Substitute teaching

People have suggested I be a substitute to earn points for relicensure.  No thanks.  Substituting is sort of the worst.  In the same way I like my own kids but hate babysitting other people's, I like being a teacher but don't like substituting.

On the other hand, at times they need to ask the aides to substitute in a pinch when they can't find one.  Also, I can earn points for my license when I sub so I've let them know I want to substitute.  The other aides are thrilled by that arrangement.

Thursday, I substituted a half day in a first grade.  It was the typical wild ride that took all my energy.

Friday, I got to school and they grabbed me to emergency substitute in art class.  It made first grade look like a walk in the park.

I had six different grade levels.  The first grade I had was the same class as the day before.  They cheered when they saw me (first grade = great for your self esteem).  They hugged me and drew pictures for me and cards where they wrote "I love you" and spelled my name wrong.  (They added an E to the end of Davis, like you do?)

First grade has its own challenges but affection is not one of them.

I had second grade, fourth grade, fifth grade.  It all went pretty much fine.

Then the sixth grade sauntered in like a bunch of hoodlums.  I don't work with sixth graders typically so it is an extra disadvantage in substituting when you don't know names.  They awkwardly flirted with each other and the boys tried to see how far they could push things (I have sons--not far).  A girl accidentally spilled a bunch of glue on the table and she was covering it with her hands, so I wouldn't notice?  I told her to get wet paper towels and she seemed super relieved that I knew about the glue and would tell her what to do so she wouldn't have to keep sitting there covering the glue puddle.

I took away a note two boys were hunched over when they should have been completing their assignment.  They howled about their right to privacy and I put the note in my pocket.  "That's my property!" they wailed.

"I'll give it back to you after class."

"There isn't even anything written on it!"

"That must be why you're so worried about it."

Then they had nothing more to say.

At the end of each class period I employed the age old trick that every teacher at every grade does at the end of the day to clean up a messy floor (and they'd been making collages out of construction paper so believe me when I say the floor was messy).  I had them clean up the floor, on a quest for the "special piece."  Whoever picked it up, got a piece of candy.

The boys came to me with handfuls of paper.  "Has someone picked it up yet?" they asked.

"I'm not going to tell you yet," I said.  I was sure they were old enough to understand that it was a ploy to get the floor cleaned.  Surely they saw that.

"Wait," one of them said.  "Wait!  Are you using us?"

"Well, yeah," I said.  "We're cleaning up the room."

"Forget it," they said, horrified at being so sorely treated.  They stopped helping.

One of the girls picked up the special piece and got a rather large lollipop I had in my bag.

I felt sort of bad for disillusioning the boys, but seriously, they're sixth graders.  They had to know they were helping to clean the room, right?