Early Easter

I don’t know about you, but the early Easter this year really caught me by surprise. However I was expecting to score a couple of sub teaching jobs from those who wanted to stretch the weekend even more.

In Willows and the rest of California the kids Iím sure all get the same days off for Easter. Not so here in Utah. The district that I sub for had Friday and Monday off, that’s it. The county to the north had a week off and who knows about Salt Lake City, it’s kind of a different world anyway. So I kept checking the sub finder system to get those stretched weekend jobs and found none, nil, zip, zero, Nada!

So I had a nice long weekend myself. I spent it getting the old 1957 Chevy back to running. I had all the wires off from the firewall forward. I marked them, but installed a one-wire alternator so I had a handful of wire left over. That’s almost never good. But much to my surprise the old girl fired right up. The new cam sounds great. If I had a regular auto shop to teach I would have brought it in for the kids.

So after Easter I kept at the sub finder trying to score a job or two. However most of the teachers all of the sudden have gotten healthy. I must add that there were jobs at the southern end of the county, but it is next to impossible to get to these schools during commute hour. If I have to get on the freeway to get to them I turn them down. However there are 10 junior and senior high schools within commute distance (five miles) and I can usually get a job at one of these.

I thought I was going nuts earlier this week when my computer would not let me on the sub finder website. We recently got a broadband internet service and have had a lot of trouble with virus’ and such, so I figured that was the problem. However when I tried a few other sites I found I could get on, so the sub finder server must have been down. Iím finding that I rely on the internet far too much!

But in midweek I was able to once again log on only to find jobs again in the south county area, with the exception of one. It was for today at my favorite (tongue-in-cheek) school, Northridge High School. This is the school I had to break up a fight in the first time I was there. I went back two more times and had one kid again in the fight class who kept trying to text message in class, and then left early for lunch. A lot of the kids wear their pants well below the belt line even though there are rules against it, and a lot of them had various piercings. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the schools I sub in. I guess Iím getting spoiled. Anyway the class in question was a construction class. From past experience theses students do not enjoy being in the classroom, they do not enjoy subs much either. All they really want to do is build houses and BS with their friends at the building site. I can’t really blame them and I would have taken it if it was at one of the other high schools. But I could smell trouble with this one and I wanted to steer clear.

I had to pass up another opportunity earlier in the week from my favorite science teacher Mrs. Shannon. It was my fault! I procrastinated getting a safety check on my 1958 Ford until the last minute. It was due on Monday and I waited until the previous Wednesday to get the safety check done. Then when I went to get it out of storage it had a flat tire. Not only was the tire flat, it was too worn on the inside edge to be fixed so I had to buy a couple more. This put me even more behind. So When Mrs. Shannon called I found myself too short on time to take her classes. I love her classes too, the kids are well behaved and she leaves enough for them to do.

I sent all the paper work in to get into the credentialing program but forgot to get the transcripts from my community college. So I sent off for those this week. They cost $5 and the university transcripts were free. What’s up with that? I really should keep a couple of spares on hand. If nothing else they could go in the family history file along with the old photos of people no one knows anymore. Do you have those? Then why are we saving them?