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A Day as a Substitute Teacher # 5
Another day as a substitute teacher, a day full of surprises in which I learned a great many things. The school district doesn't care what a substitute teacher's expertise is. When a regular teacher is absent, the school administrators must legally place some warm, adult body -- any approved, warm adult body -- in that teacher's place. I have subbed for mathematics teachers, world history teachers, English teachers, conceptual physics teachers, English as a Second Language teachers, and even a Spanish teacher, though the only Spanish I know is "Hasta la vista." The administrators and I once joked about how they were going to send me out to substitute as a dance teacher -- at which I told them that I used to teach Polynesian dance, and that would be just fine with me. So today I was sent to sub for a World History teacher. There was no lesson plan, nothing anyone was aware of that I was supposed to do according to the regular teacher, who must have fallen ill during the night and not been able to provide a lesson plan. One teacher whom I like very much and used to act as a tutor for in her classes was just down the hall. Since I was scheduled to start during the second period, I spent the first period with her and her class. She had a memo that had just come down announcing that all students were to write an essay on "stopping the killing." The community in which I live has a great many African-American drive-by shootings. I have been to the funerals of several youngsters about the age of the students I teach. Both of these deaths occurred as murders, one under a freeway in our city, another in a similar setting in Washington D. C. There is an immediate problem with this class assignment. The students don't want to write an essay on any subject. Most refuse to do it. They hate writing. Since I am not their regular teacher, they know I cannot really announce that I will dock them points on their final grade if they don't write the essay. Students know that they don't have to behave nearly as well for a substitute teacher as for one they see every day. They know they have an advantage. Most important to them is that the substitute doesn't know them by name. Therefore, the substitute has more difficulty holding them accountable for their actions. The regular teacher has another advantage just as important as knowing his or her students by name. The regular teacher determines the students' grades. Students know that if they act up and don't obey the regular teacher, their grades will suffer. To overcome some of the disadvantages of the situation, a teacher I have substituted for before has regularly had me come into her classroom and spend about one day a week there while she enjoys personal time off. This way I have gotten to know the names of many of the pupils. The last three weeks of school I will be taking all her classes, because she is going off to a family reunion on the other side of the world. I will be determining half the students' final grades, and averaging this with the half the regular teacher has already assigned. I am expecting much better behavior from these high school students than what a regular substitute teacher normally receives.
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Contributor's Note
This is Part # 5 of a continuing series. Perhaps some day I shall turn all these accounts into a book.
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AFRICAN GIFTS
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You have pointed out some of the reasons I have not enjoyed substituting. I do admire teachers who can do it well, since, as state, you often have no plan to work from, you don't know the students, and I have known them to switch places so that the seating charts don't help. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for this glimpse into the world of teaching. It must be a wonderful challenge to win over students who a) are not totally under your control and b) are from a different ethnic background. It sounds like the sort of challenge you'd have if someone parachuted you into Polynesia to teach the locals there. Though the Polynesian islands, I believe, are less violent than the US inner cities.
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