In the brain studies I’ve read of, people get old when they only use the same neural pathways and to forestall Alzheimer’s it’s good to keep trying new things. Some do crossword puzzles  or read, travel, change their routines daily just to keep that brain firing on all thrusters.  Studies about people who have learned several languages suggest that they may be using  a few more pathways and that can help also to keep the mind active.

Subs rarely have to deal with monotony and firing the brain up is pretty adrenalin pumping.  I did pretty well in school but it was a while ago and subtracting negative numbers has not jumped up into daily use for me about the house.  That’s kind of why it’s fun to sub.  I have to keep up with pretty vast basic knowledge.

Suddenly I am teaching the history of rock and roll, how things dissolve, the origin of clouds, Adam Smith’s economic theories or the conjugation of irregular Spanish verbs in the past tense.  Suddenly I am talking about international aid, origins of the French revolution or types of sedimentary rock

Obviously subs  not just winging it. We are given materials, texts, worksheets, instructional material. We are also qualified teachers and know how to quickly review material before presenting it. We are often called because of our knowledge in a given area so a math specialist sub will know the math.

But most of us subs are using at some points our general knowledge from our own education, our experience of the world, and our teaching skills as we put together lessons with material . We are teaching each day things we had not known we would be teaching – and doing the best we can.

And that’s fun.   It’s exhilarating even and I think there’s a certain personality type that particularly enjoys a kind of controlled mayhem.  I was a mother at home to four children born very close together and multi-tasking is maddening, challenging and at the end of the day often gives you a pretty good feeling just to ride the waves. You get a kind of “We will survive” mentality some days when interruptions and setbacks make the day even harder.  I like the mood that facing this type of unpredictability is in fact why we were chosen. Not everybody wants it, not everybody can handle it and yet someone has to. Let that be me.

There are some surprising moments of nearly every day. One time over the noonhour when I was alone in the classroom looking over the afternoon notes, several students came in, all girls, to eat and practice their ballet moves.  It was awesome.

Sometimes the kids are restless and it may not just be because they have a sub.  Sometimes it is because the weather is so very cold they are getting pretty fed up with indoor recess. Sometimes it is because it is the day before a holiday and they are so excited, they can see little point in working.  These are challenges the classroom teacher would face too, and hey, maybe she has faced them so much lately that is why she’s having a sick day. Whatever the reason, again subs are called in to handle an admittedly difficult situation, because somebody has to.

One day it had been so very cold so long that the kids were given indoor recess, right in the classroom. They were bored and after their snack I had an idea. I had us all line up and I attached us all with ribbon and we did a chain-linked march around the entire school, like a caterpillar. It was hilarious for me and the kids seemed to really enjoy it.

The power of kids is amazing. They are like high powered batteries just waiting to use their energy and ours is to decide where to put it best.  I don’t like the idea of school as a place where the big pitcher of knowledge pours into the little containers or the idea of school as writing on the blank slate of the child’s mind.  The child is bringing a lot to the process and actually education at its best uses the child’s input to make the lesson even more fun.

But I am always disappointed in me at how good I am not. I wish I knew more line dances to teach the little kids as a joke when they wait in lineups. I wish I knew more clever chant routines and choral rounds and rap songs they could have fun with. I wish I knew which of them is a budding rock star and which an amazing dancer so we could have them teach us all and we could surprise the teacher.

I have so much enjoyed working with kids.  We had fifteen minutes left of free time during a music period and, looking around the room I noticed, who could miss it, the piano. I asked if anyone here took piano lessons and several little hands shot up. Would you like to play us somsthing? A few did.  It was amazing and the others of us sat in awe.

The talent level of the kids in front of the sub is often shocking. One time I recognized a name in the class list of a junior high class as a child-genuins concert pianist. I asked him if he had indeed played for the queen and he shyly answered, yes.

I had the privilege of teaching a French class where it became evident that two of the students were so gifted in math they were at grade 8 taking university level courses. Never mind them getting my autograph. I want theirs, but of course I don’t ask for it. The schools see genius in the bud, when it is still sweet and modest and surprised you noticed.

One time in late June I was called to help out the last week of class. This is like code for expect very hyper kids and sure enough the school, aware of their likely mood, had scheduled on the second last day, a classroom movie for 3 classes. But I was not needed to supervise so much as to do something else. Since the regular teacher was ill, it occurred to me that what she’d really appreciate was for me to do the ‘take down’ of the classroom so while the students watched a movie a door away with the other students and teachers, I climbed desks and tables, took down kids’ artwork from the walls, assembled their work from piles and piles around the room and alphabetically sorted so that by late afternoon I had  a packge of all the kids’ work that year for them to take home.  It had taken me a long long time and I had not expected that would be my job description but it felt good too.

There is a lot of legal liability that goes with teaching and we subs are well aware of it. Keenly aware.  We enter a situation which may or may not be difficult but where we have to ensure we never lose our tempers, we never even touch a child in any way that could be misconstrued which generally means never touching a child period, and we have to be very careful what we say so kids may not report and misrepresent it later.  Our legal liability is not just to protect the child from outside forces but sometimes to ensure the child is not going to misrepresent our earnest attempts to help.

Subs are at slightly higher risk that classroom teachers or being misunderstood.  Children are not familiar with them and may see them as somewhat alien intruders. When a situation gets rowdy, and working with teens it is sadly sometimes tempting for a few students to for their own amusement make life harder for the sub. It is a no-consequences game for them, the regular teacher possibly never learning of the antics, and the sub pretty well guaranteed to not be back soon anyway.  The media has unfortunately not enhanced the image of subs as regular teachers.  The children’s story “Miss Nelson is Missing’ and other children’s stories represent substitute teachers as unpredictable and sometimes mentally unbalanced. Hollywood movies have shown subs as undercover police officers or as unqualified teachers, just faking it. The TV show Desperate Housewives has on it a character who is a substitute teacher not very competent at her subject. This all means that subs walk into a minefield some days and they have to tread very very carefully to not be misunderstood and yet still to maintain order.

In the movie “Catch me if you can’. the main character impersonates a substitute teacher as a joke and his dad just thinks this is amusing. When the real sub appears she is a sweet middle aged lady who is laughed at for her concerns about getting future calls to the school and laughed at for her complaints she has been undervalued.  Such is the modeling we are sometimes inadvertently giving children about the nature of the sub and coupled with the playfulness of kids, it takes a tough-minded teacher to respond to the challenge of the game with ‘Game on!”

In phys ed I have been told to supervise the kids as they play tag, and told suggested types of tag which I never heard of such as Toilet Tag, Disaster Dodge Ball or Doctor Dodge Ball  and I had to get the students to explain to me how this works. 

The sub role has some other technical challenges, some of which just go with teaching.  When I first returned to the classroom after being home with the kids, I noticed my legs just ached and it was not that I was walking around a lot. I was standing a lot and this is a factor of the job.  Over the years my legs got used to it but having a place to sit down is very useful but not always a good teaching strategy. You have to stand when talking to the class, to get their attention and have a clear sight range. You have to circulate among them to see how they are doing and answer questions. And so comes up the issue of – the chair.

I’ve seen several types. From the yoga ball to the straight-back wooden chair to the office desk chair on rollers I see that many teachers care deeply about comfort when they do get  a chance to sit. There are cushions and in many cases elevated stools so the teacher can be at the front and high enough to see but still sort of seated. Stools can be a joy and a problem I’ve nearly missed when absently sitting down on one while talking and I’ve run into my share of tippy and unbalanced stools. What often  happens though is the minute the regular teacher is gone some students will behind your back grab the teacher’s chair or stool and claim it for this class as their own. I am amazed they’d have the gall but some do.

When the day is over the teacher has to ensure the little kids head back home correctly. Again the legal liability is considerable. There are notes sometimes about ensuring certain people, under court order, are not to pick up the child. There are also very clear instructions about which bus the child is to take home and other handwritten notes about who tonight only is not taking the bus and is going to a friend’s.  These are very very important notes to see and making sure every child gets in the right line up and on the right bus matters.  For subs it is just that little bit harder because you don’t know these kids.  Often other people come to help, bus monitors with lists of who goes on what bus.

But it is our legal responsibility in the end to ensure their safety.  In the senior high if kids  sneak out early and run across the street and get hit by a car, it becomes part of the school’s responsibility.  Again, for subs keeping track of the kids takes a bit longer than for regular teachers.

One of the things I have started to do in empty moments over a noonhour is to sitting idly at a computer, clean the keys. I take a piece of cardboard and run it between the rows and it is just astounding, sometimes even sort of nauseating what wads of hairs, lint, paper, staples and crumbs of food are liberated that way.  I figure I am keeping the keys from jamming and also ensuring the keyboard is healthier but actually many keyboards are pretty clean. I am not the cleaner. But one librarian did say to me once, ‘Cleaning can be very therapeutic”.

One day I was in an ice cream parlor waiting for our order and the store was very very crowded.  I am used to crowds and waiting and I guess I have developed my way of coping which sometimes leaks out. I was quietly humming to myself and the lady behind me noticed.  I apologized and said that I was a teacher and sometimes weaving my way through very crowded halls I find it useful to just hum a song.  I just had nor realized it was sometimes audible.

The teacher leaves notes about students too and this is kind of hand-on of recent developments, one advising or attending teacher to the next.  But I am kind of on my guard when the note says “Don’t let James and Tristan ‘ sit together” or “Watch Cory because he is a diagnosed kleptomaniac’ or ‘Do not expect her to speak. She does not speak in class”

I feel  like whatever the lesson plans asks, we subs do it and if it says “Jump’ we only ask “How high?”  We dance backwards, in high heels if necessary, wear as many hats as we can balance and have particular affinity to that Hindu god with the many many arms.

And yet we have our limits.  I can accept a call for auto or wood shop because legally the students need a certified teacher there but I am not certified to have them do wood or auto shop work. For those calls I have to give them a study period, or have them clean the shop with brooms.  At one wood shop call they were not allowed to use any of the power machines but the teacher said I could let them sand things by hand.  The room was awash with fine sand and yet it felt very creative.  I have discovered a few things about such assignments. One is the absolute beauty of some of the work kids can do in wood shop. One is the fact that the students who may be discounted in the math or English class are often the stars here so it’s a nice turnout. Another is the fact that kids will always be kids and there will always be someone in any class who will try to take advantage of the sub and there will always be some sweet helpful person who will go that extra mile and try to help the sub.  You can’t change human nature.

When subs are asked to be the calm one in a crisis this is not hard since our entire training is to be calm despite a core level of unpredictability and yet counting on us as the go-to person in crisis is a bit odd.  For fire drills and lockdowns we sure try.  An aura of calm while inside our heads we are trying to find the file about what direction to take the kids. And yet, and yet it works. 

There is also the fine tuning. Some kids are genuinely struggling with the work and if I can sit down or kneel down beside their desks and help them step by step, and if I give them dignity and praise step by step, this is usually something they appreciate. But not quite always. One grade 8 student was not just insulted but insulting telling me he didn’t need help and I should go away and when I did leave him alone he said “Hah, you didn’t even know what to say”.

One nice thing about subbing though is the chance I can get to maybe help a student understand something who did not before. Maybe that approach I take somehow clicks with him when the textbook or another method did not. Maybe the way I explained the periodic table’s history or the way I demonstrated how to solve for x somehow today with some kids will be a light turning on.  Some days it seems it is and that’s very rewarding.

Other  times I’m not so sure what they need. When kindergarten kids are given ‘centre time ‘ for an hour and I circulate to watch and encourage each group, sometimes I’ll sit down and actually play with the kids using blocks or playing at the water table. I”ve made my share of clay animals, wooden freeways for cars and colorful towers of numbered bricks. But there’s a sensitivity to this too. The child knows I can do it and this is not about me. The point of the centre is if the child can do it and to let the child excel. So even though I might have some sudden inspiration to make a huge archway with the sponges I have to make sure my attention stays on the kids and not just the kids in this group but everywhere in the room.

The lockdown procedure is just getting perfected and some of the early versions were kind of odd.  Because an alleged intruder is in the building, he or she can hear what ever the PA announcements say so the teachers at one school developed a code.  IT’s kind of like the “Code 111” “Code 111” crash cart call of hospitals where everybody in the building knows something bit is happening but is not quite sure what.  In the schools the code this group created was this – if there was an intruder the PA secretary would say “WE are loking for a green stapler”.  If the intruder was wandering around the halls, the announcement would be “We are looking for the red form” and teachers were to lock their doors. If a teacher was in trouble the code was “code orange’ . I never was in a school where we had an intruder or where we had to use such codes but I can’t help but think that anyone entering hearing hushed and excited voices suddenly looking for green staples might be just a tad aware he was noticed.

A lot of people think that teachers only work 5 hours a day and barely deserve a full day’s pay.  To counter that some teachers rightly point out that they actually spend many more hours per day, because of lesson planning, marking, meeting with parents and students. But I think you don’t even have to say that, true though it is. Even if you are only putting in five hours, look at those hours. They are intensely demanding, screamingly busy and like being put through a ringer.  The parallel would not be five hours sitting in an office cubicle but five hours running a marathon over every changing terrain with the ground sinking. It’s a long long five hours.

And because of that, subs in particular often find that they do not want to be on call every single day.  Many subs want a job commitment of four days a week not five, and some even teach only 3 days a week. Why?

This is not laziness.  What happens on those nonteaching days is very good for education. First, the teacher experiences the nonschool world. I take care of my other commitments with family, house maintenance, family and friend obligations and I walk my dogs. I am in the stores, libraries and parks getting things done and observing the world. I listen to the news more intently and read the papers more thoroughly on those days. What good does that do? When I return to teaching the next day I am not just rested and refreshed but I have a new perspective to bring. One Friday I was teaching  a math lesson to the grade sixes about probability and I cited an experience of the day before watching birds on the river and  averaging which ones were there in each season.  A concrete example.  And maybe it did not matter that I could cite it from yesterday not a few years ago but the current nature of the experience helps kids feel what we are teaching is relevant.  Because with our day  not teaching we learn more about the world, we have  more to offer the next day when we lead a discussion or debate, talk about current events or reflect on social policy.  The ‘down day’ is vital to good education.

Sadly few teachers are able to take a down day for many weeks or even months and years and worst case scenario some never do get downtown, tour offices, find out what makes the city tick outside the school. I think we should trust teachers with their time management and free them to do this casual research a bit more frequently. One of my hobbies is watching videos on the weekend and this pretty self-indulgent hobby of pure leisure has time and again served me well teaching. When I discuss styles of parenting, or magical wands, fantasies of jealousies, being able to cite a movie the kids have also seen is a way to link the learning to our realities.  When I was interviewed for teaching in fact I was asked how well a person has to understand kids to teach.  I said that ideally the teacher is very aware of the songs they are listening to, the TV shows they watch, the books they like to read so the teacher can connect with their understanding of the world and link it to the lesson.  How do you get to know something of that world? IT takes time and it takes  this time away from teaching.

The pressure cooker world of subbing is not always pleasant and some days you leave the school positively buoyant the day has ended.  Downtime is good for mental health and vital to making sure the frustrations don’t just pile up. A sub is the back up person and the backup cannot itself fail. The sub has to be patient when the ordinary teacher may be on stress leave from a very frustrating situation. The sub has to be enthusiastic and creative even when the classroom teacher has taught this same lesson 8 times this year already.  To be fresh and recharged subs often not only need but insist on their down time. It helps them be good at their jobs.

Sometimes I find out I am a hostess.  At one AM assignment I was to teach six classes but then learned a feeder school was to tour that morning so two of my classes were cancelled. Instead grade 6ers would be walking through the junior high touring this and other classrooms to see what it would be like to take French here.  Suddenly I am a welcomer and I stay in the room and try to make it look friendly> I put on some music, do the teacher’s dishes in the sink, clean the computer keys, retrieve a noisy pencil and pen that are rattling in the heating vent.

Sometimes I am not called to teach at all. I am called in to help with other teaching functions but not in front of a class, such as supervising final exams, or sometimes even with no students around, to mark exams or organize files or even, one day to check old exams for security.  Ah this is something, to have to go through every one of 480 booklets each 10 pages long to see if any student happened to jot in the margins, circle answers or doodle.  I am also of course to put the exams in numerical order and make sure none went missing.

Alphabetical and numerical ordering are vital skills for teachers and I have developed a fast system taught to me years ago by a teacher.  It’s the 3 piles answer, and the triple sort. The first round through I pile the quizzes, tests, report cards, fee payments or locker letters, assignments or finals into A-F, G-L and M-Z piles. Then I go through each pile alphabetizing piles per letter and then for final sort I put each of those piles in order. It works very fast and the only downside is I need a large surface to do it. But it need not be a table. I have also set up several empty desks in a circle around me and that works too.
At one school I am sometimes asked to put together all the elements of the 300 students challenge exam packages, which means for each student, the application form, the sample writing, the written test results, the oral test result sheet and the Scantron multiple-choice answer sheet. These have all been filled out on different days and piled in categories and my job is to retrieve and resort, finding every little thing Joey P. did and stapling them all together in a nice package with a cover sheet. It’s kind of fun.  I get to use my alphabetizing trick times about 7 and then putting the packages together reminds me a lot of wrapping all the Christmas presents for a child and then putting them in easy piles to unwrap Christmas morning. There’s a kind of joy to it and maybe I’m crazy to think it.  It’s like finding a whole bunch of wandering little sheep and herding them in and the thing is I know this work matters because this package determines whether a student will get credit for an entire year’s course work. 

There are always surprises and you have to ‘go with the flow’.  When I am asked to take the elementary school class to the library, it is not often explained to me what I do then.  Sometimes the kids on their own magically return books they borrowed, scurry around the room picking new books and then line up to sign them up. Other classes have surprised me by having all the kids go to a carpet area and just sit down looking up at me.  I sit down too and, lacking other direction, may pick up a few books and read to them. I like reading to kids anyway. I love dramatizing the story and using various voices, rushing the  chase-scene parts, slowing down the slow walking down a dark  hall parts.  There’s something electric about having a whole room hushed to hear a good story.

Other times the task is art. At one school I am to teach four classes in one afternoon and all of them are to ‘make Christmas cards’. I have to rifle through cupboards quickly to find paper and other supplies and the transport these to each class because for this particular assignment I am not in a classroom but am a ‘floater’ with a cart. I deliver the lesson literally and arrive at each door with it.

Sometimes what the kids are doing is very touching. At some schools fundraisers take a very creative bent, with silent auctions, with corporate sponsorships, and one school had a raffle of gift baskets. The baskets were to be designed by the students, one per classroom and the classrooms could pick a theme and then students would bring appropriate items.  One class picked a gardening theme, another ‘cuddle time’ for books with babies, another baking recipes, another dogs, another cats, another winter sports, another beverages which was a coffee, tea and hot chocolate and cider sampler.  One grade four class did a Christmas theme with books and puzzles and games all about snow and sleds and skiing. 

Sometimes in my nonteaching ‘prep’ I am given other tasks to do, like sorting the Scholastic magazines for the entire school. These arrive in efficient –to-mail single stapled packs but each pack has to be separated into its 30 or so component 2-4 page magazines  This type of sorting take a strong knife to get the stapler out and then patience to undo the pack.  At one school the teacher in charge of these magazines had fallen a bit behind apparently and I had to do the magazines from the last several months, five sets in all, for each child in the school.  When I get a task like that I feel challenged to get it all done in time and many tasks like that can only be completed if I go at breakneck speed, skipping breaks and working over the noon hour. Of course the luxury of being a sub is that I can at some point say enough, that was all I was able to do.  But the ‘good-deed-doer’ in me also take a kind of personal pride in wanting to surprise the teacher and get it done. I try to do what the construction workers sometimes aim at, to get the project done ahead of schedule and under budget.  For some reason I just feel that the teacher will be thrilled the next morning to find more than expected was accomplished and her day will be just a bit easier.  For that reason I often will mark tests that I was only asked to administer, or sort things that obviously are waiting to be sorted. or get all of a task done that obviously would take more than one day normally.  It is my gift.  Of course there’s a risk there. Sometimes I have to be careful that the good-deed I am plotting is actually helpful.

If the exam is short-answer or multiple choice and the key is in front of me, there is no real danger I’ll upset a system.  If the test is long-answer and essay I don’t touch it unless asked because the teacher’s marking system is her own.  Occasionally I am aware that the teacher may have been thinking the kids would mark the exam ‘in class’ as a group and that would be a learning experience. But that often is a strategy teachers use because they are very busy and they still would be happy if they came to work the next day and the exams were already marked. Then they could use the class time to discuss the answers.  But I try to be sensitive that my good deeds are actually good deeds.

Occasionally if a teacher’s desk is a bit disorganized I used to try to sort things into related piles, all  notices in one place, student work in one place etc.  I stopped doing this once though when a teacher I was subbing for was in the building before she left for her meeting and as she sailed out the door called back to me “Please don’t rearrange the papers on my desk. I know it looks disorganized but I have a system”. It did but I guess she did.

I also try to be helpful in other ways, emptying pencil sharpeners over the noonhour or cleaning whiteboards with the good cleaner.  I have been known to pick up papers and even sweep floors if we were doing a messy craft.  I don’t technically think teachers should be doing this. I think the schools should be well enough funded that there are enough caretakers to do this. But in many schools there is only one caretaker for the entire school and I realize that helping  out is kind and certainly not beneath me. 

I have also been called to special needs classrooms.  One morning I was called last minute to go into an elementary school December 18^th. The stuents were al ldisabled, aged 6-10 but there were only five students so ratio wise it was not bad. It’s just that many had what are termed ‘global delays’, including autism, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrdom. Others had nonspecified problems on the sheet I was looking at but some were on medication. The instructions included toileting them twice in the morning, cleaning them and recording what happened. I was shocked and kind of appalled that I had never been told or prepared for this but hen mercifully a teacher’s aide came in who had expected this and did it regularly. The instructions included nonstop supervision including a locked gate exit,  and high door handles so the kids would not ‘run away’. I follow the plans, seating the kids in a circle and we clap greetings and sing songs, with considerable amount of help from the teacher’s aide. I am very grateful for these teacher’s aides on many levels. They know the routines, they are familiar faces the kids like, and they are familiar with working with high needs kids.  This particular time too I am happy that the teacher’s aide still defers to me as the teacher, not so much to seek direction but to inform me of what is usual and then to ask permission to do it.  That is very classy of her. In  my role as a teacher I am still legally responsible for what goes on in the classroom and the aide has not become defacto the teacher when a sub is there. I still have to be in charge and it is very polite when teacher’s aides recognize this subtlety. Sometimes they do not. In regular stream and gifted classes, that I most certainly can handle fine, and even without an aide, there is occasionally an aide who will want to take over as if today she is teacher.  I can’t let her be.

Subs take many full day calls if they can but often there are only half-day calls. If the regular teacher has to be away for a doctor’s appointment or half-day meeting, the half-day call is the norm. The problem is that for subs it means we have twice the adjustment.

We are then called to two schools in one day and we have to not only rush across the city by car over the noon hour but we also have  face all the dilemmas again  of finding a new place to park, another classroom and new instructions.  For this relocation there is generally no compensation extra financially and the rush of adrenalin is considerable to just meet the standards. 

One time I was in a school in the morning for 6 classes and then rushed across town to the PM assignment of four more classes.  Ten in one day is a big work load.

One time I was at a school only for four hours so I figured it at most would be four classes but it turned out it was 7 classes. I was assigned to move to a new room every half hour once the morning announcements had begun.

I also have been surprised at the equipment.  In one school the little kids were actually given slates to write on, in 2008! It was not their only way to write but when I thought of it, it is quite paper-saving.

The mixes can be amusing. I literally have taught kindergarten in English in the morning and grade 12 French in the afternoon. I have taught in the south west in the morning and the north east in the afternoon. I have had a run of grade six classes one week or a run of grade 1-2 and there is no particular logic to it, just randomness.

I am often not completely aware of what I’ll be facing for the call, like if this setting is a traditional setting or not. I find out quickly though when the students come in all in uniform.  It’s quite cute.

The classroom is a reflection of the teacher if he or she has been there a few months. Some are very bare walls and a few have just a few posters strewn around. But some are studded with decorations and are very welcoming.  A few even have houseplants and if I get a chance over the noon hour I’ll try to make sure the plants are OK. I never water them unless instructed but I am often instructed to do so, but what I do sometimes is remove dead leaves and just clean up the base if that seems to be a good idea.  In one classroom there was a floor-based pot with a vine that climbed literally to the ceiling. I know the teacher there retired that year and she did not take the plant with her.

Sometimes I have been asked before school or during a prep or over a noonhour to do some photocopying. Sometimes just one class set of a quiz but occasionally three days of photocopying for class sets of lesson booklets for the entire next semester.  I also kind of pride myself on being able to do this efficiently and truth be told, if nobody else is using the machines I have been known to use 2, 3 or even 4 simultaneously to get the work all  done fast.  Noticing how many copies is not even the start of the challenge of course since I also have to notice if the original is single or double sided, if the desired copy is single or double sided, and if the teacher wants the copies stapled or not, hole punched or not and sorted.  And yet again I try to have a system. However moving this way in front of big machines has its own problems. I have actually gotten dizzy a few times standing over the machines and happened to mention this to a doctor once. He said I should not look at the photo process with the flashing lights, and he said I should also try to get some fresh air if I could between runs. Opening the window on a cold day is a brief thing but it helps.  Again the photocopier role is one I don’t think teachers should have to do. I think they should have support staff for that so they can spend their time teaching and preparing lessons. But subs are often used as jacks-of-all-trades and though some schools respect us as professionals, others seem to treat us more like mules. On the other hand, I do know that classroom teachers also have to do their own photocopying at most schools. I taught at a few schools where a secretary would do it for you but she needed a time window often of several days lead.  A little window that sometimes you just don’t have.

Working with photocopiers is also enlightening not just for the flash before the eyes.  They often jam.  You learn little things about how to unjam the  machine and most of the big modern photocopiers actually coach you through how to unjam them, right on the display screen. But I sometimes cringe in fear reaching my hand deep into the bowels of some compartment wondering if while unjamming paper I might get a shock or worse. So far so good.


There’s a lot they don’t mention even if I did find the  VCR, the high tech video system, the laptop computer to operate it. Combining my incomplete understanding of technology with the idiosyncracies of equipment, I occasionally do have to ask for help. I try to set up any videos before the class begins, ideally with no students around, and I get it all running so I just have to press ‘start’. This preplanning however means that I often have had to call the tech help people before the school day begins and they come rushing in, if they are able, and it’s very touching. Some are enormously competent but others are as mystified as I am about why this particular TV does not accept being set on channel 3 or why this VCR does not seem to function on fast forward.  Only in a pinch will I ask for tech help from a student but actually there is sometimes a student who can help. I hate to look helpless though because this opens me up to the game of just trying to delay or upset a lesson and ‘sink the sub’.  But I do get in my own way sometimes, once even having set up the whole movie perfectly and having it run perfectly and then reaching up to just change the volume, pressing the wrong button and losing the movie.  Having to restart was the only solution. And there have been times when I knew more than the other teacher did about how to set up a movie, this skill a remnant of my wasted youth.

Some schools make heavy use of the ‘remote control’ for the VCR or other movie display and then they misplace the remote.  That is so maddening.  I understand why to use a remote as a teacher, so you can be far back and still in control. But some VCRs nowadays don’t even do all their functions on the machine itself and you need that VCR for some of those functions like picking language and translation.  Many’s the time I”ve noticed in a French class we were watching the movie in English with French subtitltes when the teacher wanted to watch it in French with English subtitles and I’ve had to stop, restart, go to menu and try to do this rejigging.

Another unknown when you arrive is where the classroom is located relative to other rooms. One might assume every class has its own hall door entry but that is not quite always true. I’ve taught in renovated nurse’s rooms, renovated music rooms, renovated staff rooms and what is a bit more surprising in anterooms behind other rooms.  One grade 4-5 class has its French lessons in a classroom behind the wood shop, separated by a door of course but accessed only by going through the wood shop first.  In another school, a high school, the ESL classroom is in the sub basement way way down winding stairs and next to a gym.  The thing is, again, with budget cuts to education, rooms are called into service that may not originally have been designed for that purpose.
Many many schools now have classes meeting on the stage of the gym.

In fact, I have very rarely ever seen a stage used in schools nowadays as a stage.  Often performances are done right on the main floor and it is very common to have the back of the stage actually curtained off because it is the school’s after-school daycare.

There are classrooms meeting in cordoned off parts of lunchrooms, and I even taught a class that for several months had its lessons entirely in a cordoned off part of the school library. This location of a classroom is common in the elementary level with dividers and ‘open-area’ school designs but for me it is a route to mayhem. The noise level is quite disconcerting from the class to the library quiet area but also from anyone in the class trying to do a lesson when you know that others don’t want to hear your noise.

Sometimes we subs are not permitted downtime that the regular teacher would get and are assigned to work in the library if we have a spare. I am not very thrilled with such reassignments because I actually do have marking and other tasks I could do back in the classroom.  But in libraries I have been asked to not only shelve books, alphabetize books for shelving, number order books for shelving or sometimes even bind books that were falling apart.. The only good part of all this is, well there are two. One is to work with the librarians who are often a very fun group actually, super efficient, often very laid back and very wise about students and  with a great sense of humor that gets them through the day. And the second plus is that I get to see the book collection. I do like that, seeing what books and videos and new releases are out there.

The unassigned prep can also have huge surprises. One time I was called to a busy high school to teach Spanish, and found out on arriving that I was actually teaching two Spanish and two French classes. I like that actually .Not many teachers can do both but I happen to be able to so I feel very much needed.  But in my ‘prep’ the office phones me to ask if I’d mind taking a grade 11 math class.  Sure, no problem, and I also do windows.