We'll start with substitute teaching... let's go chronologically on this bitch.
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Top Ten Lessons About Substitute Teaching
1. Getting the call to substitute teach is not like it once was. It's high fucking tech. You put your name into this system after you train for one-day in a crowded classroom with other young people from the surrounding area. There are older people that train to sub, too, but it's striking to see the other young people, in jeans and chewing gum and texting. I may look as young as the kids I'm going to teach, but I sure as hell don't dress like them. Back onto the main point - you put your name into the system and the system doesn't call you. No, you need to check a website every day to see if you have a new assignment. The only time they call you is last minute "oh fuck" like at 8 AM when school starts at 8:30 AM. This happened to me... two or three times. I said yes two times, no one time. Otherwise, you check this website and need to do so to see if you've got a job coming up. People heard my dad had a daughter looking for a sub job, and they signed up hoping it would be okay since he's a good teacher and person. They would tell him "Hey your daughter is subbing for me" - he would tell me - I would check the website to confirm - and then go the next day or the next week. Complicated system is complicated....
2. What you wear to work determines who you are. I look eighteen-nineteen. There is no doubting this. Even in my best makeup, I kick it up to my age, nothing more. Slide on a black jacket, some black slacks, a sweet shirt, earrings, some black fuck-you shoes... I may look twenty-five. A very young twenty-five. Nonetheless, hearing the click-clack on the linoleum as I sauntered forward with a "please bitch" look, it was pretty apparent to me that I had grown up since high school. I can do this look with my eyebrows and mouth and eyes that pretty much assures that I'm not eighteen and you should please not try to undermine my authority. That plus the clothing I wore to work? Yes, I can be whatever I want to be, that including a substitute teacher.
3. I am an incredibly easygoing person; most substitutes are not. I never cared in the slightest if the kids wanted to talk their heads off. Do whatever you want. Just don't get my room noticed, some of you do your work. Don't eat in my classroom, don't get on your cell phone, don't fuck around too much. I had numerous students comment to me that I was the best sub they've had, because I let them talk. "Most subs yell at us to shut up," one girl told me. I asked why, and she said she didn't know. I don't honestly care if they all talk their asses off. Just so long as they seem to do their work and don't fuck up the classroom, why not? That's what I wanted to do when subs came - or that's what happened regardless of the sub wanting to happen. I'd rather go the easy route than stress or struggle with adolescents.
4. I am an incredibly bitchy person; most substitutes are as well. This happened very rarely, but when it did, I was like a furious wave of ice sliding and slamming into the classroom. When I was subbing for my dad, and his students were watching a documentary where some high school out West gathered paper clips to represent those who died in the Holocaust. It was boring, admittedly. I said they could do whatever they wanted, even sleep, just don't talk. That was my only rule besides the normal "don't eat, don't text." And trust me, sleep some kids did. But one boy in his first class was chattering among several others, making them talk. I watched him seriously; other students watched me watching. Finally, I had it no more, after I had warned the class as a whole again. Click-clack went my shoes on the linoleum, and in a moment I was next to this boy in the darkness. I have no idea what I said anymore, but it was sharp and bitchy and basically amounted to "how about you shut the hell up?" One of the kids had his back to me, and I demanded he turn around and I said "You understand?" and he looked at me in wide-eyed, angry surprise and said yes but he wasn't talking. I said I didn't care and sat down. The boy and his friends shut up, even more so in the next few days when I told my father that he'd continued to talk. Honestly, do that shit when you know I have a connection with your regular teacher? Goodness. The room went so silent and cold after that you think I'd hit someone.
4. I will not be taken advantage of. My easygoing nature as a sub was provoked nearly every class that I subbed in. The most common thing students do is try to go to the restroom without me signing their agenda. I must sign their agenda. Period. "Go get someone else's." "But Mr. So-and-so doesn't make me..." *shrug* "Go get it." The second is eating in the classroom, which people always try to do, and I always have to say firmly no. No teacher lets you do that. If they do, they're ignoring several rules put forth by the administration. I don't care if I look just a little older than you and am letting you talk, there's no reason to test the boundaries every single time. This leads me to my next point...
5. Talking back to me will make me remind you of how very young you are. One math class I was subbing four students walked together towards the door without talking to me. I spoke up and asked what they were doing. They said they were going to get poster paper for a project. I asked why it took like five of them to go, and one of the girls piped up all snarkily and said there was only four of them. Losing all expression, I very tightly replied, "Well students, it only takes one of you to get to paper, so the rest of you sit down now. And whoever wants to get the paper needs to bring me their agenda to sign so they can leave." I said all of this unmoving, glaring with that "fuck you I'm authority" look I told you about earlier. Talk about disappointment and abashment. One girl slunk forward and gave me her agenda and the rest moped down to their desks. From that point on, oh it was "yes you're sixteen, shut the fuck up" from me for that class period.
6. Students nowadays have better technology but the same shitty assignments. Teachers always left the same things I did when I had subs at my school: worksheets that had the answers in them, reading assignments, reading and question assignments, mathematics question sets, finish up your work from yesterday, turn in the project you need to complete, do the work you've been doing all week. The same boring thing they were doing four years ago. The problem is the kids have better technology, and I don't just mean the ability to text their friends. I mean they have computers and know how to use them - and these computers are in the classroom. I never had a class where kids didn't scramble for the computers (something some teachers allowed, some didn't, but NO ONE ever told me where they fell in this in their instructions they left for me). Kids knew how to use PhotoBooth, hack into the system to get to music sites, figure out how to get around blocks to go to other websites, play games on the newest sites to avoid the walls keeping them off limits. I can only be happy I never saw anyone getting on video chat with some other student in another classroom. It reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o in the worst way.
7. The things we are forcing our kids today to do is simply bullshit. I asked several students over my days subbing about tests and the like. They have the EOTC (end of the course test) which is 15% of their grade as well as their final exam which is another 15% of their grade. Between TWO exams, 30% of their final grade for a class is decided. God and Jesus and all of their friends forbid you are not a good test taker. Lord also forbid you have a bad night's sleep or a stressful week. Kids looked hollow-eyed at me when I asked them about their grade in class. One or two would blankly say that they were waiting for the EOTC to come back, then they would know if they were going to fail the class or not.
8. It doesn't matter how rural your school is, almost every student you teach will have something like an iPod, let alone have a cell phone. Nearly every kid I saw had a mp3 player, which almost every teacher allows to be used when they are doing their busy work. This is something so foreign to me I was thrown for a whole 360 degree loop when I first saw it happening. I did not have my iPod until college, and I had just gotten my cell phone my senior year. Freshmen at the high school I subbed at had cell phones and were without any contest much better at text messaging than I would ever be. The realization that by the time I start teaching college that students will have had an utterly different experience growing up through elementary, middle, and high school was so sharp I bled a little internally.
9. Entire schools will mourn when a student dies, even if they barely knew the student. I had subbed one day at a time until a three-day assignment by the chorus teacher. It sounded fine, though I was absolutely nervous about it. I got sick the first day of subbing I was so worried. Why? Because the day before a student had pulled across two lanes to get to the other side of the road - and had been struck driver's side by a tractor trailer. He died on the scene. His passenger did not; he was in the hospital. The driver was a senior, African-American, a top athlete, a top student academically, very popular, had several siblings at the school. The passenger, who lived, was also a senior, white, a loser athlete greedy with the ball, a failure at school, well known but for bad reasons. The rough thing dancing in everyone's mind was not asking why the driver had died, but why had the passenger lived. I set up my spiel on the first day after watching my freshmen women's chorus class communally cry by saying that they should do whatever they wanted to do because this was an unusual day. They took this to heart, wrote on the chalkboard like it was the Vietnam War Memorial, and cried until class ended, then went and prayed next door. The rest of the classes were better, but still much crying. It was hard, feeling a twisting sensation in my torso, depression sinking and climbing with every sniffling girl and blank-faced boy. The following two days were better, but from that point on, you could tell the school aged and darkened and grew up faster than it should have. He was the very first student who had died while still attending the high school, and I was subbing during the first three days the student body knew. I will unabashedly admit I mourned right along with them. Anyone who says substitutes aren't a part of the school system has never been a sub.
10. Substitute teaching is unfulfilling. The pay is fine for what you do, fifty dollars a day. You wake up early, get dressed, get your assignment, go to your classes, maybe have a planning period, leave at 3:15 with all the kids. But you yourself can't make any calls or text anyone; you can't get on the internet; books fail you almost as soon as you open them; writing suddenly is the hardest thing you've had happen to you in years. Your computer doesn't have enough to offer. The kids are yelling, not doing their work, don't want to get their agenda, someone's opening chips, that girl's texting, did he just say "fuck you" to that other boy?, oh whose calling the classroom... ah, hey dad, yeah, everything's fine, sure let's get lunch. I should have brought another book from home. Let me edit all my pictures on my computer. Oi, let's try writing something - oh god, that fails. Another class change. Tell the kids the same spiel. Yes, you can talk. Just don't scream. Oh hey, you, I see you and your friends not doing your work, yes I am writing that down to tell your teacher. No, I don't care in the least about you. I care about leaving detailed notes for the teacher, and actually I won't be struggling with you at all. Did I mention I get paid fifty dollars for this? You should be happy I'm watching to make sure none of you choke on your adolescence... There's no personal investment, the hours tick by like slow songbirds of death, and the whole thing borders on some mental disorder as you're looking for cookies, cell phones, and crazy outbreaks from students. You're left heading to your car at 3:30 after signing out in the front wondering if this day helped anyone at all. Even when you get your paycheck a few weeks later, you're still not sure what happened. Substitute teaching is deeply unfulfilling, and that is all. If you really want to teach, go to graduate school ASAP.
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Next on long-winded lessons from work (aka Gotta Work to Play: Part 2) - retail sales associate in the ladies' department where I opened a store in the countryside, one of 75 chosen from 1500 applicants.
Hey, been reading these. Not sure if you want comments or feedback for these posts, for now I will say that I am enjoying them. You are an incredibly intelligent and self-aware individual. The posts here certainly show it.
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