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.

good things come in small packages

I struggled with the title for this post.

I thought of "jealousy".

I thought of "money".

I thought of "struggle," "frustration", "competition," "self-esteem," "success" and a few other words that currently escape my memory (short term memory REALLY sucks lately).

Here is the deal:

Another youth theater organization is in the running for a million dollar prize through a giving community. This organization has been very successful financially. I've only seen a few of their shows, which have been engaging. They do good work; they deserve support.

And they have gotten it. They have received several grants and awards that have helped fund their organization. They have several corporate sponsors. They currently have an annual budget of over $350K.

My youth theater organization is smaller and has had significantly less financial success. On the plus side, we have always operated in the black. We have more than twice as much money this year than we had last year.

BUT

We don't pay me, really. We haven't enough money to pay me, or any other staff (we could really use a producer and a stage manager). We haven't enough money to get a reliable rehearsal/storage/performance space.

The reasons for the differences in financial success are several that I understand: geography (we have no specific location, they have an urban location), grantable population (partly due to our origins, we are far too middle class white bread), length of time (partly- as they started about 8 or 9 years before we did) and size (hence today's title). There are probably other reasons that I am unaware of-- or I fear-- my self-esteem struggles-- are they better than we are?

I struggle with the idea of success. Is my group a success? Am I?

I struggle with community. My group grew out of family and friends and a cohort working outside the traditional educational community. Our best times, our best seasons, our best years were those times that a core group of young artists had been working with me and with each other deeply and personally for a number of shows, even years. We achieved true excellence, I believe.

I have resisted getting bigger and growing corporate when it seemed to threaten that community; and even so, that community has had to be rebuilt again and again.

Is it time to deliberately move away from this personal, family-feel artistic community to something larger?

I feel frustrated by these questions. Part of my theory of art-- theatrical or otherwise-- is that not competition, but collaboration, feeds art. Also, I believe that the more theater there is, the more we all benefit... BUT I am still jealous of this group's success.

If I'm so good why ain't I rich?

There has been good-- great good-- that has come out of my group, and the all-volunteer group that it grew out of. This great good has been highly individual, however.

One of my friends-- a founding member and partner of both the all-volunteer group and the current group-- has been urging me for a number of years to let both groups go.

You have your PhD, she says. You have gotten all you can get out of it. Now it is just more of the same.

And she is right, I suppose. I have "gotten all I can get out of it." But that sentiment feels hugely selfish to me.

But maybe I should be more selfish.

Maybe I should make my group smaller but more expensive.

Maybe I should make it bigger, more diverse and find corporate sponsors.

Or maybe I should just get a job at Tim Horton's.