Y

I once asked a few teachers I’d subbed for if they could give me a letter of reference. Many were kind enough to do so but the letters saddened me. The teachers did not tell of m brilliant teaching, my great rapport with kids, my great creativity or anything but just that I left good notes. I realized that they never actually saw me teach, so what else could they say?

The ones who know if I’m good or not are the kids.  And they’re a tough audience.  Some don’t even realize this is an actual job. Little kids seem to think I came in as a favor and I’m the teacher’s mom. A senior high boy asked me once “Do they pay you to come here?” and apparently would have accepted either answer.

The agenda of some kids is also not to like to  help the sub but to try to amuse friends and if possible change the day’s agenda to focus less on school.  Subs are not very important or memorable.

And yet the case could be made that since teachers are away for medical or dental reasons about 5  days a year, that besides that there are meetings and inservices, a given teacher probably needs a sub two weeks of the year and the system needs subs daily. Hiring wise we often constitute about 10% of the teaching staff actually and our role to further education even in case of teacher absence is considerable.

We do want to be good and the system usually requires that we be good. The learning must go on.

Yet we rarely get feedback except that feeling at the end of the day that we did what we were instructed and it somehow blended into the whole.  Those days when I did a little extra when I creatively went above and beyond the technical call just to enhance the lesson, I feel particularly happy, but again, rare is any acknowldgement about that.

And yet sometimes there is.  And it is once in a while from a department head or principal who sees when you arrive, how hard you work, how rarely you have discipline problems that need administrative attention or how flexible you are for quick amendments.  I’ve had some feedback and praise that way.

But the more common type we subs ever get is from kids.  You know, the ones who never write letters of reference, the ones who can’t be named on resumes, but in many ways the ones whose feedback really touches the heart. When it comes it is often spontaneous, surprising and very sincere.  Nobody made them thank me. When they do, I am moved.  A kindergarten child makes a toy block castle and shows it to me.

A senior high group seeing me stuck in snow on exiting pushes me out of the snowdrift.

Sometimes the thanks may actually be just good  manners. Maybe I am just seeing the politeness that families have taught their little ones but occasionally a child on leaving the classroom at night will say “Bye’ “See ya”. Once in a while “Thanks for being our sub’ or “I had a nice day”. Once in a while a child will hug me. Sometimes the ones who are kindest are the ones who were rowdiest as if they are grateful we made it through the day without major problems. One feisty little boy at the end of the morning  came up to me, took my hand and sadi “I have to go> IO t was nice to meet you. You’re a nice teacher”.

Older kids are more understated. One might say” Thanks. You were OK”

At other times my positive feedback is simply the looks on the kids’ faces, the laughter when we’re going oral reading of a stage play, the efforts they make to take part in the reading of the Social Studies text and the apparent desire they have to do it well.

I like it when we are playing a math game or a memory game or creating a skit and there is laughter and joy in the room. I like it when a discussion just clicks and the kids’ hands shoot up to offer some insight, some personal experience that they want to share. I love it when we are playing I pack my trunk or a math elimination game or a 3 minute impromptu speech game and the kids sigh in disappointment when the bell rings and the game ends.

And once in a while a child will hand me something that is particularly sweet.  One put on a post-it note “You are awesome!’ and one made a pencil drawing of a face and said “You are a great teacher”.  Once in a while during an art lesson the kids will do the required work and then someone brings me an extra, and it is for me, maybe a nature scene with a bright yellow sun, maybe just a happy stick figure drawing smiling broadly and floating in the air.  It is for me, they say and I take it home and put it on my fridge for weeks.  One time a kindergarten class was finger painting and one girl brought her finished product to me, a sky with a smiling child. I ask if this is for the teacher, thinking to save it for when she came back but the girls says “No this is for you”./

I have had negative feedback too of course. One teenage girl defiantly tried to ignore anything I asked her to do all class and when I kept coming back to remind her to do it she said “You are a very bad sub”.  I discount such feedback mostly.

Obviously kids who swear under their breath when near me, who say “Bitch’ and who when I ask “Pardon?” say “Nothing” or “I wasn’t talking to you” – they are not giving positive feedback. But I suspect they are not angry at me per se, but at the role.

Sometimes the feedback is critical, especially from little kids who are past upset and even unhappy I don’t things precisely the way their regular teacher does. One said to me, after I used English a few times in a French class,”So you’re not really a French teacher are you? You’re an English teacher who speaks French”.

Often in bilingual classes kids will rush up to me at the start of the day asking” Do you speak French?”  It is not always clear to me which answer they are hoping for and since I do I think they generally realize the lesson will go on.  Once or twice I have introduced myself in French though, told all the announcements in French and then a student asked “Do you speak French?” At this point it is tempting to say ‘non’.

Once in a while the feedback is maybe the very best kind- academic success. One time I as in a grade one class and had been told that a particular student was often uncooperative, had low level skills and was probably going to be a problem. I helped the kids set up and then sat down with this boy to help him understand the lesson. he was goofy and it did not seem to be his habit to actually do the work or be expected to but I walked him through the careful shaping of the letters.  I find he is cute but very slow but I hant in there. He actually prints well but is very easily distracted by friends. I help him do every single question, while keeping an eye on the other students and after it is over he looks up at me beaming. I suspect he has not finished a lesson in a very long time.

I read once that babies are amused not so much by our words when we try to get them to laugh, but at our own genuine laughter. It tuned out to be true for me at least that when something genuinely struck me funny, my laugh was deeper and more spontaneous and the baby’s laughter became much happier back.  I think that this must be built into our human nature and that is why we are all kind of pained to hear faked laughter or feigned smiles.  The times when I have actually enjoyed teaching, laughed out loud at something  genuinely, seem to create an interesting effect on kids too, albeit unintentional. One time I was reading a novel to the grade 5 class and the chapter was about the boy having ‘stirrings ‘ and deep feelings in his body for the girl. The kids wanted to know what that meant and I explained vaguely and then went on but the text went on  more and more about his ‘stirrings’ and I started to laugh. I laughed out loud and told the kids “I didn’t’ write this. They are making me read this” and I kept going.  They all laughed too but I noticed when that class was over one of the girls as she left that night said “I think you’re the best sub ever’. What she had liked, I think was that I had enjoyed the day with them.
Kids seem very touched when that happens and when it’s real.

Sometimes the kids will high-five me or want to do other gestures of their generations, some of which confuse me.

Sometimes the kids will make my life very hard – writing sarcastic comments about me behind my back, drawing graffiti cartoons about me and passing them around, flying paper airplanes when my back is turned or just plain defiantly saying when I ask them to do something” I don’t have to.  You’re not the real teacher. You can’t make me”

I used to have a rush of panic sweep through me when kids talk back like that and I want to make sure I handle this right so they pay a price for defiance. Nowadays though, my goal is still to get the upper hand but I am kinder about it.  I invite them to the hall, we chat, I ask them to explain what they were saying and they eventually promise to improve. A principal told me years ago that kids one on one are usually much less defiant and secondly that it is important also to not completely humiliate them in front of their friends.  But those reactions I don’t take personally. The kid is not balking at me but at the system.

Once in a while the praise is surprising and public. In one French class for grade 8 a girl suddenly said out to someone misbehaving, “Shut up. We’ve learned more from her in one hour than we learned all last month”.

At the end of the day a grade 2-3 class is writing in their agendas and I am to go around and sign the entries they put about their homework etc. I notice one little boy in his note home to his parents wrote “We had a good sub”.

Sometimes the feedback is that they do as other humans do- they start to trust you.  If they tell me something that touches their lives, something personal about their family, their fears, their future plans, they have permitted me to enter that very protected territory and I never want to abuse that privilege.  The student who alone will hang back and tell me of a very troubling family or dating  situation is really trusting me and this has happened a few times. 

Sometimes the feedback is that they dare to share a joke with me.  In some ways this is very sweet also because for a child very young to try to amuse someone much older is a bit of a leap. I admire the effort and often the joke is actually very cute.  For some jokes teachers know the game really is to play along too and not necessarily spoil the joy of their joke.  At one school a few grade 5 boys actually got me quite concerned after recess when they came up to me handing me a note and rushing away. It read ‘Sorry we broke your car window”.  Actually I have had a car window broken at one school and another time a window egged so this was well within the range of literally true. Their confessing and running was also consistent with little kids’ honesty and fear. For the next half hour as I taught I tried to put my sadness about the car in the back of my mind only and then it started to occur to me, how did they know which car was mine? I was not even parked in the teachers’ parking lot and my car is not identified anyway.  Then it occurred to me. It was April first.

Sometimes the feedback is a sense of fairness. In fact I think good teachers count on this as a mood somewhere running through the class so that if a few kids are rowdy and defiant, the majority do not really approve.  Teachers have many ways of addressing these problems, some yelling and threatening and punishing dramatically and others more subtly disciplining and talking with but in the end there is usually a sense that the majority of the kids want the rowdies to be controlled and want education to proceed.  Even though it is amusing to sink the sub, most kids don’t want the sub to technically sink.  I was in one grade  5-6 class where I had to keep  a tight lid on them because a fw kept trying to leave the room, changing desks or trying to distract each other from studying. At recess one of the kids came up to me to invite me to see the ducklings in the science room. It was a child’s hand of friendship and respect anyway.

One time a little kid came up to me and whispered “Are we giving you a hard time?”

Once a senior high boy said to me “I’m sorry I was loud today. I forgot to take my medication”.

At one very troubling class where a student I tapped on the shoulder accused me of hitting him and jumped up dramatically saying he was going to ‘call the cops’, the tone of the class immediately shifted. He had been one kid acting up and now this was getting way more serious as he was now claiming himself a victim of a crime.  The kids watched all this, 29 pairs of eyes well aware of his game and studying closely how I’d handle it. I phoned the principal to come down to the room and explained to him briefly the situation.  He took the boy out in the hall and the boy admitted he had not been telling the truth.  However it is what the other kids did that touched me. Several shot their hands up to ask me to help them, with math, with science, with a language essay they were writing.  They were in their own way reaching out to reassure me that they saw in me a teacher and it was all going to be OK.

A very touching type of feedback I have had however is in being remembered. It happens in several ways.

Sometimes I am remembered by the students in this class later in the year.  I re-introduce myself and someone says” We had you before” or “You already taught us’.  Generally this is said in a friendly way so that’s a plus.

Sometimes students from another class I taught notice I’m back in the school for a different group and they great me anyway.  I’ve had kids at the entry door ask me who I’m subbing for today and sigh if it is not for their teacher. I’ve had kids who remembered my name and over a noonhour asked me for special help even though I was not subbing for their teacher today. In fact it’s very nice to walk onto the school playground or down the hall and see many many familiar faces of all different ages and realize I have had some small link with them all.

Sometimes I am in a school and a student will recognize me from years earlier, from their own earlier childhood in effect, at that school.  Occasionally a child will not remember when I taught them but they know I did. I guess in terms of memory the unfamiliar face that comes in and leaves makes a change in the day that can be recalled just for its variety alone. Didn’t you teach me in grade one? Did you used to teach for Mrs. L? Yes, probably. Now that I’ve been subbing for 8 years I have seen some kids in several locations, even at 3 different schools each.  When I at the end of the day hear them say ‘See ya’ it occurs to me that this may in fact be true. Who knows?q

And once in a while students will come up to me recognizing me from an earlier school. For some reason this type of recognition seems to just startle kids. It is as if they can accept that I sub, that I do it for several teachers of whatever subject, but the idea I also appear as often at another school, or another level or in widely different subjects elsewhere seems to just amaze them.  In one south west school a little girl rushed up to me to ask if I had subbed at her former north west school. I had. She had recently moved to the new district and I guess at that moment I was the only familiar face she saw in the whole building. She seemed relieved even to see me. I talked to her with respect too asking how she liked the new school, and open to hearing how it might be hard to adapt. She said it was “OK” and I could hear a sadness in her. I said it is hard to move at first.

She seemed happy to have that validated.

I had frequent calls to a huge junior high where some of the grade 9 kids, the senior kids in that school, were rowdy.  The next year I was subbing at the high school down the street from there, one I also frequently went to, and lo and behold there are some of those grade 9s, now lowly grade 10, all small again in the social pool and quite humbled by now being in a school with several thousand kids.  Our eyes met in the hall and they seemed surprised to see me and nearly embarrassed.

One time I was teaching a grade 11 class and I recognized vaguely one of the students by name and face as someone I had taught in maybe grade 8 at another school. He recognized me too I’m pretty sure and it came up somehow about jobs and I pointed out that I was on call to about a hundred schools. I heard him practically gasp. He had not realized.

One time I was teaching in a large junior high school, a rowdy grade 7 class in late fall. Several of the students looked vaguely familiar and a few came up to me to ask if I had taught at this or that school last year.  It turned out I had taught at all four of their elementary schools and this class was a joining together ironically of kids who I had all taught earlier.  It was like old home week and having that much in common with them all I think made a link between them too. It was odd.

When kids ask me if I used to teach at a certain school I realize this is not just a factual question yes or no. They think they recognize me and they are confirming but the asking itself takes courage. They are also willing to admit they may know me and they are willing to actually be recognized or remembered by me.  In a way it is like saying “I remember you” which words some kids actually use verbatim.  It dose not usually seem to mean I dislike you but more often I respect you. If their memory was extremely negative they would not bring it up.

I realize that subs have the amazing privilege of seeing kids in the transition, from one stage of life to the next and helping them over it. We are the  missing link as it were and sometimes it feels like kids are relieved to have one, from elementary to junior high, from junior to senior or even from one school to a new school in midyear. When so much has changed they actually even run up to me in hallways sometimes to greet me. It is not me they are greeting but their past.

A teacher colleague of mine who has taught senior high for several years, started teaching elementary. One year a young woman, grade 10 approached her at the school in apparent disbelief – Madame Lynn, is that you?”  She had been her grade one student nine years earlier. I guess it made them both feel old but in a happy way.

Once in a while we subs will get remembered in public, out in the street even and that can be touching.  I expect actually that we are noticed and vaguely recognized frequently but not acknowledged. Most kids are too cool to admit outside of school that school exists, or to admit teachers are a subgroup of the human species.  But once in a while a small child will smile at me shyly at a park or mall in a way that to me indicates I am recognized. Once a little girl said “You taught at my school”.  It was adorable. She was with her dad and in a way I guess was introducing us.

Another time I was at a video store and when checking out some movies the clerk, about age 18, asked if I used to sub at a certain school. I said yes and she said she remembered a  class discussion we had had years earlier about the SARS epidemic. I remembered it too. We had been talking in science of what people on a given hotel floor all share in common. It was a news item and she said she had thought it a very good discussion.  Maybe she did – she was remembering it about 5 years later and remembering me.  I walked a little taller leaving that store.