The Substitute!

There was a movie that came out in 1996 called "The Substitute." I haven't seen the whole movie, but I've seen clips on YouTube. I always criticize movies about education because they often exaggerate or leave out certain aspects of the profession. This one used to fit into that category, until last year.

My mentor, Rafe Esquith, would often say movie producers wanted to make a movie about him and his role as an educator teaching at an inner-city school in Los Angeles. He always turned them down because he never wanted to give the wrong impression about teaching. 

Odds are students won't be standing on a desk reciting poetry as you are being led out of the classroom for disobeying the headmaster of a private school. 

Odds are you aren't going to save an entire group of inner-city youths by having them write in a journal. 

Odds are you aren't going to walk into a school in Harlem as a teacher is quitting and then immediately take over the class where you learn more from the students than they learn from you. 

However, the movie after which I've titled this post after, was more correct than I wanted it to be. 

This last year, our state had a shortage of substitute teachers. It was so bad that the governor asked for state employees to take leave in order to substitute teach. In fact, the state would give us additional time off so we didn't have to use our personal leave. I don't know how many people took him up on this offer, but I do know the governor made time to substitute teach at a middle school long enough to get a few photos for the newspaper. (see below)

I thought this idea was awesome and I had even been talking about it with my colleagues at the state board of education. I know this sounds crazy, but I thought it was important for those of us working in education and making rules for educators, to dip our toe into the classroom occasionally in order to get a feel of what teaching is like in our schools. I stopped teaching in 2016 and I know our schools and students have changed drastically since then. 

I was lucky to find several opportunities to work in a number of school settings as a substitute. I worked at some jr. highs, high schools, and even an elementary school. I thought it would be just like riding a bike and I was somewhat correct. That is if the bike had two flat tires and no handlebars. 

It was a miserable experience. I know having your own classroom is a very different thing than being a substitute teacher, but I used to substitute teach back in 2009 and I felt like it was much easier back then. Almost every school had the same problem and it made me realize why we were having a substitute teacher shortage in the first place. 

The last substitute job I took was at an elementary school teaching 4th grade. This is the grade I used to teach and I was looking forward to it because I was a good 4th grade teacher. Sure, I had problem kids in my teaching days, but the classroom as a whole was good. Students got along and we had a good class culture. I thought I would be able to bring that same energy to this new classroom. I knew that might have been a bigger task than I expected as the principal continued to drop in throughout the morning. It was still early, but the principal had already come in twice to check in on me and the class. I soon realized why. 

After an hour or so, the first problem happened. Two students were starting to argue about something and then they started telling each other to eff off. This didn't sit well with me, so I sent them to the office. As I was watching them walk down the hall, some noise was coming from inside the classroom. It turns out one of the students, who was larger than most kids his age and bound to a wheelchair, was being teased by other students. I soon found that this was very common and he would often fight back and only make the teasing worse. 

As I went back inside to handle this fire, the school's counselor and learning coach came down to ask what the other two students had done. I told them that they were telling each other to eff off and the learning coach sighed and said, "When they use language like that we just remind them to use professional language." I could tell she knew that this was something that never worked in their school, but that is how they were taught to handle these types of situations. 

The only ray of light about this day was that they were being released early, so I only had to be there until 12:30. If it had been a full day, I would've left at lunch because it was that bad. There are many awful events that took place that day, but nothing worse than the email I got from the agency that was in charge of placing substitutes. 

I was told that MY behavior was unprofessional that day because a student had told a parent or teacher that I had said the class was awful (which they absolutely were). I was reprimanded for saying this. However, the context of me saying that to the class was it was AWFUL how they were treating that poor student in the wheelchair and they should stop bullying him. I wrote the company back and told them they didn't have to worry about me because I was never going to substitute teach for that school or district ever again. 

I left that school with a lot of feelings, none of them good. It made me really angry because this was a profession I loved, but it only took one day...ONE DAY!!! to make me so disheartened and bitter about it that I decided I'd probably never teach in the classroom again. I could talk about some of the other experiences I had during my short stint as a substitute teacher, but this is the one that stuck with me and impacted me the most. 

If you've ever substitute taught, my hat is off to you. If you're a teacher, please make that day as easy as possible for the substitute. Simple things like a seating chart or a class leader to help the substitute can make their day 100% better. 

Pro Tip: FERPA allows you to leave notes about specific students if you think it is applicable to their job for the day. Take advantage of this.