I actually felt like a teacher today instead of a baby sitter! Subbing April 26

Today I am was in an English classroom! This is quite rare. Not only was I in an English classroom, I got to teach English. A couple of days ago I was subbing at one of the middle schools and walked by a teacher with her son. She said, “oh, hi,” as if she knew me, and she looked vaguely familiar. The next day I ran into her in the teachers lounge. I had been thinking about who she could be, and then it came to me. She was my 7th grade English teacher. We ate lunch together, and towards the end she said she was going to be gone a number of times coming up and she asked if I would sub for her. I said I would be happy to. So when I subbed for her, I actually got to teach. The students were starting a research project based on biographies. I lead discussions on “what is a Biography?”, “What makes a person notable?,” “How do you choose a topic?,” and “What is plagiarism, and How do you avoid it?” These discussions were a lot of fun. It was interesting to see what the students came up with, using their back ground knowledge of biographies then adding on to it with more detail. Most of the students didn’t know what notable meant, so we broke the word down and found part of the word the students knew, note. From there we constructed a definition based on what the students knew. I was surprised that some 6th graders actually knew what plagiarism was and they had some great ideas on how to avoid it. When we were talking about the consequences of plagiarism many of the students connected plagiarism to the more common term of “cheating.” these students are much more familiar with the word “cheating,” so they were able to make a connection and add to the meaning of both cheating and plagiarism. I really like working at the middle schools. The students aren’t so afraid of being wrong, so they have more opportunities for being right!