide help as the regular ed. teacher led the lesson. The final period of the day was the time for me and other LS teachers to work in a Resource room with LS students, helping them with homework, school assignments, studying, organization, etc. The Resource room is a place for Special Ed. students to go, away from their homerooms and regular ed. classrooms, to work specifically with LS teachers and students on their level. Overall, it was a very good experience for me...a chance for me to put into practice LS instruction I had only previously seen in videos, read in textbooks, or observed as a student-teacher. Even though I had taken a class in Special Education while in college, as part of my coursework in Elementary Education, there is much more to it than anyone could gain out of one college course.

Now, onto why I feel old...make that short and old. It is really weird walking through the hallways of a middle school having 7th-9th grade boys (and some girls) tower over you and look at you as if you are a new student. Many of the boys there look like the boys in my high school used to. Anyway, I feel old because a few of the students I had as a 1st grade student-teacher in the district were in my 7th grade LS classes today! As soon as I saw their faces and read their names, I remembered them. And, they remembered me. When I refreshed their memory, their eyes lit up like they couldn't even believe I was standing there in front of them. One of the girls told me at the end of the day, "It was really nice to see you again." I seriously almost cried; I thought that was so sweet.

Although it is hard, and many times uncomfortable, not to be settled in one school, one classroom right now...I am enjoying the experience of meeting new children and teachers every day. Hopefully sometime in the near future, I will find a place to hang my hat.