The way the subbing is set up for me, I’m all set to work in the school district that I live in and one that starts about 20 minutes or so to the south. I get most of the calls in the district that I live in. I get a fair number of calls at a few schools in the other district too, but I think part of that is because my wife is doing a long term gig at a school there and if I go with her or to the high school next door I can ride with her.
There’s a city/town/group of people in the other district where they usually have to beg for subs because it’s so far away for most people. Today was one of those days, in the high school. Luckily they wanted both of us.
Originally I was going to shadow an autistic kid and my wife was going to be a science teacher. We traded because I’m trying to figure out what grade I want to teach and she wants nothing to do with kids who are about 98.5% guaranteed to be bigger than her. I don’t blame her at all.
High schools here are on a block schedule, which in this case means they have the same class for about 90 minutes at a time every day for the semester. I enjoyed that as a student, not so much as a teacher.
If you get a bad kid then you’re stuck with them for what seems like forever. You’ve really got to hope that the teacher left enough work because if not you’re stuck with high schoolers with nothing to do.
Luckily the first class I had was advanced chemistry. They came into the room and started to freak out because they were supposed to finish their test. I thought a few of them were going to leave a puddle on the floor. Luckily they got to finish their tests. After that I let them talk. I was feeling nice, they hadn’t misbehaved at all, there wasn’t a reason not to. They started talking about the book they were reading for English class.
Really? You have a sub who’s letting you talk and you turn the whole thing into another class? No wonder these kids were in advanced.
The other two classes watched a video and did a worksheet. One of the classes wanted to talk a lot, but they did it quietly and seemed to be sorry when people asked them to be quiet. So far my worst fears had been averted, the big kids weren’t really trying to take advantage of me.
The last class broke that. They were the class teachers dread, the ones where the teacher takes a sick day just to get away from the kids. They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t do the work. They wouldn’t accept the fact that I wouldn’t turn off the lights.
I mean, would you turn off the lights with a bunch of high schoolers that you don’t know? I’m not willing to play that game.
I sent one girl to the office because she kept singing some song about being a jerk at the exact moments where I could see myself thinking that about the sub. That calmed the class down some, at least they know I’d really send people out.
But experiment over. I can take high schoolers for a day at a time. There’s no way I’d want to do it full time. Not unless I can someone go straight to having all advanced and AP classes or something.
