The Joys of Substitute Teaching

So I've been subbing now.  It's kind of the pits.  Remember in grade school when you'd have a substitute teacher and you'd say to yourself, "What's the deal with this idiot?"  Yeah, me too.  Well, there's no possible way for a substitute teacher to know exactly what to do.  First of all, chances are that the sub has gotten the job last minute and has had to rush to the school, completely unprepared.  Second of all, upon entering the building, the sub is merely pointed in the direction of the classroom they will be taking over.  There is no tour of the school; the sub is not even told where the lounge is so that he or she can put his or her lunch in the refrigerator.  If the sub needs to take the students somewhere during the course of the day, one can only hope that the students will be honest and help the sub find where to go.  Third of all, no matter how detailed the lesson plans that the teacher leaves are, and no matter how hard that teacher tries to make sure all the materials are in an easy-to-find place, there is no way for the sub to know where everything is.  It's challenging, I'm telling you.  Not unrewarding, but definitely challenging.

If I showed up to a class revealing my garter belt in this fashion, I would probably be asked to leave.

 Anyway, I was excited to be able to work in the same classroom for two consecutive days last week.  It was a Kindergarten class, which I chose specifically not because I like working with younger students (I much prefer slightly older), but I had never worked with Kindergartners before, so I was looking forward to the challenge.  And what a challenge that turned out to be!  This was at an inner city school, so the classroom was very diverse and, with diversity comes names that are hard to get down in the course of one day.  And these Kindergartners were particularly unruly ones.  They were very, very thrown off by having a substitute teacher and many spent a good part of the day being argumentative amongst themselves, crying periodically, and tattling -- oh, the tattling!  Needless to say, it was next to impossible to follow the lesson plans the teacher had left for me.

The worst part, though, was getting them on the bus.  It suddenly dawned on me that I was responsible for the safety of 24 children.  And I could not begin to know for sure which student was who, nor what anyone's name was.  Yet, they were entrusted in my care and it was up to me to make sure they made it home.  It was too much.  Everybody did make it on the bus/were picked up by the correct parent but I could barely keep back tears as I made my way back to the classroom (which the students had all but demolished by the end of the day).

And I had to do it all over again the next day.  I briefly considered admitting my incompetence and giving up the job, but couldn't let myself do that.  Then I thought about ways to make myself get sick overnight.  I didn't feel sick but maybe I could skip taking my nightly Airbourne which would, in turn, weaken my immune system and maybe let my body give into all the germs I had been exposed to during the course of the week... 

I woke up Friday morning feeling just fine.  While getting ready, I Googled "Kindergarten Classroom Management" and jotted down some notes.  Guess what?  Friday went extremely smoothly.  I like to think that I changed into a better teacher overnight, but I think it had more to do with the fact that the students had gotten over my being new and decided to settle down.  Still, I installed a few very important classroom rules at the beginning of the day and made use of some of these surprisingly good ideas:

1.  I put a stuffed elephant on a chair in the corner of the room and told the students that if they felt like they needed to tattle on someone, they could go tell Mr  Elephant.  I cannot begin to tell you how well this worked.  A few times, when a couple of students got into a fight over who got to talk to Mr. Elephant first, I just told them that Mr. Elephant was tired and needed to take a break and they actually listened to me.

2.  The Quiet Game.  I was extremely skeptical of this, but right after snack time when I could sense that they were seconds away from getting out of control, I told them that I had a really good idea for a game.  At that, every one of them perked up and wanted to know more.  Moments later, I had them all at their tables with their heads down, silent.  It was nuts, I'm telling you!

3.  Taking time to sing songs and play games during transitions makes all the difference.  This is sort of a no-brainer, but it was something I did not think of the day before.  Oh my, did it make things easier, though!

The best part of the day?  When the time came to take them to their buses, I realized that I knew the names of at least 80 percent (maybe more) of the students.  I was able to send them on their way knowing that they were on the correct buses, accounted for, and that I didn't compromise their safety in any way.

What a relief!