small.town.girl

Life as a substitute teacher essentially involves a series of unpleasant experiences. Often, you’re offered a job by a 5:30 a.m. phone call. If you decide to take this job, you must then stumble out of bed to a school where you know virtually no one, and you must look professional upon arrival. Depending on who you are subbing for, you will find lesson plans. If you’re in for a high school teacher, odds are these lesson plans will be worksheets, quizzes or “continue working on such and such project.” If it’s middle school level, you may actually have to teach, or at least supervise them teaching themselves.

Depending on how the day goes, your afternoon might involve an energized trip to Wal-Mart or it may involve collapsing into bed and self-doubt. It depends on the school district, the students and your own resilience. Some days, I find myself doubting that this is the proper profession for me. I wonder if everything I’m doing is worth it, or I start looking at the want ads for “real jobs.” Other days, I’m fully confident that I’m making the right decision to continue my education and I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to gain varied classroom experiences.

There is one school district in particular that I dread seeing on my caller ID first thing in the morning. It’s the city school, and the kids are completely different from any of the other school districts that employ me. What scares me the most, I think, is that our “city” is nothing compared to actual cities. I find the fact that we have gangs almost laughable, because there’s no chance of our downtown ever becoming anywhere near as sketchy as even the state capital less than 30 miles away. Yet when I teach in the city school, I wonder what kind of lives these kids are gearing up for, and how they could possibly think that their behavior is acceptable.

My first day at the city’s middle school, I was greeted by a very uptight security guard who was upset that I didn’t have a proper school ID. (I found out later that these IDs are only available Friday mornings for one hour.) I navigated my way to the teacher’s room and waited for a janitor to let me in since the sub’s key had been misplaced. It wasn’t such a bad deal; I was merely administering tests in most of the classes. I started the day with confidence. After all, how bad could 7th graders be? As it turns out, they can be a nightmare. Each class had a few students with attitude issues. Luckily, this specific teacher had noted in her substitute folder who was trustworthy and who would cause problems–the warning definitely helped. At one point during the day, a girl was in tears and I didn’t have the ability to find out why and maintain control over the classroom. It upset me because she was one of the well-behaved, trustworthy students; I did what I could by sending her to the restroom with a buddy (who might not have even been her friend). The buddy later told me that the girl had been harassed in the morning at the YMCA, and I assume additional teasing in school probably set her off. Regardless, these students were relatively low-key compared to later in the day. In the morning, the office had called to ask me to cover another class during what would have been my teacher’s planning period–the last period of the day. Despite my run ins with surly 13-year-olds and hearing from more than one teacher that there were “no good kids” in the school, I was confident after my day as a 7th grade language arts teacher. I wrapped up my notes on who misbehaved and what we accomplished throughout the day and rushed to the end of the hall where this last class waited. This was an 8th grade math course, and the other teacher who was watching over them until I got there stayed for about ten minutes, but we couldn’t really gain control. Eventually she left me with them, and their math quiz, and I basically just yelled for forty-five minutes in an attempt to make sure they didn’t kill each other. Two girls almost got in a physical altercation, and one did leave in tears at the end of the day. A few of the students actually completed the quiz, but many of them just talked and goofed around. I had no control at all, and each time I handled one near-catastrophe, another one popped up. By the end of the period, I was hoarse and felt completely defeated. It didn’t help that as I was cleaning up the room and leaving the building, the teacher from next door told me with all the passive-aggressive attitude of a longtime city teacher, that he “hoped the movie they were watching wasn’t too loud for us.”

For weeks after this, my confidence was completely shaken. I felt that I had failed, and I heard that teacher’s comment about the movie echo in my head numerous times. Eventually, though, I decided to give the District another chance. This time it was for high school, and I thought that maybe older kids would be better behaved. At this point, I had subbed a few times at another local high school, where the students acted like legitimate young adults. Surely these city kids would be starting to progress toward being productive members of society. When I arrived, however, I knew I was going to have no such luck. The lesson plans listed the number of calculators (regular and graphing) in the room and asked me to count them after each period, and the the classroom itself was disheveled and old-fashioned. The students proved to be just as bad as the middle schoolers, only even more disrespectful because they knew I had no true authority. Some of the kids had this teacher more than once during the day. Lucky me, I had a set of girls who spoke loudly in Spanish for two periods. They were incredibly rude to me and the rest of their class and didn’t do the assignments they were supposed to do. This teacher had requested information on who misbehaved with a description of the transgression, and I wrote him approximately two pages detailing these girls’ actions and some of the other things I caught. I tried to write down the names of a few kids who were well behaved. Truthfully, the high school level was a bit more controlled than middle school, but they were still difficult to corral. None of them seemed to think that school was anything other than a vehicle for socialization. After that day, I had to drive downtown to meet up with a friend. Even though these high school kids did not know my car or even recognize me as a substitute teacher (since I had not left the room, I’d only seen the few kids I’d dealt with personally), I heard small rocks hitting my car. I can only assume that they were throwing rocks at all the cars passing by as they walked home.

I went into my second experience with the middle school thinking that the high school had taught me something more regarding classroom management. I walked in with a tough attitude; I felt prepared to take on these kids. I went to the school feeling that I deserved respect and believing that the kids, being 6th graders, would show me that respect. The tiers of disrespect vary so much with age levels. These students would not behave, and the fact is that I can hardly remember any specific anecdotes because I’ve worked so hard to block it out. I do know that one period, I had to call the office for backup after a white male student got in my face and the girl next to him continued to back talk me. The assistant principal’s stern warning lasted all of three minutes with the class before they were back to talking. Somehow, we made our way through the lesson plans, but in many cases I just told the students the assignment because reading the chapter together didn’t work. In other experiences and different school districts, students at this age thoroughly enjoyed the “popcorn” style of reading, with each person taking a paragraph and then calling on the next person to read, and, truthfully, I think that these students would have enjoyed it as well if it weren’t for a few ringleaders who headed up the disruptive behavior. Their attention spans crumbled like a house of cards with the first incidents. Every period had this issue. After this day, my voice was going, my head hurt and I went home and collapsed into bed for two hours. But first I called off for the following day, for which I was scheduled at the same school district’s high school as a physical education teacher. Hell no. Feeling sick already, I knew I couldn’t swing it.

At this point, my fourth and final experience with this school district was at the elementary level. They scheduled me as a full day floater, though it was mainly in the afternoon where coverage was needed as teachers had a meeting to attend. I was placed in one classroom for the entire day. The regular teacher had to have been around my age, and she was very sweet, so I could understand why she worked with third graders. For the morning, I worked through a folder of tests and quizzes students had taken, calling each one back to go over mistakes and allowing them to redo certain sections. This was definitely difficult for me as I have no early education training and communicating with small children is kind of like communicating with aliens. I’m not sure if I did it properly, because in some instances I practically gave the answers away. Some of the students merely needed to be reminded to slow down and think about the questions, but another little boy had the attention span of a gnat and no motivation. He actually growled at me. When it came time for the teacher to leave me alone with the students, I was surprised at how quickly a bunch of 8-year-olds could become rowdy and obnoxious. Granted, they were nothing compared to the older students of this school district, but most of them were talkative and had difficulty focusing. However, we made it through our afternoon fairly well. The massive test of my abilities came at the end of the day, when I had to herd my students to the cafetorasyium (cafeteria/auditorium/gymnasium combo!) for their holiday concert! Oh, my God. I barked orders like a drill sergeant to have the kids line up from tallest to shortest carrying their chairs, and other teachers were annoyed that I couldn’t figure out where in the auditorium I was supposed to have them go (the crudely drawn map in the plans was not very helpful). We pulled it off, though, and made it back to the classroom at the end of the day with just enough time for them to record their homework assignments before it was time to go. I had about a page of notes regarding misbehavior for the teacher (growly and the wannabe class clown, among others, gave me a bit of trouble). After this experience, I wasn’t as crushed as I had been with the older students, but I was exhausted and horrified by the behavior and lack of respect of children. If they act like this at 8, how will they be by the time they are teenagers?

My experiences with the city’s school district have been some of my biggest struggles. Life as a substitute is never easy; every day you are a new target, you have no ongoing relationship with the students and are not familiar with what they do and do not get away with on a regular basis. When in this district, though, it’s worse—you are not just a target, you’re practically invisible. Once the disruptive behavior starts, no amount of scolding, promising of referrals or warning that the regular teacher will be giving detention will regain control of the classroom. Each period becomes a war story; each day is a test of your faith in yourself. At first, I let this school district shake me to my core. I questioned whether I was choosing the right career path, and I wondered if the graduate courses I am signed up for would be enough to teach me how to cope with behaviors like I saw in these classrooms. Then I realized that this school district is an anomaly. Granted, many urban school districts would be as bad or worse than this, but I don’t intend to seek work in an urban school district. I guess it was just hard to realize that maybe, even though it is a small city, it counts as a city. The attitudes are different, the behavior traits are different and the student’s abilities are different than those witnessed in a suburban setting. So, city school district, it’s not me—it’s you. I won’t cry if you stop calling.