Friday, February 24, 1995
It’s after Kyle’s bath and I’m sweating. My fever may be back. I’m not sure. Lisa reads Wednesday’s newspaper on the futon next to the desk in the office. (She tells me James Heriot died yesterday. I think, "Prophecy? She’s reading a paper from day before yesterday.") I should really give it up for the night, but I need to get some more down on the keys.
I’ve just finished the entry from yesterday. And as Lisa heads to the bedroom to read a book, I try to get down some words about today. Today, in any other year, might have been a "mental health day"--one of those sick days taken more for relaxation than for curative value. But this year, it wasn’t all that relaxing. I slept until eleven (I guess my body needed at least that much rest), but then I graded papers and worked on lessons until three, which was when I had decided to go to campus. I needed to pick up today’s papers to grade, grade sheets so that I could figure the weekly grades for the classes, and to prepare the room for Monday morning’s classes.
Those are all lies.
I returned to campus to check on my room and my roll books. I have had very little luck with substitutes lately (save for Maria, my former student, who was not my sub today). Super subs--who can follow a lesson plan and actually teach--are rare; and we lost a great one when Daniels became a full-time teacher. Mediocre subs--who can take roll and at least follow a lesson plan moderately well, making only a few gross errors--are few and far between. This leaves the dregs.
It’s almost as if our district has a sign welcoming shitty subs, like the Statue of Liberty used to welcome immigrants, only our sign reads, "Send us your burnt-out, your shitty, your lobotomized troglodytes..." Now, I know, being a substitute is not a great job, nor is it easy; shitty teachers leaving unmanaged and unmanageable classes with poor lesson plans must make for a negative life-altering experience. But all I ask is that a sub take roll, follow the damned lesson plan, and leave some notes as to behavior...not really all that difficult. But it seems I cannot even get this recently.
Last year, I had left a substitute lessons plans that called for silent sustained reading, a quick peer-editing session for the students’ vocabulary sentences, and then the reading aloud of a single scene from Romeo and Juliet (complete with a character list for the scene, difficult words and meanings, and some notes to put on the board to help the students in their own note-taking). When I returned, I asked my classes how the day went and they said fine. When I asked how the reading went, they stared blankly at me. When I asked about Romeo and Juliet, they went, "HUH?" They hadn’t read the play. They had watched a video. Only it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet. It was a tape on George Washington. Only I didn’t have a tape player in my class. This sub from Uranus had brought his own tape and had asked a neighboring teacher to borrow her VCR to show his tape to my class. He didn’t follow my lesson plan; he never had any intention to follow my lesson plan. The scum bag baby-sat and picked up a paycheck.
Earlier this year, I had another sub who was twenty minutes late for my first class, failed to take roll in any of my classes, and was late again for my fourth period class. Luckily, I had planned video showings of Of Mice and Men on that day. But today I was nervous. I hadn’t planned a video showing for the English 9’s. And today I didn’t know who the sub would be. So I went to school at three.
I didn’t arrive home again until four-fifteen. Since I live no more than three minutes away from school, this is a bad sign.
As I walk on campus, Cindy Daniels comes out of the door of the classroom next to mine (I would call it her classroom, but as she is a first-year teacher, she must travel from period to period... so she shares the room for two periods of the day with another teacher). She asks me how I’m feeling, and when I tell her I’m ok and that I’m checking on my class, she tells me that it was pretty quiet when she poked her head in there second period. This is a good sign since period two is this term’s class from hell.
In the class, all looks good. Rows still in place. No student writing on the boards. The desk doesn’t look too bad. I look at the period three clipboard. Roll has been taken. Good. I see a note left for me from the sub. First period went well. Second period was loud (no surprise) but it "worked better since (he) had a better grasp on the lesson plan." This doesn’t sound so good. Third period was great. Gotta love the Honors class. I see the period one and two clipboards on the desk filled with papers. Good sign.
So I move on to preparing the boards for Monday’s classes and the week to come. And only then do I get around to looking closely at the clipboards. Period two... roll taken. Good. Notes on who had books, who had vocabulary sentences. Very good, just like I asked. A note here that the second period student aide Tricia was helpful. Good. I grade the papers turned in, disappointed in the amount of work that is left for me. Not that it’s too much, but that it’s not nearly as much as I hoped for after giving the students nearly thirty minutes of free work time...academic detentions next week are going to go up, if that can be believed. Then I go on to first period. Wait a minute. Roll hasn’t been taken. No notes on who had novels, or who had sentences. Hardly any new work. Oh, shit. This guy didn’t do the job first period. He obviously needed Tricia to explain to him what was to be done. And since first period doesn’t have an aide, the sub floundered. I try to piece together who was there and who was absent by unreturned, graded work that is left over (and that should have been passed back to attending students today) and work that has been left for me to grade (what there is). But this leaves nearly ten students for whom I have no I idea if they attended or not. Shit.
It takes me an hour to get things in a state so that I can come in on Monday without stress. Thank god I didn’t wait until Monday to come in. I’ve never been able to do that (no matter how sick I am, I come to work in the afternoon of the sick days, either to mop up after the sub and prepare for my return the next day, or to mop up after the sub and prepare for the next day’s sub), and I’m thankful that I’ve come in today, even though I’m now sweating and I’m sure my fever’s back.
I’ll have the weekend to rest. Hopefully.
Hopefully, I’ll never have this sub again.
No comments:
Post a Comment