5 Things I Learned About Subbing

Holy moly. Just thinking about substitute teaching gives me a complex. OR maybe because I'm subbing right now. Who knows. Seriously, it can be the best/worst job of anyone's life. Lets face it, I don't like getting up at 5 am to then deal with over 180 students who don't want to be there just as much as you don't, but it has its perks. Definite perk: LOTS of homework gets done and why lie, lots of pointless research that has no relevance to my life gets done, too. Bad thing: there's only so much in this world I can research about, which lasts until about 3rd period. Then I want to do this,

and then this

Guess I can't complain if I get paid to take roll, assign some work or play a movie, and blog. #winning

A few things I've learned so far:

1. I'M THE FREAKING TEACHER. Yes, it sounds juvenile, I know. But it's seriously important to remember. I lay down the law right at the beginning of the period. Do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, love thy neighbor as thyself...Just kidding. It's the same old same old: don't talk while I'm talking, do your work, etc. I'm usually pretty lenient about phones/music/talking/etc, but if students aren't working, or they're trying to turn this class into a shindig, I'll assign them an essay. I've done it before and they hate it. BUT if you tell them that that's the consequence if they don't work, it's usually enough to scare them into working.

2. COMPUTERS ARE YOUR BESTFRIENDS. Obvious reasons. Go pointless research. Go pointless research. I can tell you everything about absolutely nothing. My laptop is my saving grace, but some schools will give you a guest teacher log in so you can use the teacher comp. It's teacher locked though meaning you pretty much can google a few things and read a lot of yahoo. It's better than nothing. Most schools don't give you a log in; probably because they don't want you sitting on your butt researching all day. Oh well. 

3. MULTIPLE DAY JOBS ARE A SLICE OF CAKE. I don't mean easy, I mean awesome. Some people don't enjoy doing the same class more than once, and I guess that's understandable if you have a terrible class that won't listen and you have to deal with them for days on days. Regardless, I love multiple day jobs because I get to know the students and the students get to know me. I mean, that's kind of a big reason why I love teaching. They know my expectations and I know what makes them work/not work. It's makes the rest of the days easy, and I like knowing what I'm doing day-to-day, rather than walking in blind. But that's just me. 

4. 1ST, 4TH (or 5TH), and 6TH PERIODS ARE BEST PREPS. 1st-obviously you get to come in later, and time to prep and breathe before students come in. 4th or 5th depending on what lunch you have. If you have 1st lunch, 4th is great because you get your 30 min lunch that goes right into your prep. That's pretty much an hour and a half lunch break. HEAVEN. Same goes for 2nd lunch and 5th period. 6th is always nice because you get to go home early. It's especially nice if you work high school, you're home by 12:30!

5. BE POSITIVE. ALWAYS. This probably should have been #1. But really, if you come into a classroom showing that you don't want to be there (even if you don't) and have a bad attitude towards the students, it's going to be a long and hard day. I've learned that when I greet the students, ask how their day is going, or crack a joke every now and then (A-A-RON NEVER gets old, let me tell you!) they are more likely to listen and less likely to be punks. I mean, how can they be mean to a funny teacher right? Most of the time anyways. You wouldn't believe it, but a smile goes a long way.