and I thought teaching computer would be easy!

So I subbed in keyboarding today (computer keyboarding) which was suppossed to be easy. I am the kids type I watch, and then write down their typing scores and they type more right? WRONG!
(***names have been changed to protect the guilty)
Who knew computer could be so crazy... Essentially the description above is what my day SHOULD have looked like, but the reality is so far from that.
Period 1: I get into class ready to take on the children and am trying to have a good attitude despite the fact I knew I had "jail duty" second period. Then it begins. The bell had just rung and I hear "Miss Frost, I can't log in!" "yah, me too... me three... yeah I can't log in either.." now I have 20 kids that can't log in and 5 that can.. Ok so they aren't making up an excuse I determine unless they conspired against me in the hallway which was highly unlikely. So I go over and read the screen that says "system network error.. unable to log in" GREAT! That means that they can't do any of the lesson plans I have for them. So I call the office, and wouldn't you know, the person who knows how to reset the network and fix the problem is the person I'm subbing for.. and then the other guy that knows how to solve it isn't there yet. Wonderful! I tell the kids just to hang out and to keep trying. Finally the part time guy that knows how to fix it does so with like 15 minutes left in the period, leaving my kids with 45 wasted minutes of class.. Gotta love that.
I supervised jail, which was amazingly enough the most calm period of the day (not including my relaxing prep period). Only 2 kids and neither were major offenders...
and then the chaos began again..
Period 3...
So the kids are working on their assignments and thankfully all the bugs have been worked out of the server. I notice Stacy*** is not typing and is writing frantically on a paper with the words Athena at the top. I calmly walk over and tell her to get to work and stop working on English homework. OK...sorry... Then 15 minutes later or so I walk back over to check her progress (as I'd been doing to everyone else) and guess what? She's still working on Athena. I ask again calmly to see her work.. "O I finished it already!" "Great, let me see then.." "OH.... UM... I don't understand how to do it!" "So in otherwords, you didn't even start" "NO..." "Well then Stacy, I'm going to hang on to your Athena paper until you finish my assignment" needless to say she wasn't happy about that, and she really wasn't happy about the fact that since she didn't finish her assignment I didn't return her assignment. She told me as she stormed out after yelling at me that "her teacher would call me, and that it was stipid and I was stupid!" whatever... what she didn't know is her teacher is one of my friends and when he and I talked at lunch he said exactly what I thought he would. Good.. I'm glad you took it away if she was doing it in another class and not working..

THEN... the highlight of the day (not) was the almost fight in my 6th period class. I actually had to yell to get them all to shut up. At one point during the crazy period I looked across the room from where I was helping a student with the formating on his letter and I see Michael and James in a yelling match that is about to turn into a fight. Michael apparently had been punching keys on James' keyboard which upset him and rtaher than telling me about it, James decides to rip the cords out of Michael's computer and then flipped over the computer monitor. I rushed over just in time to stop Michael from trying to punch James.. I split them up and calmed the class down and then gave them both detentions. In retrospect I should've called security, but there was too much else going on in the classroom to deal with just that problem.
So yeah... broken servers, confiscated homework with insults, and then fights.. gotta love computer!
Thankfully I'm in AVID tomorrow. Hopefully it will be easier.