Super Sub!

Heh.

So last week, I was in a high school English class. The teacher was sick and had been out the day before as well. She had left a message for me to call her when I got in.

She had a collaborating teacher who knew what to do for three of the classes. One class was a small group elective class. It was the last class-a class of freshmen-that she thought I might have trouble with.

“Don’t be afraid to send them out of the classroom if you have to,” she told me. “We haven’t had a sub in here, even the most experienced ones, who haven’t had to send at least one out. If they give you any trouble, just call the office.”

They were studying Romeo and Juliet. She’d had them watching the movie (the newer Baz Luhrmann version), and said that I could have them finish that and then have them start watching the older version.

I was warned that the previous day, it appeared that someone in the room had an electronic device that was controlling the VCR.

The teacher gave me a couple of suggestions about what to do with them, lesson-wise, and said she’d leave it up to me.

I spent all my free time that morning figuring out what to do with them. I decided to try a lesson I had used in one of my teaching classes, but never used in a “real” classroom; we’d watch the suicide scenes in both movies, the students would keep track of similarities and differences using a chart, and at the end, they’d be asked to answer several questions about what they watched.

As a classroom management tactic, I stole something I saw a veteran sub do at another school…I had them write their names on a square of paper. I began by setting out my “rules” for the day. I explained that if anyone broke these rules, I would take their paper and leave a note on the back for their teacher. Any second infractions would result in a call to the office.

Most of the class passed without incident. Toward the end of the period, one student seemed to be arguing with someone across the room. He stood up, basically challenging the other student, swearing. I walked over to him.

“Would you like to sit down and be quiet?”

“No.”

I asked him to give me his paper, which he did, and then sat down and didn’t say anything for the rest of the class.

Which I made it through without having to call the office. Yay, me!

I worked the next day at my “good” school, where I was teaching seniors. Again, we were watching a video. Most of them were fine. One class, though, had the behavior of eighth graders. They even threw a paper airplane. I picked it up, threw it away, and said, “I don’t want to hear anyone’s voice for the rest of this class.”

And I didn’t.

In other teaching adventures, my classes at the community college started yesterday. It’s going to be a challenging semester. I’ve got one section of 099 (the remedial class) and one section of 101. In each class, I have two ESL students. In my 101 class, I have a girl who failed my class last semester. That should be fun…but I also have three students who were in my 099 class last semester and signed up for my section because they wanted me!

Speaking of last semester’s 099 class…I don’t think I mentioned this yet…all but two of them passed. One of them failed because he got caught plagiarizing on the final. *sigh* (this was the student with Asperger’s Syndrome)

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