Substitute Teachers: challenges and student perspective
Substitute
teachers are near and dear to my heart. One of my jobs as a psychologist in a
large urban school district was training substitute teachers on classroom
management. And now my son is a substitute teacher, while getting his teaching
credential.
There
are many myths about subbing, like "Don't smile for the first day." I
advise the opposite. Even if you are facing a challenging group of
adolescents, smile and tell them that you're so happy to be there, because this
is your favorite age group and the teacher has said so many great things about
them. It's hard to be evil to someone who likes you.
One
of the many strategies is to put a few sample notes home on the board, e.g.
"________________ was so helpful today in the class. I appreciate the
positive attitude and helpful behavior." The sub states that he or she
loves to send positive notes home or to leave them for the regular teacher. The
sub then invites students who want such a note to let him or her know at
sometime during the day. Amazing what this motivates in a classroom.
So,
I was very impressed by the letter that my niece's fifth grade daughter wrote
about a long-term sub when the teacher was out with knee surgery. Granted, she
is an exceptionally thoughtful and bright child, but I thought the information and perspective would be valuable to anyone who is doing substitute teaching (and to teachers
selecting a long-term sub)
Thanks
to Sophia.
Dear
Mrs. G.,
We
are writing this letter first to welcome you back, and we are very delighted to
see you again as our fifth grade teacher!
We hope you had a full recovery and are feeling much better.
The
second reason we write this letter is to express our concern regarding the
atmosphere of the class during your absence.
While we understand that filling in as a substitute teacher is not an
easy job, we feel that there was a very high level of stress. This stress made learning difficult and made
the classroom very unpleasant at times. We believe many of our actions were
interpreted as misbehavior, and numerous pink slips were distributed to
students who have never been reprimanded for behavioral issues. For example,
good-hearted joking and fun was not tolerated and was regarded as bad behavior.
The threat of receiving the punishment of pink slips added a lot of tension on
us, and some of us took it very hard. The class felt controlled by the fear of
earning a pink slip. Even for those of us who were not the subject of a pink
slip, the situation of seeing our classmates being treated unfairly and our
classmates’ reactions to the punishment were upsetting to the point of deep
sorrow for each other.
I,
as our anonymous writer, felt this sorrow throughout your absence. Though I
didn’t get a pink slip during this period of time, I did watch many of my
classmates receive them. I watched sobbing out of agony after class,
recognition to everyone that you need to stop talking, even if you were trying
to work and your tablemate wants to start a conversation, groups drawing
together on the back of their papers while waiting for others to finish their
sprints, but then misinterpreted for passing notes. Also, as mentioned before,
humor was not accepted.
I
am still very stressed from what happened the Thursday this paragraph is being
written. I also keep this name anonymous. I felt as if I needed to converse
this issue with a group of students. Because of this I felt compelled to write
this letter. Honestly, I feel we tried really hard to be on our best behavior
and show respect in the beginning, but every day class got stricter and
stricter, and we slowly became restless. Finally I realized that it wasn’t that
we were bad students, but that we actually really missed you and we wanted our
normal routine. I personally feel that the class was not run by reward and kept
calm, as you would do.
Thank
you for taking this time to read this letter, you have no idea how incredibly
pleased we are to have you back. Next time you have a sub, we would appreciate
it if you were able to vary it with different people, if you have a choice. We
look forward for better times with you this school year.