first day of subbing

I decided to record some of the stories and experiences I've had while subbing... For various reasons I've decided to post them on the days when they occurred, even tho it's been 2 months since my first day.

So let's see. My first day was strange and revealing.

I had a couple periods of "resource room," a sort of study hall for students with special-ed labels, where supposedly they do their homework. I found (on this and successive days) that they mostly don't have any homework and that the unstated agreement is that I will leave them alone and they will leave me alone and as long as we're all quiet we're all happy.

This is education?

Last, I had a period of social studies for, again, students with various special ed labels. I hate this type of class--in the name of making it "easier," they give students really boring, stupid busywork that is not much easier for them than the regular work.

For example, the topic was the Roman Empire and the beginning of Christianity, and in their busywork they had a matching exercise for their vocabulary words. Among the fifteen or twenty words were "messiah," "prophet," and "Jesus," and they were somehow expected to differentiate between the definitions of the three.

Well, "messiah" vs. "prophet" is actually quite a fine theological distinction, and all the definitions could reasonably have been supposed to refer to Jesus. So even though they understood the passage and understood the words, they had a terrible time with the exercise. So the whole thing just makes them feel stupider, even though it's really the exercise that's stupid.

Again, this is education?

These are the students who would most benefit from the type of challenging, engaging lessons that I received in my "gifted" enrichment programs.... instead they get this crap. So anyway, much misery all around, much disruption from a couple of the kids, and the rest just sat there looking like they wished they could just vanish through the floor. The highlight of the day for them was when my underwear showed above my (for the last time beltless) corduroy slacks.

Maybe I should change the title of this blog to "this is education?"

Afterward I reflected on my role: basically I just kept the disruption from getting totally out of control, and saw to it that all the students made at least a desultory attempt at their silly worksheets. And I had done my job--done all that was asked of me. Could it really be so little was expected?

Feeling the near-total lack of attention or interest from outside the room to anything that happened inside it, I saw how easy it would be to just go along with the system, and felt the seductive pull to relinquish my ideas about how things could be different. It could be so easy to just bide my time.

Scary.

Very scary.