Given that I'm tired of examining every single life lesson (that may or may not be true) which invariably accompanies every glitch in the road to my success (and recovery from illness no less), I thought I'd lighten things up a bit over the next week or so and share with you a few episodes of:
A Day in the Life of a Sub
Monday I worked in Junior High. Or as I like to call it, "Lord of the Flies".
For those of you out of the loop, that's grades 7 & 8 (roughly 12 and 13 years old).
Things were clipping along as usual... by 2 pm my throat was hoarse, there were a few paper airplanes on the ground, general insults had made their way back and forth across the room and a couple kids had laughed themselves to the floor.
But around 3:10 pm, some kid who had been aimlessly wandering the hallways all day -(I kid you not, and with no consequences) - stuck his head in my classroom door and chucked an iceball at some poor unsuspecting kid and got him right in the head.
I'd say it was a good shot, but it was also pretty hard to miss considering the kid was sitting two feet from the door.
Nothin' personal. He just happened to be in target range of where this criminal-in-the-making couldn't possibly miss his shot.
As this power-packed weapon rolled its way towards my feet (the thing did NOT break I swear), I looked up and said, "What the..."!?
"This is a FRAKKIN' ICEBALL!"
Like an audience at a tennis match, all the kids' heads turned in my direction.
Some even contemplated naming the culprit. I could see it in their eyes, but they couldn't figure out which was worse - ratting out one of their own or maintaining this vow of silence so inexplicably agreed upon during the adolescent years.
So I relieved them of the burden.
"It was that little --(muffled swear)-- wandering the halls wasn't it?
They nodded.
I grabbed my evidence and walked over to the poor, unsuspecting walking hormone who got nailed.
"You okay"?
"Yep. Didn't hurt at all", he said, "It just bounced right off me."
Gotta love the false bravado of twelve year old boys, I thought as I squeezed the lump in my hand to no avail. It was like a rock alright.
"Sure thing kid." I said in collusion knowing his pride was at stake. Besides, it was only 20 minutes 'til end of day. In half an hour, he'd be home nursing that growing egg with a bag of ice and weeping quietly in his room.
I stormed out and saw the sociopath, sheepishly walking towards the end of the hall.
"If you're gonna hurt people", I yelled at him, "why don't you just go home"?
He took that as permission to leave the school and went to his locker to put his jacket on while I stormed in the other direction to the office, where I slammed the ice ball down on the counter.
"Look", I said, "I know this kid wanders around all day, but this? This is too much."
Nothing came of it.
It rarely does.
But at least he didn't call me a bitch! like that kid did in grade 6, who flipped me the bird, then told me to "SUCK ON THIS ONE!"
Or the kid in grade 4 who was so violent the division psychologist told the school there was nothing they could do: "Just let him do what he wants. But assign an instructional assitant to him full-time so he doesn't hurt anyone."
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
What better, safer place to breed sociopaths than a permissive, public school?
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great public schools. And I like subbing. It's highly entertaining. But it's a different animal altogether from having your own classroom.
As a classroom teacher, there's a good chance I would eventually get fired because I would yank a bully into the hallway by his ear and make him call his grandma and tell her what he did.
Let her deal with it.
And this is not to say there aren't a lot of great public schools that do their bit and tolerate very little in the way of behavioral issues.
But, the impetus is on 'letting things slide' because the kid's 'got issues at home'.
I got news for them. This is not tolerance or compassion, it's called ENABLING.
And they're only making things worse.
But at least it makes for a lot of good stories...
