Substitute Teachers

I have missed two days of school this week, due to a memorial service for my Grandpa and for a day-long professional development meeting that I call "teacher school." When a teacher is gone, a substitute comes to teach, as you all surely know. Remember those weird substitutes you had when you were in school? We only remember the weird ones, not the completely normal ones who come in, do their job well, and leave an organized pile of homework and notes on student behavior. For instance, in high school my Spanish teacher was on maternity leave and we had Senorita Bebe, who lived on a commune and took us all out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. In sixth grade (another maternity leave) we had the superintendent's son, Mr. Valon, who shoved all our assignments in a cabinet instead of grading them, but boy was he cool.

On Monday, my substitute was the normal kind. He followed my lesson plans and the students knew exactly what to do. He collected homework and wrote down the names of students who were late or weren't working. Everything was in a neat pile on my desk when I returned.

Yesterday, I had the other kind of sub, the one who makes for great stories and is probably MUCH more interesting to the students. She got to class 15 minutes late, then yelled at the students for starting their work without her. She never seemed to know which period it was; all the assignments were mislabeled and she told me that period 1 and 5 were "unruly" when those are my two best behaved classes. My eighth period told me that she spent the entire class period on the computer and would periodically turn around to yell at them because she "knew" they were off task. My students described her behavior as "paranoid and on crack." She left behind a bowl with the remnents of soup in it (her lunch?).

This substitute also left me a nice note telling me that I should call her any time I need a sub. Right.

The nice thing was that some of my students were genuinely concerned about me (they didn't know that I would be gone again). I told them that I really appreciate hearing their concern because someday I may find myself locked in the padded room of a mental institution without my shoelaces, and it would be nice to have visitors on occasion. I hate missing work. It's double the work to prepare for a sub, and the uncertainty of what will be waiting for you when you return is just too much to handle sometimes.

This is why I go to school when I'm sick and infect all the children. It's for their and my own good.