Today was just another random substitute job day again. I'm like an educational firefighter. If a teacher gets sick midday or all day, I get called. Usually being a math/physics credentialed teacher, I'm booked way in advance, but today my arranged job got cancelled. I was just at home nearing the end of writing the first draft of my second book, "To Previve or Survive Breast Cancer" when the phone rang.
A special education teacher came to work sick, but realized that he wasn't going to make it the whole day, so I got called. Not a lot of guest teachers will take special education, but I usually do. The class was high functional and since it was listed as "severe special education," I had to assume that this was the "Emotionally Disturbed" (ED) class of this high school. I sub for a lot of ED and alternative high school classes these days.
Typically I can win a "colorful" class over with my introduction, "Hi! I'm Ms. Ulrich. I'm a former international mechanical engineer. I retired two raise my two kids that are in college now and became a landscape designer that was voted 'One of the Best in San Diego County.' I've been an entrepreneur many times and decided to become a math teacher to give back to your generation. I've been trying to get a math teaching job and subbing for 5 years, but while I've been subbing I wrote this book, 'The Romance of Kilimanjaro.'" Then I hold up my book. "Now, being an author was not my planned, mainstream path. Sometimes we may get off the mainstream path, but our new, unplanned path may be more awesome!"
This introduction typically inspires the "colorful" students to make the best of the path to which they're currently placed. It also creates an atmosphere of instant respect, because I've had my own challenges with the public school system, too. Despite my many setbacks in getting a contracted math teaching position, I became successful my own way---writing about my life experiences.
Today my introduction won the ED class over, and it was easy to keep them from killing each other after that. I would have no pencil stabbings or stapled cheeks today! After I got them to finish their assignment for the day, I gave them some free time. One student kept irritating his fellow students, but I had no idea how he was doing it. He didn't steal the good chair, push anyone, or throw tiny pieces of pencil eraser at unsuspecting students.
"You can't hear that?" a student incredulously asked me.
"No," I said as I walked by the student holding an i-phone with the "Dog Whistler" program.
"No way! The myth is true. People over 30 can't hear these high notes!"
I was intrigued that I actually could not hear the sound as the other teenagers put their hands over their ears in irritation. So we all did an experiment to see when I could hear and when they all couldn't handle the high pitches. I can't hear sound at 16kHz and teenagers can.
I joked, "Wow! I'm going to have to get that program and 16kHz will be how I tame my wild classes!"
When I got home, I was a little worried that maybe I was losing my hearing. So I took an online hearing test which indicated that I do hear well and confirmed our "Dog Whistler" experiment. I used http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html, and I definitely can't hear 16kHz! Fortunately, I can hear everything else. :-)
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