Busy with not much to say

I've been working a lot lately. I had two days of teaching art for one school, a fifth grade one day, and finally the class with my friend the student teacher ending the week on Friday. I also have been feeling rather uninteresting or lacking in things to say...which I know isn't true.

For instance, the art lessons I did totally rocked! I actually got to talk about the Surrealists and what they did with kids! They even learned Andre Breton's name! The lesson was a short mini-art history spiel on the Surrealists, a demo of automatic drawing or scribble drawing (First draw without lifting your pencil off the page, using lots of shapes and lines. Then outline line in black, finally color in with either watercolors, colored pencils, really whatever.) And the thing is that this school has K-6 grades, so all ages were exposed to this. I found that the 1st graders and the 6th graders really liked it a lot.

Another fun sub story. The 5th grade class I subbed in I had been in once before. They are really great kids, lots of character and their teacher has in place a system of "behavior bucks." I always try to pay them as much as possible since I think he is a little hard on them. Anyways, the schedule is on the board and next to the slot where an assembly was, I had written "$15-20." I figured that I would inspire good assembly behavior with some "bbucks" as they are known. Well, the day got started and in the chaos I forgot to mention it right away, so after announcements, a student asked about the schedule. "Oh, right...well we have 2 math lessons to try to finish and later there is an assembly where I will pay good audience members 20 dollars," I announce. The class is totally silent. They are looking at me really strangely. No one says anything until finally one brave soul raises his hand. "You mean you're going to pay us? Like real money?" "OH NO NO NO! I mean 20 behavior bucks!" They look a little disappointed but continue on. For the record, nearly everyone was excellent during the assembly. Who knows what they would have done if I was handing out real money?