You wanna hear something wacky? I liked subbing. I graduated Winter Quarter back when Michigan State was still on the quarter system, so for part of March, all of April and May, and the first week of June, I was on the sub list for six different school districts in my area. I had my degree and my teaching certificate; I was ready to go. Then I did summer school, too, because my first regular teaching position wasn't til that fall. There were days I'd get calls from two or three different schools and get to choose. Back then, I was still young, hungry, and idealistic. I wanted to get out there and teach, and it was great because the lesson plan was done for me, all I had to do was deliver the lesson, and I didn't have to grade the homework or tests or anything.
Sure, half the time it was just a movie or some other waste of time because the regular teacher wasn't going to trust the presentation of new material to a sub, but sometimes they got sick that morning and there wasn't a choice. I got to teach science, math, history, music, English, even Spanish. The best was scoring a long-term gig. I had a two-week stint teaching math the nicest high school in the area, and it was sweet. The teacher had surgery scheduled and knew weeks ahead of time that he'd be out, and had lesson plans prepared every day for every class. By time I was done, the students were telling me that they wished I could just teach them the rest of the year because they liked me better than their regular teacher. They liked him, too, but I made it fun. And yeah, they learned. Algebra II & Trig, Advanced Geometry, that kind of stuff. The smart kids, the ones who actually liked learning and did the work.
One time I covered two days for the band director at the school where I'd done my student teaching. Solo & Ensemble was coming up, so the notes just said to let the kids practice their stuff. Well heck, my first major was music education, and I knew half the kids from teaching math there for three months, so I went around helping them all, giving them pointers, etc. They loved that.
I did a three-day gig teaching history, and they were just starting a unit on World War II. I always started each class by writing my name on the board... in Chinese. Then I'd write it in English in parentheses and make some kind of joke. With the World War II unit, I didn't joke, but instead said that I was Chinese, not Japanese, so get it straight because Chinese people do not like Japanese people. Every class, someone asked why. This was Lansing, Michigan, in the 80's. Most of them had never even met an Asian before, and if they'd heard of Chinese or Japanese people, we were all the same to them anyway. So I told them about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, completely unprovoked, lots of deaths. Talked about how you almost couldn't blame the Japanese, since they had all those people crammed onto a string of little islands, while China had this whole huge area (draw some rough maps on the board), but it still wasn't cool what they did. Heads nodding. Talked about the escalation, and how Japan somehow got it into their heads to bomb the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, which is how the U.S. got involved. It started with them thinking they'd get the sub talking, and they'd get out of learning anything that day, but instead we talked and they learned half a chapter from the book before they knew what was going on. And they were engaged. By the third day, they didn't want to see me leave, either. I had kids telling me they'd learned more in three days than they'd learned all year from the regular teacher. They never realized that history could actually be interesting.
In other words, subbing might not be as ridiculous a suggestion as you think. I've never thought about it before, but I think it would be fun. Thanks for reminding me about that. Those were good times.
Topic: The Educators Thread (Read 14557 times)
