From the Horse's Mouth

I had some long days at the end of this week. On Thursday I took a job that was listed as a para position in a classroom alongside a teacher and assistant. When I got there it emerged that they actually wanted me to teach a first grade class alone, last minute, without plans and with no other adult in the classroom to lean on. In a class usually run by three adults.

I did it, and no one got badly hurt. One girl got a little pencil prick and bled a bit, but that was the worst direct child-harm. The little boy who normally has his own one-to-one para needed redirection about every thirty seconds, but I managed to keep things fairly calm and tear-free while getting through all but one of the emergency make-do lessons the very kind teacher next door printed for me. One student was determinedly destructive, which eventually forced me to break a long streak of not removing students from my classrooms. I hate doing that, but I tried everything else first. 

Sometimes at this job, I'm thrown into a situation where I just have to tell myself that I need to do the best I can with the skills and tools I have. From a surprise solo teaching gig with zero premade sub plans, I ended up with a roomful of alive, uninjured children and a couple stacks of semi-complete worksheets. That's not a bad result, even if I'm not as polished at lower elementary instruction as I hope to eventually become. Everything is practice.

The funniest moment of the day was when a teeny six year old boy looked down at his subtraction worksheet and back up at me, scrunched up his face, and said in his birdlike little voice, "Ms. Gremdark, why are you such a bastard?" I did a strategic lip bite to keep from laughing. It was an absolutely hilarious delivery.

Today, things worked out so that I was in the classroom directly across the hall from Thursday's, teaching K-5 music. The music teacher had planned her absence well in advance and left an absolute holy grail of sub plans. She had detailed teaching scripts for each class, bonus suggestions for if material ended early, and all kinds of supplementals to cover various contingencies. As a result things went very smoothly. I taught 5th and 2nd grade music in the morning, then saw 4th grade and Kindergarten after recess and 3rd grade just before dismissal. It was a nigh-perfect day, even with the usual shoving matches and tattling and stolen pencils. I've started bringing a little bluetooth speaker in my bag, and I use it to play a specific jazz album when classes are doing ""silent"" solo work. It's a very effective strategy, though it was no match for post-recess Kindergarten energy.

3rd grade was the most challenging. One boy repeatedly asked me if I was a virgin. "That's not a question we ask people at school, Name. Focus on your worksheet." Later in the class, the same boy asked to go to the bathroom, then flooded it. According to his teacher, he's done that several times this year.

My favorite moment of the day happened in the 4th grade class, which the sub plan had warned me would be "chatty and high energy." Sure enough, I had to raise my voice more than I prefer and separate several people. The older kids were doing a webquest about Black musicians. The jazz album brought the chattiness down to a low rumble. Then I had to spend a good fifteen minutes intervening in a situation where two girls were bullying a third girl, calling her names and trying to make her upset. It was clearly an established pattern.

I finally got the instigators separated on opposite sides of the back of the room, but by then the girl they'd been cruel to was crying. She'd already been stuck on the worksheet before the bullying picked up steam, and of course it's so hard to figure out a confusing assignment when something else is upsetting you. I sat with her for a bit and made sure she knew that I would tell her regular teacher what happened and that there would be no consequences if she couldn't finish it by the end of class. That made her feel better about taking a breather in the "calming corner." It took about twenty minutes, but she emerged with dry eyes at last and settled in to work out the tricky part of the worksheet.

Just as I was about to walk over and see if I could help without embarrassing her, two little boys looked at each other and crossed the room to talk to her. These two had previously been very high energy and done a lot of roughhousing, but now they made sure to speak quietly and kindly to their classmate. They invited her back to where they were sitting and folded her into their little group. I was touched to see how gently a previously loud and rough group of kids met their classmate's anxiety and stress with compassion. I didn't need to say a word to that group for the rest of the period. With their support, she finished the worksheet just before the end of class. I made sure to tell all three that I was proud of them before they lined up.

That's one thing I love about teaching. For every kid I see acting out cruel patterns they've adopted from adults, I see more making choices like those little boys and using the tools they have to do what they can for the people around them.