One of the fun parts of my day is any time I can be creative and use a lesson plan and expand on it.  If I’m given the opportunity to teach a lesson and can add an insight from current events or personal observation, that may make it just that more meaningful for the kids.

At my age, I do not know everything but I know a little about a lot and it’s really fun to keep tapping the mind to use what I know.  I like teaching about the periodic table in science to notice its amazing patterns. I like teaching terms of family membership by using dramatic examples like the royal family or the Kennedy family and I like it when I can add a bit of zest to a lesson.

At announcements time I like to summarize for kids upcoming events for the week or month if I noticed them and if there are current events I might find fun to discuss, that’s the time to do it.  I’ve had great discussions with kids when time allowed, about some pretty intriguing issues- whether if bystanders to a fight were in any way responsible, whether school buses should have seatbelts, ways to dress warmly during a blizzard.

I sometimes clip news articles for a backup file. Little kids like to stare in awe at the world’s largest pizza or the castle made of cake or ice or cheese and they are often mesmerized by optical illusions and those clever drawings of artists who hide objects in the painting.  I like clipping oddities in the news for kids to think about, the ethics of dropping a rock from an overpass, a daring rescue of window cleaners, new research about cloning sheep or kittens.  In my mind if it’s an intriguing story, kids any age will like it.

I like to make lessons concrete. If we’re talking about globalization I like to set up a debate between those who want to bulldoze small boutique stores for a big international chain store and those who object.  I like showing kids how governments work by having them act out seating in legislatures and parliament so they see percent representation.

I like assigning roles of voyageur, native, English settler, priest when we discuss early settlements and I like seeing kids act out their parts. It’s really fun to explain prisms by letting kids set up an experiment to bounce light back and forth around the room and it’s fun to suggest to them a crime scene scenario so we can as scientists figure out strategies for investigation.

I’ve had so much fun conducting the bell choir, laughed at the grade 2s as they only took baby steps on the playground to evade the person chasing them in What time is it Mr. Wolf?    And I’ve found that if my eyes light up with a sudden idea the kids seem to catch the same enthusiasm in my voice. “Hey, you know what we could do?  “

The motivation for doing something spontaneous is varied. For me it is educational – to advance the lesson, but sometimes it is also to add interest to learning. Sometimes the kids are understanding the ideas fine but they need to have more fun with the concept. I really enjoyed the grade 4 class that was asked while studying the far east to make paper lanterns. But the teacher had not said what to do with them so I had this brilliant thought  of stringing them all across the blackboard. I found string in the teacher’s desk and the kids were just little Trojans standing on chairs, doling out string and looping lanterns through it to ‘surprise’ the teacher. I have discovered, and I guess this is no big insight but it always amazes me again, that kids love to be the good guys, they love to create a happy surprise for the teacher and the laid back bored, uncooperative kid will often just jump at the chance to do something new and creative in this way. 

In fact a fellow teacher friend of mine told me a secret of success subbing is often to enlist the help of the kid who is not very cooperative. This surprises him and the others but it helps him see a new self, a new way he can have the limelight and often it works very well.

Sometimes in discussions I have heard amazing insights too, about how country music matches the rhythm of car driving, about how if you’re angry it is best to listen first to angry music and then later to softer music.  The kids in front of me are not just fully human but often very wise.  I had a student with cystic fibrosis tell us what her life was like when every night she had to sleep in an oxygen tent. I’ve had kids tell us all how odd they found it when the school overreacted to a playground  eye injury of someone bumping into a tree, by uprooting every tree in the playground.  The thing is, kids are sometimes more practical than adults. They want us to not overreact.

If I can I like to bring a surprise too, especially before a holiday. One grade 9 class was studying advertising and it was just before Easter. I had this mad thought of bringing them all a chocolate and then in the store I noticed there were two kinds of wrapped chocolate truffles, a cheaper version and a more costly one. I bought enough so each student could have one each and we could compare the products and their ads, while eating them.  One time before a holiday I bought the kids who had been studying Chinese culture, each a Valentine heart wrapped but we had to each pick it out of a bowl using Chinese chopsticks.

Serving food in school  is very tricky and we teachers have to check ahead of time for allergies in the room and of course nowadays there is a no- peanut rule in general also. Occasionally I have asked administration for permission if I wondered about a certain snack and I always give ones individually wrapped so there is no danger of germs.

I like to tap into the natural interests of kids. The senior high Spanish class was much more fun for me when I found an article in the People magazine in Spanish with short bios of famous holiday stars in Spanish. The students suddenly had more of a reason to read the material. 

One sub I know brought music to class and when teaching about history played a song or two from the era.  One time a class was learning about weaving so I racked my brain trying to think of how we could weave and it occurred to me to bring cotton balls. The challenge was to take one and to roll it so fine we made a very thin yarn and it was just stunning how fine and long a thread a few of the kids made.

A teacher I admire told me years ago about the ‘teachable moment’ and how if there is a bat in the playground and the kids are all talking about it, you have to drop the day’s plans and discuss bats.  That is what they are expressing a ‘need to know’ about.  Subs are not free to scrap plans and of course we do not but if there is a gap in the lesson plans we can insert what the kids are fascinated about that day. And once in a rare while it seems that we subs are called on to use our professional judgment and shift things around. Today the lesson plans were to teach printing large numbers and then to do a cut and paste activity about sentence construction, all before recess. As it happened, and the teacher could not have known this, a new student came in from another country and she was crying and clinging to her mother so we took some time to reassure her. One of the other grade 2s suggest we all sit in a circle and introduce ourselves to her so we did. I talked gently to the little girl and we spent some time just chatting with her . Then as we started the actual lesson a current student came in late, rolled along on a chair with wheels by her dad, because last week she broke her leg in two places and this was her first day back at school. Well obviously we had to help settle her in and elevate her leg and then the lesson continued but one of the students recalled he had brought a gift for every student after his trip to Mexico. He was very excited about this and it did seem something so happy for them all that it should not be delayed so we sat in a circle and he handed those out. Then back to the lesson which I think we worked on very well, but we never did get around to the language arts cut and paste.  Interruptions are often a key component of any teaching and one of the lessons of experience is how to keep your cool when things are shifting. One principal told me once she appreciated my approach a lot because I was so ‘flexible’. Kind comment.

Flexible is what subs are all about. Often we are asked during an assignment of 3 classes of Spanish, during our break to mark French tests or to whip over to another wing of the building and teach math.  I like to view such assignments as a compliment and am flattered that they think I can handle this.   Once I had to do a math lesson like that without about 5 minutes notice and so I whipped into the math teachers’ work room to retrieve the textbook. There were a few minutes when nobody was able to find it for me and then I discovered it near some papers. A teacher said to me” Wow, you subs are good!”  It was nice.  I felt clever, which doesn’t happen often to me.

I am in an elementary school where the grade 3 class has been called down to an assembly to hear guests sing opera.  Frankly I would not have suggested this but when the professional singers, there are two of them, ask the kids who has attended an opera performance dozens of hands go up so, hey, maybe it’s OK.  The guests sing a few little songs the kids enjoy and then, sadly, launch into full blown arias that few of the kids appreciate. Oh well. Eventually we are all dismissed and go back to our room. WE return to our assigned work but at the end of the day there is about a half an hour free. I decide to have us sit on the carpet and tell a story, a cumulative story where each of us adds a line. I’ve done this before and the kids are often silly about it but sometimes not. I start us off with a child entering a dark forest and then . Usually  the next speaker adds  something like that the child sees a monster and e go on like that but this time, since we’ve just watched an  operatic performance, I require that we sing our lines. I sing mine and bless their little hearts each of the little kids stands up and launches forth into some idea to add to the story, with gusto and in melody. Even the kids who don’t like to sing seem to enjoy this game. There is laughter all round and I realize we are now close to the end of the day. I ask one little girl to finish the story off. I expect she will add some detail like a big fire or everybody gets run over by a truck or spends the week at the seashore. But no. This little girl stands up, takes a deep breath and finest operatic voice trills “The End!” 

Another time when I had the kids in a junior high class, about grade 7, do speeches in front of the group and they were to act out famous  people, one girl amazed me.
She stood up, bowed deeply,yelled across the room with fake mike in hand “Hello Calgary!” 

I am in a grade 7 class and we are to discuss values. It is a very vague assignment but I rack my brains to try to make it meaningful. I suggest ideas and we just open up to discussion. We talk of giving money to the homeless in the street, to whether to fix a leaking roof or buy a new building, of a high needs girl and whether it is fair to sterilize her so she won’t get pregnant, about shoplifting, about telling on a friend.  The discussion is animated and sometimes I feel that it is moreso because I am a stranger. What they say is not being recorded, is not for marks and there are no repercussions. They are free to invent I suppose but they are also free to admit the truth. I got the feeling a few were actually doing that this day. Two girls admitted they had once shoplifted. One had taken a dress from a store at age 10.  I am  not sure what is the right reaction to such a revelation because she was as rowdy student and I suspect the story was true.  I asked how she felt about that now.  I did not moralize or judge.  I let the idea of it just sit there and I kind of feel in this particular case that she was purging herself of a guilt.  My mother once told me that to be a good parent you must never be shocked when kids own up to something. The louder they get, the calmer you get. And I knew that it was right for me to just let her revelation pass. It was as if I was saying that was in the past, admitted, now no longer part of her life.

The class is studying the French Revolution. I have just heard on the radio that an airpline pilot flew a jet in safely to land it on the Hudson River because both engines had suddenly failed. He saved the lives of all 155 passengers and someone analyzing his actions noted that professionals like pilots and surgeons, when  a crisis happens, kick into professional mode and override any emotions they might be feeling They deny their feelings whatever they are and just get the job done. Only later when they reflect back on the responsibility of the role or how close it was to disaster do they get emotional They are not emotional at the time. Well teachers are not usually in life and death situations but I do know that many of us have that professional mode that just kicks in.  I know that for me I become oblivious to what I am wearing, to my hairdo, even to my health. My aches disappear. Nothing matters personally right now except the lesson and the kids.  And one thing that kicks in automatically seems to be a professional quick judgment spontaneity. If I  have an idea of some way to teach something, I assess it, say Ok to myself and I’m off.  And in this way I have sometimes overcome what would normally be a real tendency to shyness, to do whatever it takes to get the lesson across.  I have acted the ma scene in Moliere, loud and dramatic, before a fairly hostile French class in grade 12. I have danced across the gym to demonstrate to a grade 3 group and I have bounced badminton birdies off a racket many many times as if I knew how, because someone had to. On this day it occurred to me that the kids might appreciate the humor of the parody song “You went the wrong way Old King Louis”.  I scrambled my brain to recall the lyrics and I was off, launching into full song. The kids looked at me in shock, then smiled and when I was done applauded.  I couldn’t care less about the applause as a personal judgment but I say that they saw I was doing whatever it takes.

Half the grade 5 class got to go on a field trip and I am there because half did not.  These kids are a bit unhappy, feeling they missed out on a privilege for lack of funds or parental permission or whatever. And since they are studying all afternoon early native Canadian culture, tipis and fishing I have this flash of an idea. Why not clear out the carpet and make a model village on the floor? I go to the art room and we get colored paper, little tooth depressors for wood, plasticene in many colors, and lots of poster fringe material, large rolls of blue for a river. We are off. The kids make little people, tipis, canoes, even a little spit which has on it meat barbecuing. I am in awe at their creativity and also at their work ethic. They are just throwing themselves into this surprise for the kids who come back and they are not bickering, and are using their best adult like cooperation skills. The product is pretty neat and I put a note around it for the caretaker to please l eave it and not sweep it up.  It is about 9 square feet in size.  I never know what the reaction is since I am of course not there the next day but years later a girl in junior high remembers me. She reminds me I was the one who helped them build the native village on the floor. I tell her I never did hear how it went over. She tells me the teacher loved it.

My most common planned surprise for the teacher is a rousing chant for when she walks in . We practice by banging on the desks rhythmically and loudly the motif for We Will We Will Rock You.  However we change the words at the end of the verse. We clap out at the end “Welcome back, Welcome Back, Mrs. X Welcome back.” For French classes we do the same but in French’ Bienvenue, bienvenue, Madame X bienvenue”

We then practice who will orchestrate it when  the teacher walks in and of course for a glorious big finish the kids are all to leap up from the desks for the last line.

I also rarely hear how that goes over.  But I have my suspicions. One time the regular teacher came back just as I was leaving and a ltitle girl gently took her hand and said “We have a surprise for you”. As I went down the stairs I heard the rousing clapping and chanting.  Well I’m sure it was as surprise.

Kids are just untapped energy to harness. There is so much a person could do to get them to sing, dance, act in sync for dramatic effect and they absolutely seem to love it if it is rarely done, and a surprise.  I just wish I knew more routines to teach.