Yeah, I got a call! Today I would be teaching English (again) at the High School — my third English teacher. The classes started great; later classes were less spectacular. Maybe it has something to do with the time of day and when these kids eat. I’m seeing a trend where the later classes get more and more disruptive. This teacher’s first class was made up of my wife’s students from last year. I recognized many of them, and they sure knew me. Because they were freshmen, they were feral and squirrely. No wonder no one wants to teach freshmen.
The most fun part of my day was all the stuff that happened in between. My dear friend Annie was also subbing that day and we had the same prep period. She talked my ear off about how to manage a disruptive class. I think some of the stuff she suggested might be frowned upon or illegal these days, but she’s an old-school teacher, so no doubt, that’s how they did things 30-40 years ago.
She told me that she didn’t like today’s lesson plan that her teacher had given her so she decided that today for class she would tell the kids about her march for civil rights with Martin Luther King in 1961 (Annie grew up in a segregated environment — she attended black only schools right through her college years). Actually, living history like that is very valuable! It’s no wonder that both the teachers and students love her.
The break and lunchtime conversations with the English department were also fun. They talked about students, both good and bad, and about topics like the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado, and how it was going to cause trouble for that state… and yet they’d also like to see pot legalized in our state because it would reduce the number of people currently in jail (and they would also then have more happy, mellow students!). At one point, a teacher was saying how a student had simply made her day by giving her three reams of paper just as she had run out. That student turned out to be my son! Once the teachers knew who I was (Father of Jeffrey), they all had wonderful things to say about him. They then asked if I had any other kids at the school, so I told them about my daughter. They asked who her English teacher was, but I only knew her as “Mo” because that’s what my daughter calls her. It turned out to be the gal sitting next to me.