Currently I have chosen the glamorous job of substitute teacher. Not a real teacher because then I would have to do lesson plans and go to parent teacher conferences and do beaucoup de paper work which is right up there with shaving my legs and going to the dentist. But today I subbed in 2nd grade and they said I was the nicest sub they'd ever had (how many subs can you have by the beginning of 2nd grade?) and they wished I could be their real teacher probably because their real teacher does not play the quiet game with them or do the Happy Dance. And what's not to be happy about when you are in 2nd grade and you get to go to recess and eat corn dogs for lunch and read Junie B. Jones?
But sometimes subbing is not so great like when you are the ONLY teacher on recess duty and somebody is wetting their pants (besides you because you haven't had a break all day) and somebody else has playground gravel in their knees and you cannot let them into the school because you cannot be trusted with a key because you might run to Home Depot during lunch and make a copy of the key and break into the school at night and steal all of the Rubber Cement because man oh man is that stuff fun. But you can be trusted to protect 100 second-second graders from any gunmen or raving lunatics who may invade the playground. And protect them you will because you are making so much money and they love you more than their own teacher because you can do one mean Happy Dance.
Subbing is also not great when you are at the middle school and your students ask if your grand kids go to their school and you put a big black mark by their names and then try to laugh it off, telling yourself how foolish middle schoolers are, and then the teacher in the next classroom introduces himself and he is one of your children's childhood friends. . . or when you are subbing a special ed class and somebody asks you if you are in the class. . .
But it's all good because at the end of the day you turn in your badge, go home, eat chocolate chips with handfuls of marshmallows because you haven't had time to go to the store and buy anything else, tell your son, who says you are the meanest mom in the world, that Mrs. W's second-grade class thinks you're the bomb-diggety, blog about your day, and wait for that big ol' fat pay check to come.
Oh gosh. I can't help but laugh but only because you tell this so honestly AND well - it's the TRUTH! I've spent a lot of time working in schools and I hear you. In fact, when I was 21 I was the "playground duty" at an elementary school. One day a 3rd grader asked me how old I was. I said, "21." His mouth dropped. "oooh!" I thought he was going to say that I was too young to work at the school. NOPE! "You're old enough to be my grandma!" LOL. Yeah, that's what I got. Then he told me I should date his brother. LOL. Oh man - kids. Thank heaven for chocolate!
ReplyDeleteYou are so funny. I student taught at a middle school and got sent back to class. But I guess I should be grateful they didn't think I was in special ed.
ReplyDeleteI've thought about subbing, but all my friends who are teachers are horrified by the idea. They practically throw themselves in my path, screaming "noooooo! don't do it!" I don't know whether it's just south florida, but substitute teachers here come in for some serious hazing by students, who do their best to make sure subs collapse in tears or melt down by the end of their first day.
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