Hmmm....

Yeah, so I kinda like subbing. I was in a kindergarten class today and although the notes that the teacher left were a bit scatterbrained... I got through it with help from the parapro and it worked just fine :)

I went in thinking it was a full day and the lady in the office told me that they had just found out it was only going to be a half day. So much for the lunch I packed (I ate it when I got home..LOL).

While the kids were at gym, I was talking with the parapro about the fact that they do zoophonics there. For anyone who doesn't know, zoophonics is a FABULOUS program that teaches phonics to kids.... letters, letter sounds and putting the sounds and letters together.... so that you know the sound that each letter makes. Each letter has an animal, a movement and a sound associated with it. So there is visual... movement... auditory all rolled into one. It takes the students about 3 weeks to learn all 26 animal names, movements and sounds. The program begins with just the animals and no letters... once the kids' learn the animals, you introduce the animals' "homes" (the letters)... but still not the letter names. Once the students can put each animal with it's correct "home", you tell the names of the letters.

I first heard of zoophonics when Blake was in kindergarten and he LOVED it. We did all sorts of things with it at home. I showed it to my assistant at the time, and although it took a long time to get her to buy into it, she finally did. Then we collected cans from the local vfw hall and returned them each week until we had the $450 to purchase the zoophonics kit for the classroom. (In retrospect we could have gotten away with about $100 worth of products and been just fine because we created most of what we used in the classroom from the CD). Anyhoo.... my assistant and I went to a day long zoophonics training and had such a blast! We were SO excited to take this program back to our classroom.

There was only a couple of weeks left in the year, but we still showed the zoophonics to our students (preschoolers) and they had a blast with it also.

The following year (last year) we started out the year teaching zoophonics. We had both collected beanie babies for each of the letters... we had games...we had books... we had playdough mats... we had art projects... you name it... our room was FULL of "zoo friends". At the end of the year we had SIX 4 year olds reading! The kids would get out the letter magnets or the dry erase boards and say, "Jolene, I"m going to spell dog." and I'd say, "Ok, spell dog" and they would say, "/d/ {that stands for the letter sound}, that's Deedee Deer, "d". /o/ is Olive Octopus, "o" and /g/, ummm... Gordo Gorilla "g"! D-o-g spells dog."

Amazing? I think so. My supervisor thought so. My assistant thought so. The parents thought so. The kids had NO IDEA they weren't "supposed" to be able to do that at age 4.

This year my new bitch of a supervisor told me 3 weeks into the year that I couldn't teach zoophonics anymore because "It's not a beneficial phonics program." Bitch. She had no clue. She just didn't like me... because my OLD center taught it all year. And she was THEIR supervisor too! Bitch.

But... when I left in April, many of the kids still remembered zoophonics! Even though we had not done them since October!

But, I digress. So I was talking to the parapro about the zoophonics and telling her that I would really like to be a trainer for the program but that I had contacted them several times and wasn't getting anywhere. She told me to wait around and talk to the teacher because the teacher who I was subbing for is a trainer and would be able to help me out.

So I did. The teacher came in and asked if I had been told it was only half a day. I said I had. She then said, "Then why are you still here?" Sheesh! Sorry!

I told her why and she really wasn't all that helpful. *sigh*

But I am going to try again... and if I don't get anywhere this time I am going to send an email every damn day until they respond to me! LOL :)

Well, this has turned into an awfully long post!

I just wanted to post about how much I am enjoying subbing and might like to just do THIS for the next year.... if only we had insurance. *sigh*