Paid Work

You may have the impression that we've done a bit of work at our place. Anyway, every once in a while I go out to do paid work as a TOC (Teacher On Call). This is the school where I most often work, located about a 7 min. drive from my home. Most of the time I've worked in the high school end (it's K - 12) working mostly with grades 8, 9 and 10. This past week I had the chance to be the librarian - loads of fun and they actually paid me to do this for a whole afternoon. Why do I do it? I do find it's good to "keep the hand in" so that I don't totally forget about kids and ways to deal with them. In the winter when I started I had found time a little heavy on my hands so wanted to work a couple of times per week. I find the work quite suitable to me, actually. So far, I haven't become overly involved in all the "issues" at the school and I simply love walking out the door at 3:15 with NO homework! The 6:45 a.m. calls aren't really bothersome to me and most of the time I know ahead of time that I'll be working.

Today I did listen to Cross Country Checkup which was discussing the state of the schools. I agreed with almost everything everyone said so didn't even bother to email the program. Most of the callers had pretty grim tales. This school is probably pretty typical and the kids are nice enough (most of them) but I'd call it very lax in terms of expectations. To this point I've been able to remain calm and relaxed while at the school and trust that I haven't been written up on Face Book, Angry Teachers.com or Rate This Teacher. I know that I may be naive in thinking this hasn't already happened - after all these kids all carry cell phones to class. It's very good to be casual at this job in this internet happy world.