Sub-Sister: Adventures in Substitute Teaching

It's about time!

Isn't it funny how sometimes it takes putting yourself physically into a situation for memories to come flooding back? Like it takes going back to your Grandparent's old house to recall that big scary wardrobe that you used to be scared to death of, convinced that something big and hairy with lots of horns and drool would jump out of it at night.

Well, I got on a school bus this last week for the first time in, uh, about 14 years. It was weird. I sat there in a bit of a stupor, just smelling the bus-smell, and remembering how it felt to dodge flying books and insults on a daily basis.

But there was also a part of me that was oddly comforted. Buses smell the same. Kids still sit in the back and sing popular songs off-key. And I can still scrunch down in the seat so my knees are perched on the seatback in front of me and my feet are dangling off the floor. And that's still a comfortable posistion to sit in. All I needed was someone to play "Miss Mary Mack" with me.

I guess I should clarify that I wasn't driving the bus, this was during a field trip. I had been called in to sub for a class of itty-bitties that was planning to leave school grounds during the day. There were specific directions left for me. When we would leave, where the activity bus would be picking us up and letting us off, what we were to be doing, when we would be back, how I should tie my shoelaces, and what songs we should sing as a group during the trip. Maybe they weren't that specific, but I had in front of me the best and most thorough sub-plans I had ever recieved. Unfortunately, they were all wrong.

Before it was time to leave, a member of the administration visited the classroom where he heard about our little jaunt. Here is what I learned: It's illegal for a sub to take students off school grounds. Did you know this? I did not know this. This is a necessary info, people. You need to know something like this before you commit 25 counts of felony kidnapping! Needless to say, I made sure that Admin. knew of my ignorance. Hey, better ignorant than fired and incarcerated.

After this U-turn in my day, I'm scrambling around trying to figure out what to do with this class since my erstwhile "perfect" sub-plans had just died a fiery death, when the regular teacher calls to check in. I'm going to skip a lot of details here, because this was an uncomfortable and very stressful day. Here it is in a nutshell:

• Real Teacher comes in to ensure the legal operation of the field trip.
• At place-o-fun, Real Teacher is MIA.
• Discover only through eavesdropping that Real Teacher has left the premises without telling me.
• Return to school sans one adult and have to tattle to Administration.
• Feel like a vindictive fink.

The really interesting thing here is that the only enjoyable part of the day... was the children. They were little cherubs. If they had been hateful ankle-biting heathens, I might have gone AWOL along with Real Teacher, and left the bus driver to deal. Hmmmm... I wonder if that's the sort of thing I have to look forward to...

posted by Magpie Chick at 4:41 PM