MISTAKES, I’VE MADE A FEW

I had a school colleague once, a counselor, who gave me once what I considered to be a great piece of advice. I had said to him, as I had had a particularly frustrating day with junior high kids, that I was not in a great mood. And I said I worried I was not a very good teacher when my mood started to cloud things. He said that what we owe kids is only the best a reasonable adult can give.  How we handle even our bad moods is important for kids to see.

Once in a rare while I will begin a class, if here have been four in a row before it that were rowdy, with the words that I am not in a good mood and it would be very wise for them to be good this period because I was not in a mood to put up with anything.  In fact I think by my tone and by my demeanor and possibly by isolating a few kids shortly after for misbehavior, the kids seem to sense the air of truth about me, and often they do behave.

I can only give my best.

Often it is not quite perfect. So be it.

To catalogue some of my errors all in one place is humbling and may make it seem I do nothing but make mistakes but I have also felt more human for admitting these flaws. Sometimes I have even laughed at myself in front of the kids.

Years ago when I had a classroom assignment I liked to wear high heels but I often would change to winter boots to actually go home. I left by shoes under the desk and one day as I was teaching I noticed the kids snickering as I walked around the room. This can be very disconcerting because though you try to look confident and not put up with disrupters, a little voice in the back of your head always wonders if your skirt is rapped, your slip is showing or for men, if your fly is undone.  At this point I realized several kids were staring pointedly down at my feet and when I looked down I saw I was wearing one brown shoe and one black.  I had an identical pair like that under the desk.

Another time I had taken to wearing cute little pixie wigs and it was so handy to roll my hair up under one and just plop it on and pin it down.  The kids were pretty aware that my hair color shifted from time to time but never said anything much. However one day they seemed to be staring a particular way and when I went to the washroom between periods I saw why. My little whig had popped up and though still on my head and attached by the pins, had risen so my own hair was visible all round the edges.

Subs make their fair share of mistakes too, and maybe more given that the territory for them is less charted.  I have used the wrong marker on the white board and found it was the stainable permanent type – and had to get out the cleaner and soap to remove it.

I’ve used the vial of liquid near the sink thinking it was hand sanitizer only to discover as my hands got stickier and stickier that it was soap.

I’ve given the students a desk assignment and as I sat back down at the teacher’s desk, noticed the ballpoint pen I was using was leaking all over the papers in front of me. It leaked onto the floor, onto the chair and of course on my clothes and my next mission was to of course clean up but also to not make a big deal of it so the kids would not notice.  Getting out the paper towels, random papers form the recycle bin and a whole lot of cleanser I set out to clean up the incredible mess and the kids bless their hearts pretended not to notice the mayhem going on over to the left. As I recall one quiet student did however come up and ask if I’d like more paper.

While preparing for the class I try to understand the equipment and more than once have not really reached a sort of agreement with it about how it operates.  One simple radio stereo had push buttons and one was stuck. Trying to dislodge it I pressed extra hard and it broke off and sank within the bowels of the panel.

I have left a classroom at the end of the day looking a bit like a wreck but  not aware of it, though a teacher once mentioned to me that there was a chalk line all down my back from leaning against the blackboard.

When I first started subbing I realized I needed a cell phone to get assignments but I was new to cell phone technology. As I taught I heard amazingly repetitive beeping and I tried to ignore it and then got irritated and suspected one of the students was playing some trick. Only later did it occur to me that it was my own phone beeping because of low battery.

I’ve gotten an electric shock while fiddling with a tape recorder idly when lecturing, and I’ve cut my finger till it bled on a pencil sharper I was idly holding as I spoke. I  have discovered that when wrapped up in my work I tend to hold things and relocate. The chalk, the markers, the pens or pencils I am holding get put down on tables, desks, chairs, whatever is handy as I make a diagram on the board, as I illustrate an idea or grab some papers to distribute. This chasing myself and retracing my steps every few hours to find what I put down is irritating but it is part of who I am I guess. My permanent fear though is that I will have put down the lesson plans somewhere and will not be able to find them.

Sometimes the way I bomb is by trying hard. In a Spanish class I was at for several days I thought the kids might enjoy some genuine treat so I went to a Spanish and Mexican import store and bought some genuine Mexican suckers.  I bought 100, enough for each student in 3 high school classes and then with big bravado at the end of our last lesson I brought them out. I had clearly looked at the ingredients and there was nothing allergenic like peanuts so I told the kids the ingredients and we all tasted. I even tasted one. It was, well there are so few words to say, horrible. Bitter, upsetting, disgusting, abhorrent, spicy, like an endurance test to see how long you could keep it in your mouth.  Mercifully after I had the experience myself I welcomed the kids to not eat it, to throw it out if they wished and I apologized profusely. As it happened though, some kids thought it was a neat challenge to consume it and some even said they liked it. About 2 of 90.

One time the grade one class was just a challenge to handle and three little kids in particular were off the wall disobedient.  They were not willing to take part in any lessons, were chattering and running around and distracting others and trying to make life hard for everyone. I had been warned about a few of them actually so this was no surprise and though I sympathized with the teacher who had these kids every day, I thought I might help by phoning home over the noon hour to tell the parents the child was having a hard day.  I did this and actually am not sure it worked. No parents are happy to hear bad news but some are already defensive and have heard it so much they enter another mode.  This one lady however was shocked, nonplussed and so apologetic that I felt sad for her.  Only five minutes later did I realize rechecking the class list that I had phoned the home of Jim Thompson who had been angelic, not Jeremy Thomson who had been misbehaving.  I have changed the names here but the point is I had phoned the wrong parent! I phoned back and apologized profusely and she was very relieved.

When schools ask us to take attendance in duplicate and triplicate for each class I am pretty sure I get it right the first time but there is often  chance of error. I don’t know these kids. But one day I did get it right but the second version, the copy I sent to the office, I had apparently written absences down the row, with one kid on the wrong line. I had in essence marked away some child who was there. The school;s policy \is to  phone home to inquire about reason for absence and by 10Am the secretary was calling me to ask if indeed the boy was there. I asked, he was, and he had always been. We figured out what had happened, I apologized sincerely and she was able to calm down the parent who for a few moments had worried her child had never safely arrived at school.

I am having fun with a grade 6 class that I’ve been teaching for several days and we are to go to an assembly in the gym.  It is a whole school assembly and we get to watch a dance presentation where even the TV stations have been invited – and actually came.  I am not sure why we get this level of coverage but I notice the school superintendent has also been invited and is there, so that may be why. I whisper to the students I am near that maybe while they are leaving they may wish to walk slowly by the TV cameras because they might be on TV tonight that way.  They are excited. But when they try to do it they are told by administrators in no uncertain terms to stay away.   Among teachers there is a code that we never reverse each other and never undermine each other in front of the kids. I had apparently reversed an administrative decision. Oops.

One time over a noon hour I tried to fix a window blind that had been marked ‘Broken. Do Not Use’. I figured, hey, why not try to repair it as a favor? I climbed on the counter, dislodged the blind, removed it and took it back to ground level, saw it had been attached to roll the wrong direction, removed it, reattached it with staples and masking tape and then tried to put it back up.  This took some time but it seemed to be working and then only then did I realize I had gotten it backwards and the problem was not that. I took it back down, realized it was front wards correctly originally and rehooked it up, this time fixing the real problem which had been simply the tightness of the roll. A high school student happened in about ten minutes before class, saw me struggling there on top of a counter and offered to help. He was taller and stronger and it worked.

One time just as I got the room ready to show a movie I pulled down the small blind on the door and it came right off its hinges.  It is not at all uncommon for me to pull down an overhead screen and have it stuck in down position or to let it go up and have it whirr to the top of the roll out of my reach.  I have done a fair amount of stand-on-chair time reaching.

One time there was a fire drill at a very old school I had not been at before for such an event. I was told which door to take the 3^rd floor kids out and then to take them down the stairs to the exit.  I  did this, surprised at our sudden blast of air as we entered the fire escape but it was kind of fun. Only later did the principal tell me that they never use the fire escape and when they said ‘stairs’ they mean the interior stairs.

When we were writing up journal entries for the grade sixes to recall their most vivid elementary school memories, several recorded times with subs. I am not sure they recalled the sub by they recalled the event, and true to form it was something oafish the sub had done. One was of a sub who fell asleep during a movie. One, very memorable I’m sure was when a sub was to take the kids downstairs and piled the 20 of them into the elevator. It however was a freight elevator and she was not technically supposed to use it. It jammed and the group had to be rescued by administration.

One time it was a science lab experiment and the teacher had us mix various  household compounds with each other to notice change in color and scent.  It seemed harmless enough and yet I had to create a system so we were not all mixing the same two or three things. I made a kind of math chart so that every item got mixed with every other item, ultimately, but different groups of students did different sections of this sampling. I felt very proud of my scientific prowess until we n oticed that a few of the compounds, when m ixed, though harmless alone, created a very offensive smell.  In fact I started to worry the smell might even be toxic so I was opening windows and shutting down the experiment and walking us to the hall. 

I guess the thing we teachers worry about, particularly subs, is that we won’t be taken seriously, that we can’t maintain discipline and that the kids will not only not learn but will find the day one of ways to defeat the system.  It’s not a contest and the point is not to ‘win’ but we don’t want to be so bad a contributor that we actually subtract from the day.  To do this we can’t be laughed at, laughed with maybe, but not laughed at.

If I am recovering from a bad cold or if I am hoarse from laryngitis, my voice can’t carry quite as well as it should.  If I could not speak at all I’d take the day off, albeit unpaid, but some days I feel well enough but I just can’t be heard well. On one or two such days I discovered that my voice was just fine until I had to yell something across a gym or playground at which point I made a horrendous squeak. I discovered that the sweet little person I tried to be in class was suddenly trying to carry a hundred decibels across a playing field and I could not do it. How I envied men with their booming voices. I once heard a principal call out loudly to a student at the other end of the hall “Hey you!. Come here” and every single kid in the area cowered They don’t cower when I squeak. I also noticed that singing the national anthem or any other group song if I have a cold, I can speak but I can’t sing. The kids find this amusing.

I like to stand in front of the class to give a lesson and I like to have my papers in front me, ideally on a desk or table but failing that on a stool or chair or some piece of equipment like an overhead projector.  Sometimes setting this up before class I have inadvertently used a front desk that was in fact a student’s desk. One time I had set up with the textbook from the teacher’s desk and it turned out this was a student’s text and was to be given back to her, leaving me with none per se so I had to hover over the kids as we read the lesson.  Subbing is like learning to play the violin in public, where you make several mistakes and then soldier on.

Getting class times wrong is a constant concern.  I am given lists of class times, usually, and they are correct, usually, though in some schools they have been adjusted and the handout I have has not.  But even assuming the list I have is correct and my watch which I set ten minutes fast is also correct if I subtract the ten, I often however find we are still not quite in sync.  School time has its own logic and school clocks often are not technically the official time.  The result is that with one thing and another I sometimes have told the students to pack up their books and get ready for the bell, a bit too early. In fact for the older students I need not bother at all I suppose since kids can ‘decamp’ from a classroom in about 2 minutes it seems, regardless of warning.  But if my warning has been way early, with maybe a 10 minute gap of dead time, it’s a problem. Enter then the creative games I try to use or not.

I have some regular things I do such as for French learning parts of the body, teaching the  kids ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ in French. We sing it, with actions and we omit one word per time through as we increase in speed. It’s great fun and the kids often laugh as they rush along with the lyrics.  The mistakes I make however are that sometimes in my rush I have pointed at my eyes and said ‘nose’ or have forgotten which word we omitted last.

When I teach names and colors for articles of clothing I often have kids stand up and name all visible clothing items they are wearing and their color. To demonstrate I do my own but once I was so tired I misnamed my own clothes saying I was wearing a white vest and black sweater when it was as black vest and white sweater.  Hey if I can’t do how can I hope the kids can?

Sometimes my error is in misreading instructions though over time I at least have little warning flares in my mind at likely problems. If the kids are to go to the library TH that may mean just Thursday or it may be that T is Tuesday and H is Thursday.  If the note says  St. Discussion – it may mean saint or street but it most likely means student. If the note says LA it may mean language arts or learning assistance though and if it says Hum it does not likely mean music but humanities.  Some of these things I learned the hard way.

Often if I am to administer a quiz and then to have students mark it in class, I like to put the answers on the board ahead of time and then hide them, to speed up the process later.  The hiding is easy if there is a map to pull down, if there are posters I can take over the answers or if there is, as there is in some schools, a sliding blackboard that can be slid over the answers.  This system often works but naturally not quite always. I have had a partial answer still visible by a few letters, under a map, or sneaking out the side of a poster.  One time the system worked well, the test was over, I had us all get the papers to mark then dramatically slid the top blackboard away to reveal the answers underneath. It always feels kind of like magic doing this and I think not many teachers do it so the kids are often surprised I went to the trouble. The problem was that this particular time I slide the top board away so dramatically that it went very fast and there was a loud snap and the board had run over a metre stick on the ledge and had cracked it in two.

Mercifully some of mistakes are in private. One time after leaving a school I went to my car, turned the key in the ignition and it broke off. I could still drive home but had to use tweezers to get the rest of the key out.

I am called to teach K-6 music and it turns out this teacher has 10 classes today teaching the kids to dance.  I am 57 and I try to demonstrate to them the dances they have to do. One requires me to act like I am flying so I soar around the room arms spread.  One has us doing fake sword fights and thrusts and parries the air and this seems to me a bit odd given that some of these kids are sweet little girls in a traditional learning uniform and to see them doing sword thrusts may be not quite the tone their parents had planned.  A few dances to older kids are nightcluby rhythms so I try to swagger a bit and one dance has us doing Ukrainian deep knee bend, leg thrusts which I, alas, also try to demonstrate.  At one point I am crouching which is hard enough and then I try to kick out and nearly fall over. I get a sharp sharp pain in my stomach as if I have knotted up my bowels and again, the professional in me requires me to not cry out or indicate pain. I get up and smile and urge the kids to also try it and I turn away and rub my stomach to try to unknot things.

One winter day a fellow sub had to open the door to her portable next to my portable and she had no key. I had a key so we tried mine and as I twisted it in the lock, I must have pushed too hard on my key ring and my computer memory key snapped off the chain, dropped to the ground and fell through cracks of a metal grate.  The memory key is worth not just $25 to me for its cost but all the memory I had put on it and I tried to figure out, during my next prep, how to get that thing back. I thought of magnets, tongs, trying to flip it out with a long stick but  nothing was working. Eventually a school caretaker rescued me – she removed the grate completely and retrieved my memory key.

I have been told to go get the kids from recess and headed to the wrong door, been told the kids arrive at 9 but nobody came and then realized that I was supposed to actually go the door and let them in. I have had dozens of hiccups in the perfectly smooth operation of a day.  It means I’m human.  I do my best.