Adventures of a Substitute Teacher

This is a really existential job.

Every day when I come in, I ask, "Who am I?"

I've been working as a substitute teacher at the local public charter school (where my Dear Husband KK is the director of finance) for more than five years now. When I am asked to substitute, I'm not told until I arrive what class I will be teaching. For whom will I be substituting?

Who am I?

Adventures in substitute teaching: Green Cats and Invented Spelling

I was substitute teaching for a kindergarten class. In each of the kindergarten classes, there is a teacher's aide full time assisting the teacher. As a result, it is fairly simple to sub for these classes, because the aide knows all the routines and standards.

The teacher left me an assignment for the class: Practice writing D, d, and use d in a sentence. The practice sheet had lines for practicing D, d, then "dog" then room for your sentence. There was a box at the bottom of the page for the students to draw a picture. There was a step by step model of how to draw a dog.

The aide pointed out that the students' spelling words for this week are the "-at" family- so, cat, mat, rat, sat.

I encouraged students to think of sentences that would include "d" words and also words from the "-at" family.

The aide layered on the idea that the picture- which was to include a dog (and I modeled the step-by-step instructions on the whiteboard)- should reflect what was written in the sentence.

These instructions were getting pretty complex, I thought.

I had the aide model the forming of the D and the d, as I know that the students are taught specific strokes in a specific order and I didn't want to confuse them.

So, finally, the students are busy writing and drawing. I move from table to table checking the progress of the students.

Seeing a student has written "I hav a dog" I asked the aide, do we correct spelling? And she replies, if you can sound it out, we don't correct the spelling.

Okay.

So the students move on to the drawing and coloring. Students bring up their work to the aide for the final check before putting the work in their folders.

A student shows the colorful work of "the dog sat on the cat".

The cat has a voice bubble that says: "AHHH!!!!"

The aide says: I don't know any cats that say "AHHH!!!!" - cats say "meow"- go fix that.

?!?!?!

(I have never heard a cat say "meow" either.)

Then another student brings up a picture with a colorful drawing which includes a green cat.

The aide says: Are cats green? No they are not. Go fix that.

And students who have a yellow dog have to fix it.

And students who have a red dog do not have to fix it- because of Clifford the big red dog.

!?!?!?!

And I want to say: Have you never seen Picasso's blue period work?

Have you never seen ERIC CARLE?

But, I am only a sub.

Did you Ms. me? the story

I substitute teach at the local K-8 school where my Dear Husband is an administrator. I think I will start a series of tagged blogs on "Adventures of Substitute Teaching".

This episode:
I was substitute teaching for the middle school this time. First I had a very chatty group of 7th graders. I substitute fairly often, and many of the kids know my name, but for whatever reason on this occasion. multiple times I was called either "Mrs. Cunningham" or "Mrs. Campbell" - neither of which is my name. I assume that those two subs get called by my name as well.

So when the next class- this one of 6th graders- arrived, I wrote my name on the board like this:

Ms. K------

One of the students asked why I had left out the "r" in "Mrs.".

I explained that I had written it correctly, the word was pronounced "mizz" and I invited them to tell me what they thought it meant.

Some of their guesses:

-it means that you don't have any children (I told them I have 4 children)

- it means that you are divorced (I told them- and/or reminded them- I was happily married- to the man working in the office, Mr. K----!)

- it means that you are older (!! I told them-- ah, no.)

So I wrote: Mr. Smith, Miss Smith, Mrs. Smith, Ms. Smith on the board.

I asked, pointing at "Miss Smith,"- do you know if this person is married? (yes, we know she isn't married).

I pointed at "Mrs. Smith"- how about this person? (yes, we know she is married)

I pointed at "Mr. Smith"- what about this person? (no- we don't know if he is married or not)

So, I explained that in the 1960s, or about that time, the term "Ms." was created to use for women- in a fairer way, like "Mr.", without reference to their marital status.

Some other topics came up- last names, hyphenated last names and so on.

And we went on to the lesson.

Then I was talking to the classroom teacher later. I outlined what had happened.

It turned out *she* (a "Miss" in her late 20s / early 30s) had no idea what "Ms." meant - she thought it meant you were divorced.

Wow.

Do I feel old or what.