I substituted for the same teacher as last time on Tuesday. I have been in the library most days so it was unexpected that I was asked to Sub. I may have went "yikes" in my head because of "those" 8th graders, but it was mentioned that around 10 of them have been pulled from class and put into special ed because of behavioral problems and/or reading problems.
The first half of the day was decent. The kids were decent to me and we got work done. I read a story out loud to both classes of 8th graders so they could do their vocabulary worksheet that went with the story. I did not think anyone was paying attention, but when I changed a contraction to the longer version as I read (because I sometimes do that in my head. Too many years in school with a teacher who hated contractions in writing), a kid corrected me. One 8th grade class got everything done. Not in enough time to watch a movie, but enough done so I did not have to give them punishment homework. I did have two of the better students fall asleep, but managed to wake them up and get them to work some more.
The troubled 8th graders were mostly nice to me. The first time I had them that day, they got work done. In the afternoon they were pretty distracted so not everything got done. But no one was loud or mean or causing trouble so I still did not punish them with homework. That was for behavioral issues only. Of course one kid was trying to steal pencils when I was sitting down helping a student do her work. And after that student had been behind the desk, I was afraid to drink my drink (these same kids have spit in my boyfriends coffee and I think put a fly in his water once). No one was mean to me, though.
I had trouble getting the 7th graders to finish their work because the first assignment had word search on the back and they wanted to finish that before reading. Then when they came back for the last period of the day, I had one girl lying on the ground crying, two sleeping on the floor, one hiding behind a bookcase, and a girl refusing to sit down because another girl was in the seat she wanted. I also had three girls try and skip but got busted by the office. So no one was really disruptive or bad, but just refused to do anything but the first worksheet. But, their other teachers had the same issues.