More About Deer and Substitute Teaching

June (aka Joan) – Thanks for your comment on yesterday’s blog about deer. I was curious so I looked up deer population for the states of Ohio (680,000), Michigan (2 million), and Minnesota (950,000). So, yes, Minnesota does have deer. Last year a deer was spotted in Megan and Jeremy’s backyard. Mostly they get squirrels and chipmunks. However, I have not seen any deer during our Minnesota travels – I keep my eyes open for them!

While visiting my brothers on July 23rd, they informed me that on a recent drive up to the cottage near Coldwater, Michigan they spotted over one hundred deer on one drive near the cabin. I have never hit a deer as we did not have any in our neighborhood in Woodland, CA. [We did have wild turkey flocks].

All of this to say I became increasingly anxious as we saw an increased number of deer before we left Michigan on July 1st. Admittedly we were doing a lot of driving from Michigan to Bryan, Ohio and Defiance, Ohio so we were on the road more than normal. Come to think of it we had been on the road for over two and a half months when we got to Michigan, and we were mostly saving turtles and not fearing dear. Okay, Joe was saving turtles.

Joan’s other comment was about substitute teaching. In 2001, I decided to work as a substitute teacher because it allowed me to have the same schedule as my daughter. I subbed during her 4^th and 5^th grade years. During her sixth-grade year, we moved to Maadi, Egypt and I helped in sixth grade math. When we came back to the states, I went back to working in business for a while. Once she started ninth grade, I decided to substitute again for a couple of years. I discovered I liked K-5^th grade best. I did substitute at high school level in charter schools which was fine because class sizes were small, and the students usually committed to getting an education. My hope here is to work with K-5^th graders.

My favorite teaching was in two after-school enrichment programs. One of the programs was Poetry with 4^th through 6^th graders at Dingle Elementary in Woodland, California. Students studied poetry styles and authored their own poems. They would read aloud their poetry in class. It was fun to watch how excited they were to listen and encourage each other. I want to think we printed a booklet of poems for each of the students who were in the class to take home. It sounds like something I would do and yet I don’t have a copy of it!

The second program was a Journalism class for 4^th through 6^th graders at my daughter’s school, Prairie Elementary (also Woodland). In Journalism students did a newsletter and a yearbook. To raise money to make the yearbooks affordable to all students, we took orders and baked and decorated Christmas cookies. Adults baked and volunteers in the class helped to decorate. I look back in amazement at what we were able to accomplish. Today, I do not have the energy I did then!