Having been a substitute teacher  now for seven years an odd thing is happening. Not only do I get to go around to many schools K-12 but kids are beginning to remember my face, and me theirs.

It is like an unfolding of a time-lapse camera.. The rowdy kindergarten boy who could barely sit down is now sitting quietly working in grade 2.  The dainty little grade 4 girl who seemed exquisitely innocent is now a grade 7  girl, a bit more worldy but still sweet.

The kids seem amazed to recognize me. “Didn’t you teach us in grade one?” They remember me if I was at the same school years ago. This is a bit surprising since I don’t think subs are very memorable. In terms of hours, we statistically do not teach the kids more than 5% of the time. How could they recall us? And yet maybe because we are new faces in the room, what we do seems odd enough to recall.

I was surprised this week when a grade 6 class, asked to write its fondest or funniest memories of the entire elementary school experience, independently wrote memories of several events, three of them about subs!  One was of a sub who fell asleep while showing a movie. Another was of a sub who disciplined a student by tapping her head with a pencil – and the kids’ understanding of the result was that the sub got fired. The third was what even I would have remembered as a child though. One sub had been told to take the class downstairs and in the very old building had opted to put all 23 of them in the large elevator. It however was not a well functioning elevator and it got stuck with all them in it for 3 hours. The ‘jaws of life’ eventually were used by police, to perform the rescue.  Subs. The memory seems to be of incompetence.

Ah well, the kids do not seem to be happily talking to me with that memory. Or how would I be sure?

What is a bit more touching is if I am at one school and kids remember me from another. 
”Weren’t you at Valley Creek school on Friday?”. Yes. How could the kid know that? But the kid was having a school holiday at her own school and had been a guest of a teacher relative where the teacher taught, for the annual barbecue.

The kids know that adults move around but the idea that teachers do seems to shock them. Teachers in their experience are reliably, mind-numbingly always there in their own class.  I’m not saying the kids treat me like a rock star. Maybe more like  a ship adrift or a random meteor. But it’s fun.

Once in a while I am teaching a class where many of the kids were former students at other schools. They have all somehow melded, united, globbed together here like tributaries forming a larger river.   And the common experience they all had was suffering through a class or two by me.  Once this year I was teaching grade 7 and one of the kids asked if I had taught at their elementary school, and another and another asked of theirs and it turned out I had taught at all four of their feeder schools.  I was a known entity.

And this seemed to make me acceptable to them. Maybe their recognition was “Aha, I’m onto you”” because they were not looking for my autograph or anything. They just recognized me. 

I have also had kids run down the hall to greet me. One day at Westgate a little girl hurried up to me to ask if I had taught at King George. Yes I answered and then of course asked if she used to go there. She said yes. She had recently moved to a new house, new part of town, new school, new teachers. All was new there to her – except me.  And I realized the enormous privilege I had of being for her maybe some source of reassurance, of stability. I asked her how she liked the school, she replied, hesitantly that it was “OK”.. I said “Sometimes it’s hard to move for a while”.

Yesterday the kids at one school recognized me again. Truth be told I do not remember all of them and sometimes the ones who ask me “Do you remember me?” are the ones I do not remember.  But I of course do not say that. I say “A lot of you look familiar” which is true.  They huddle around with that joy of life that kids have.

A principal of mine years ago, Robert Walls, now deceased, used to say that after his 45 year or so career teaching, he was often approached by former students. He asked us all to please introduce ourselves voluntarily instead of asking “Do you remember me?” Now I understand that.

I had a class of grade 7s recently and we were to do a lesson on averages. We randomly selected 6 boys to stand at the front of the room and totaled and averaged their ages and then their heights. This is not a good time for grade 7 boys height-wise. They feel so insecure, the ones having had growth spurts and the others still not. I wanted to make sure this lesson was in no way humiliating. So I said to them that by grade 9 most of the heights would not only have changed dramatically but the tallest might now be the shortest. You could actually hear the sigh of relief in the room.  What I did not say was that in all likelihood I might be there to see the new heights also.

I’m like halitosis or an  annoying aunt. You just can’t get rid of me. I’m everywhere. It’s like a haunting.

At several high schools in September I get to see the new grade tens, all nervous, freshly polished, trying to look cool, and yet visibly intimidated by the much taller and stronger grade 12s.  The tens who just two months earlier were the ‘big kids’ at their own school, are now scared. They’ve heard rumors about high school. They’ve seen the movies, read the newspapers.

Many feel lost. And then they see me and nearly do a double-take. They thought, haha, that they had outgrown me and yet there I am again. And yet one even asked me how many schools I go to, and seemed to have a bit more respect for me.

And sometimes I see life’s sweet ironies, the way that arrogance is sometimes given its own reward.  The kids who were bullies in grade 9, are now humbled. The school of 500 they could intimidate is now a school of 1500 they cannot.  I love that.

And yet they are still kids. I smile to myself that they are now paying their dues but I still am there to help them.

Sometimes I look at a student in grade 5, a short-skirted sassy little girl who is already wearing make-up and strutting her hips and I feel I  not only know her but have seen how this ends up, in grade 11.  And I see the wayward kid in grade 5, the rowdy rule-bending rebel who is sneakily disobeying every rule the teacher has, and I feel like I have seen him for years, and I know where he is headed, and it’s probably school dropout and maybe jail.

And yet I must not assume.  Each kid is still unique. more than just ‘types’.

It’s something I have to force myself to remember though as  I arrive out of the blue, stay a day and sail off into the sunset for another few months.  As I leave the school I feel like the embodiment of ‘Who was that masked man?’

A few weeks ago one student had a familiar last name and I asked if her dad was Doug. She said yes and I said I thought I had taught him years ago.  She was in grade 10 herself and my presence was a shock to her. Maybe the fact I still breathed was a shock. Her dad had actually gone to school and had a teacher and this person was proof!

By my age I realize that for the kindergarteners, I am older than their grandma.

It is just possible I even have taught their grandma, their parent and now them.

My aunts did that.  My aunts taught in rural schools in northern Alberta and often taught generations of a whole family. One aunt taught for 40 years.

Seeing kids as unique is fun and yet I also can’t help but see the vast flow of bright wrinkleless perfection every September, the way nature keeps churning out energy, optimism, beauty. 

Yesterday the grade 2s told me their teacher is retiring. I chatted with them about that. They indicated she was quite old, maybe 49, and she had wrinkles.

Hmm. 49.  A spring chicken really.

And in some ways I feel like a mom and now a grandma to them all.

When I say “Have a nice summer” I mean it. And when I think “See you next year” they may think I won’t but I just might.