Substitute Teachers: How to Treat A Classroom

Yesterday, I left some suggestions for classroom teachers in what substitutes need. I’m sure there is more to the list, as each classroom and school differs from another.

As I mentioned, Substitutes also have a responsibility, and I’ve heard from teachers and students alike on things that need to be done:

Substitute Teachers

1. Be on time.
   1. This means, to me, being at least fifteen minutes early to where you are supposed to report (usually the main office).
   2. Dress appropriately.
   3. Ask for a security badge if not given one automatically.
   4. Ask for the Substitute Folder if it is kept in the main office.
      1. Make sure you have CURRENT attendance sheets.
2. Come prepared with at least one pen: don’t assume any will be left for you.
3. Get to the room you need to report to and read the lesson plans from start to finish.
   1. Hopefully, the teacher will have left you all material you need with the lesson plan.
   2. If not, round it up/locate it before the students come in.
4. If the teacher assigns a Study Hall or Individual Reading for that time period:
   1. Do not:
      1. Read the newspaper; text; be on the computer; discuss your personal life; comment on other classes/schools; listen to your own music with ear plugs; etc.
   2. Do:
      1. State you are in charge
         1. They have work to do: do it
      2. Take names if they are disrespectful to you
      3. Keep your calm
5. Leave the classroom, especially the teacher’s desk/work area, as you found it.
6. Leave the teacher notes on how the day was: good and not so good behavior.
   1. Don’t leave a novel: just highlights/bullets
   2. Some schools use some sort of feedback system, whether online or paper: follow through on it.
7. If you are working with any classroom aides or paras: thank them for their help at the end of the class/day.
8. When students say “..the teacher always lets us…” well, that is up to you and the feel of the kids, but more times than not the teacher does not  let them do whatever they’ve just told you.
   1. Apologize, tell them you have no notes to that effect, and they’ll have to do it your way for today.  Tell them you’ll leave a note for the teacher that you said no. They’ll usually stop at that.

Zero Tolerance & Broken Rules

Zero Tolerance and School Safety

The Time is Right to End ‘Zero Tolerance’ in Schools

Zero Tolerance Schools Discipline Without Wiggle Room

Zero Tolerance and Alternative Suggestions

 

The above links will lead you to sites on both sides of the debate over  Zero Tolerance in schools. I leave it to you to read them, make your own conclusions.

I won’t summarize them, but give you some observations:

A school with a strongly worded rules on dress code and school behavior online, with the consequences for infractions clearly stated. Syllabi/Lesson Plans, posted online as well, readdressing the same concerns. The conduct rules are posted in the main office as well.

What was seen: two students being taken out of the school in hand cuffs by police officers; not one student dressed in the very well laid out dress code (hoodies and hats were worn; scarves as head wear; tee shirts with graphics; etc); students walking around the hallways by the front door guard, near the main office, sitting on the floor; a school official hugging a student (one “rule” was “no contact between students of any type, hugging mentioned); a student walking into the office, talking to a secretary, her trying to send him on his way to class but he cut his class, as he came back in less than fifteen minutes later to “hang out”; and during the classroom change, uncountable number of cell phones and electronics being used in a school they are supposedly banned.

This was one school, but I’ve seen variations played out in many.

I made a mention of this, at times. to various teachers or staff, and the answer is almost always the same: a shrug of the shoulders, or the complaint that no one enforces it, or they can’t enforce them. They don’t get support from any number of sources (parents, the principal, whoever).

I’ve also seen schools where the parents are very involved and supportive, where the rules of conduct and dress are enforced. Are there still problems? Of course. You are dealing with a wide variable of situations. Yet, when rules don’t matter, consequences are basically non-existent…

I haven’t written here in quite awhile. Observing what I have in the last half a year (really, last four years) has sometimes left me dumbstruck. This experience just left me shaking my head.

What do you see that will work?

“Don’t Worry About Spelling”

“My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.”
A. A. Milne

“I don’t see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.”
― Mark Twain

“God, don’t they teach you how to spell these days?”

“No,” I answer. “They teach us to use spell-check.”
― Jodi Picoult

It goes like this: I’m at a school and giving the class a handout. I’m reading it along with them so I can answer (hopefully) any question that arises. The first page is a list of vocabulary words (the day’s “Do Now” is: “Why do you need to increase your vocabulary?”); the following pages (parts A & B) are fill-in-the-blanks based solely on those words. The kids are struggling already. The answers are on the first page given: they just have to read, go back to the list, circle the correct letter or fill in the blank.

Part C is different: it’s a journal entry that asks them to think. All well and good, but then it says (and I’m only slightly paraphrasing here):

“Don’t Worry About Spelling.”

That in itself boggles my mind, but it’s not the first time I have been mentally gobsmacked (hmmm..is that possible, since a gob is a mouth? Don’t care: I’ll follow Mark Twain from his above quote. So yes, I am dumbfounded).

I wrote about a previous experience with third graders before: in assisting a student with a written assignment, in my trying to help them correct all their spelling errors, which were many, I was informed that the school administration did not want that. If the word read like it sounded, then that was good enough. I informed the teacher that I’d rather be fired for trying to help the student spell correctly then to dumb down. Nothing more was ever said to me on that subject.

In the case of the above hand out, this was High School. Six and seven grades higher, and “don’t worry about spelling” is emblazoned on the paper.  Scary. Just plain old scary.

On a recent interview, I was told by the interviewer that they had to discard so many resumes and cover letters due to the amount of grammatical and spelling (many homonym) errors that a normal spell check system does not catch. I’ve heard this before, and I’ve kicked myself in the head the few times I did not proof read a cover letter as well as possible, catching that stupid mistake that makes me sound like a dolt.

So…the schools say “don’t worry about spelling.” The job force, which is getting stricter and harder to break through, IS looking at these things.

Scary…just plain old scary; and very, very sad.

Public schools need to raise their standards and return to a more traditional, classical educational learning method.

What we are churning out is not working.

What do you think?

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While I have been slumbering, figuring out what to say/do with this blog, someone “liked it’ this morning: rereading it, it gave me a renewed sense of purpose. I am job hunting, and that has taken over most of my concentration. Today I have two interviews, both for Director/Manager of Education position in arts administration. This post already has helped clear some of the cobwebs I’ve laid in my own way. Thanks for the like, Isurrett2.

bornstoryteller

One of the most disturbing things that I have heard  from a student was:

“Why should I try? I’ll only be working at McDonald’s.”

I was an Artist-in-Residence for a year for a large school district in Westchester County, NY. Still early in my profession, that statement was both a shock and a revelation of a point of view I had never considered before: low expectations given, and projected; leading this student to live  that that is all they can do. The young lady who said that to me was in a ninth grade repeat class. Most of them, I was told much later, were on their THIRD repeat of ninth grade.

Yes: she was a third timer.

It was not that working at McDonald’s is such a negative job, but the expectation of that is all she could expect in life is. There are jobs that many would never…

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Budget Cuts: No Kindergarten!!!

Harrisburg school budget to cut Kindergarten, Art, Sports

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania schools eliminate Kindergarten

The Danger of Cutting After-School Programs

School Budget Cuts: How Students Say Slashes Are Affecting Them

 

Please read the links above first. I’ll wait.

Now…

I’m completely blown away. Schools are probably the last place we should be cutting budgets, since the future of our world depends on the children. We propagate the species to continue, and I would hope we’d like to leave a better world, and give our kids the chance to advance.

Doesn’t seem like it.

These types of cuts will not happen in private schools. These schools have the means to make sure all the educational hurdles we are facing does not happen to their academics. They’ll continue to have Kindergarten, Art programs, Sports programs, and have a more well rounded student in the long run. They’ll take working models and stick with them, instead of futzing around like the public sector does.

As part of the public, we should allow all children the best education possible, no matter the social/economic happenstance of the family/community.

What Is A Drama Teacher?

A Fourth Grade Classroom:

I was asked the question: “What is a Drama Teacher?” when I had announced that I am one.

According to a young lady , who I had the pleasure to work with that day, a Drama Teacher is:

 

“Someone who teaches others to exaggerate emotions so they can be Drama Queens.”

 

I think that pretty much says it all.

🙂

Longer School Days/Year: Is This AN Answer?

Chicago Wants Longer School Days; Foes Want Details

Longer School Days That Work

Obama Calls For A Longer School Year

Iowa Considers Longer School year

Speak Your Piece: Longer School Year, and Better

 

 

I was just on an interview for a job I would love to have. One of the questions I was asked was about the working hours: would I mind working the longer hours this new school would schedule. What struck me is that it needed to be asked at all: there are many, many reasons why extended school time is needed today.

Before I continue, these are MY opinions from what I’ve observed in the field (I have taught as a Teacher, Teaching Artist and as a Substitute Teacher); I’ve left you five links above for others on the subject. Object if you must, but do so with justifications and always keep it civil.

I have heard from too many educators that there is just not enough time in the school day to accomplish all that must be done. I’ve experienced it myself: you just get things going, and they have to rush to another class instead of investing the time needed t o really explore. I’m not talking about busy work, which I have seen in an abundance. Actual student engaging moments get cut short many times.

We have a  shrinking teacher base, due to budget cuts in places there should not be budget cuts. Classrooms are overcrowded. Tests and evaluations and  rote “learning”  practices shove aside a real chance for connections and actual learning.

Yes, we should have more teachers, more classrooms, and less students per class.

With the changing economic realities, parents are not always home until later in the day. The idea of Mom always being home after school is antiquated in many parts of the US; that has changed, but the schools have not changed with the times. There are after school clubs and such already in place; but again, the idea for a longer day is not just social activities (which they do need to foster as well, since much of home life gets truncated that way).

Double blocks of teaching (80 to 90 mins) during the day gives the teacher and the class to work on projects. The time constraints we have now means that there are only three classes per day that way. A longer day would allow more constructive work.

Advisory meetings, portfolio work, special projects that have a true impact and are not busy work (again, seen too much of that), planning sessions; individualized work (NOT study halls: I saw, in one location, 12 students on computers playing Halo in study hall; not making that up, and it was not my place to stop them)…there is so much that can be accomplished with proper time use.

The long summer breaks were originally set up by agricultural needs: farmer kids needed to work on the farm. School came second.

Education should not come second in anything we do.