Monday I was too in the throes of convulsive throwing up to care if my emergency sub plans were good or not; my students would survive.
Tuesday I again called in sick and was in bed all day again physically in pain and mentally agonizing that my sub plans would hold out only so long and potentially not well at all.
Wednesday I felt terrible but knew staying home wouldn’t help matters much in my gut or classroom, so I plowed my way into the day and ended up feeling fine. And it was good I went back: As I wrote M partway through the day, “Things here were getting subbish.”
The scoop: My school division pays subs really poorly. Furthermore, Monday had originally been a holiday, and a lot of teachers and subs just didn’t acclimate well to the idea of it becoming a snow day makeup occasion. Therefore, I had no sub. Other subs and some school staff ended up cycling through my room, presumably making sure the students were following my instructions.
It wasn’t too bad, really, but I wasn’t happy to see that the students seemed to have been told they could work together on the assignment, as I had clearly indicated should NOT happen. As one “sub” noted, “The students didn’t seem to want to work and were more interested in socializing.” Um, duh.
Tuesday was worse. The sub, whose name I didn’t recognize, left even less completed work than did Monday’s conglomeration, and this note: “It was a good day. Thanks for the plans.”
And of course there was the rash of spit wads all around the room, textbooks out of place and disorganized, and no work graded. (Okay, I admit–only an excellently excellent sub would actually grade work.)
But the surest signs that it was bad (if necessary) for me not to be at school were the greetings from students throughout the day:
“Oh, you’re back.”
“No offense, but the sub made you look boring.”
“We had a comedian and magician for our sub yesterday.”
(“Was he funny?” I asked. “Not really.” Great.)
Now, these responses to my lovely face smiling over my still-sore gut at first were a bit of a blow to my self esteem. But by the end of the day of interacting with students, making them laugh and work and be relatively model citizens of forced responsibility, I realized that most of the time a sub adored by students is a really bad idea. “Fun” under the guidance of a nice someone who believes in the innocence of children clearly has no place in a middle school classroom, where structure must be rigorous even the most creative and “free” projects must be strict regulation and “encouragement.”
Simply put: I hope my assignments are of value and even interesting and fun for my students. But let the emphasis rest on “value.” Also simply put: I have many devious students. Don’t watch them like a hawk, and you get annoying spit wads everywhere.
The bottom line: If my students didn’t want me to come back, then they really needed me.
It was also important for me to go back to school Wednesday because I had already planned to be out Thursday and Friday, too. I had to finalize plans for that sub, a woman I know and respect for her distinctive quality of being the most persnickety, unpleasantly confrontational, anal, nitpicky, and rule-following specimen of particularity person I know. She’s excellent: kids hate her because they’d better be perfect and work their butts off or she’ll get her own panties in a wad and then there’ll be trouble.
Now, to be fair, this lady is a retired teacher who knows how to affirm and encourage kids, and she does do that. But she’s strict beyond imagination–an absolutely lovely quality in a sub.
Plus, she often does grading. Last time when I came back from a day away, the only recuperation I had to do was enter grades into my grade book.
As I told one class Wednesday, “Look, you may have liked the sub yesterday. But just because I’m going to be gone again this week doesn’t mean your education has to suffer. Mrs. DS will maintain good order and insist that you do your work. You may not like her, but be cooperative and work hard and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
Here’s to hoping.
