Before I tell the story, let me clarify.  The “Day 1” title comes with an asterisk.  It wasn’t my first day ever of substitute teaching, but it was the first time I subbed since I quit my full-time teaching gig back in 2019, after 25 years in the classroom.

I didn’t think I’d ever go back, especially not as a sub.  But as the first 6 years of my post-teaching life progressed, my jaded, angry, fed-up, exhausted and frustrated outlook gave way to something more balanced- and accurate. I loved teaching for a long time before I grew sick of it.  And having moved several years down the road from that career, I’m now able to look back at the experience without being overwhelmed by the emotion that made me want to leave it.

So last school year, I started looking into the possibility of coming back to education in some way.  I wasn’t sure what form that would take or if it was even a good idea. I didn’t want to end up on a roller coaster I couldn’t escape, where it looks fun from the queue line and makes you throw up when the ride takes off.  

So I moved slowly to get my papers in order and register with our regional substitute teacher service.  It took many months to get set up. Some of it was bureaucracy and paperwork, but the rest was my intermittent motivation and/or lack thereof. Along the way, I was considering everything from long term substitute jobs (where you teach in the same “job” everyday for a number of weeks or months), to permanent part-time employment, to just forgetting the whole thing.

By the time this past May rolled around, I was registered, credentialed and ready to work.  All I had to do was accept one of the daily substitute teaching jobs that get posted on the services’ website.  I let another week or two go by before finally clicking yes to a 1 day assignment in an elementary school.  It was in the subject I had taught my entire career- music. It was for the day after Memorial Day vacation- a typically squirrelly time for student behavior.  But, I knew what those situations were and didn’t want to sugar coat my experience. 

So when the day came, I got myself out of bed early and went to school.

It was only one day, but it’s amazing how much that single day mimicked my entire career.  On the one hand, I got to work with some really great kids and it was fun!  On the other hand, I saw once again how a small minority of kids with behavior problems and a lack of accountability can ruin everything.  And that was as miserable as I remembered.

The worst incident was when I was waiting outside my room, as the teacher brought her class down the hall to me.  One student stood out because he was walking wildly in and out of the class line, doing whatever he wanted.  Before I even had a chance to ask the teacher about him, she said, “He probably won’t listen to you, but that’s ok. As long as he isn’t hurting himself or somebody else, we let him go.”

“I’ve seen this bullshit movie before”, I thought.

As you can guess, this kid had learned that he didn’t need to pay attention to anybody, so he didn’t.  As a substitute teacher, there wasn’t much I could do in the way of discipline.  The teacher I was subbing for seemed to have a plan that was specific to her.  The kids’ classroom teacher had already shown me that she’d given up.  So as I tried to teach the class a song, the problem kid was wandering all over the place, freely making noise on the drums and xylophones along the wall, making it difficult for the rest of us to concentrate or to have any fun.

As the classroom teacher predicted, the problem kid was not listening to me. As he made his way up to the front of the room where I was trying to teach, he walked right beside me.  I put my face a few inches from his and said this in a very stern, but not overly loud voice.

“I don’t care who you’re allowed to ignore at this school, but you’re going to listen to me.”

It was a bluff I figured I would lose. There was really nothing stopping him from continuing his nonsense.  But instead, he stopped in his tracks, his face fell into a shocked expression, with maybe a little fear.  A second later, he was crying softly by himself in a chair off to the side of the class.  

I hadn’t expected this reaction, not the way things had been going. But it at least allowed me to continue with the rest of the class.  When I turned back to them, they were smiling and happy.  Some even looked relieved.  In an attempt to coral the problem kid, I had asked the class a few minutes earlier if they were annoyed by the problem kid’s behavior.  They all said yes, but I didn’t know how much they meant it until I saw their faces after the crying started.

For the rest of the period, the class and I had a nice time with each other.

I’ll skip the sermon I’d like to give at this point about how many schools accept and enable poor student behavior at the expense of everybody’s education. Instead, I’ll end with this:

That was my exciting first day as a substitute teacher.  It was a good reminder of why I loved teaching and also why I left it. 

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Holiday Horns

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