When I came home from my mission I badly needed something to be my time-filler, my purpose, my substitution for the lifestyle of hard work I was so used to.
So I became a substitute teacher.
This was probably one of the best things I could have done, considering that it can be a temp job (I only needed a job for a month or so until I could work on campus at BYU), I choose when I want to work, and it is a great experience for what I plan to do with the rest of my life: be a teacher.
It wasn't what I expected it to be, but it has been wonderful. I thought I would share some of my experiences with you.
First of all, I was expecting to hopefully be mostly subbing in a high school setting because that is where I will teach someday. That turned out to be a false hope because most sub jobs are in elementary schools. For some reason, all of the jobs I can get are in 1st and 2nd grades. The opposite end of the spectrum from high school.
My first day on the job was in a first grade class. When I arrived at the front office to check in, the secaretary expressed her condolences for the class I was about to be in charge of for the day. "They are a handful,"she said. "If you need help, just call. You can send kids to neighboring teachers, too."
Oh, great. Just throw me in the deep in and let's see if I can swim.
The teacher was there to greet me, because she actually would be in the school all day doing individual testing for other students. She told me that this was was the worst class she had ever had. Nothing she had left for me to do was essential. "Your job is just to survive today," she told me. Wow. Very reassuring.
The day actually was that bad. It was real mutiny. I lost kids to the hallway, they were hurting themselves and others, they couldn't listen to directions, and I had some serious liars in the class. It was crazy.
I wondered for a bit if I was really just bad at subbing, but as the days went on, I think I've gotten the hang of it. One of the biggest things I have learned is that the Teaching Skills chapter in Preach My Gospel is true. But really. One of the things that it says is that you need to be bold but loving. That is so true in the classroom.
One day I went to a class that the teacher originally thought she only needed a sub for the second half of the day. Last minute she decided she needed a sub for the whole day, so there was a different sub for the morning, and then I came in half way through. The first sub was having a hard time of it. She told me that the kids had been horrible for her, and that she had taken away their recess they would have later in the day with me. She informed me that these second graders were to write a letter to their teacher about how they should behave for a sub and how they were behaving. I saw right away that that was not going to happen. The principal had been involved already that day, and the kids were wound up. They really needed something positive to wind them down, not something negative to make it worse.
She told me that she had been subbing for a year and that she had worked for two years previously at a bad boys' school--nothing could compare to that, she said. She was confident in her classroom management skills.
But then I watched her for her last five minutes while I read the lesson plan. She definitely had the bold confidence down, but the kids weren't responding to it. What it lacked was
love. There wasn't a smile on her face. It was so clear that the kids didn't care what she thought because she didn't care what they thought. hm.
The other cool thing about subbing in elementary school is that the kids don't have boundaries in between things in their brain. Everything is all part of the same reality.
Let me clarify. I read a book with a small group of kids aside to read with me in a first grade class one day. We read a book about a dog who decides that he would rather have his friend than be famous. A big part of reading with kids is helping them build connections to the book, so we talked about the moral of the story, which is that we need to stick by our friends and that that is worth more than a lot of things. I was talking about friendship when one boys spoke up and said, "Well, you don't even need friends, really. All you need is Jesus and your family." He said it so confidently and unhesitatingly. I wanted to meet his parents.
But since it was a public school setting, all I could say was, "Well, your family can be your friends, too" and silently think, "And Jesus can be your friend, too."
Along the same line of thought, I have realized that filters of all kinds develop at later ages. I feel so pretty when I sub, because I will have four or five girls crowd around and tell me that I am beautiful and that they love my shirt and necklace and hair. I also feel very old, because every first grader wants to know how old the sub is.
In one of the second grade classes I was in, there was a student who had the same last name as me. I had five or six of the students ask me if I was his mom--do I look that old? When the answer was no, I found out that there was a teacher with the same last name as me--"are you married to him?" Nope again. Oh, dear. I hope he didn't hear about it, too.
I have also discovered what motivates that age group (which I think will be very useful later on in life). All I had to do was threaten to write their name on the board, and they would settle right down. Oh the embarrassment of seeing your name written on the board in front of all of your friends!!
Then there were the disruptive students that that didn't work for. For some of them, the trick was to help them feel useful. If they felt like they were doing
me a favor, they would do anything. They just wanted to be my special helper. " (*insert name here*) could you help me by being a good example and showing the other students how to be quiet and work hard? It will really help me out. Thank you!" It worked almost every time.
So, if you are planning on being a teacher and have time for it, become a substitute. No faster way to learn how to swim than getting in the water. :)
