The Substitutes

About two weeks ago my coop was out for a Thursday and Friday. I was my first time without him at least in the building so it was an exciting time for me. Because of liability issues there needs to be a teacher of record for each class and since I am not a teacher, there needed to be a substitute. It was an easy job for whomever it was going to be considering that I was the one doing all the teaching.

I met her after the "homeroom" period and she seemed like she was going to be fine. This is after she screwed up and forgot to escort the seniors to their assembly. It was just a miscommunication on someone's part that didn't result in anything bad accept the seniors were a little bit late.

The kicker was when during my first period algebra class when her cell phone went off. Now, things happen and we all forget to turn our cell phones off from time to time. So after a bit of chastisement from the students I thought it was going to be fine. Then.....THEN she answered the phone and had a not-so-quiet conversation for about...6 minutes. If THAT wasn't bad enough, she then proceeded to make another call. I don't think I have even experience something that rude in a movie theater. I had no idea how to respond and for about 5 seconds I was so flabbergasted that I think I just stood in front of the classroom with a blank stare on my face. The worst part of this experience which may be more sad than bad was that she was a classroom teacher for over thirty years in this same school. What in the world was she thinking?

Once again, this week, my coop was out for a surgery and there was another sub assigned to my classroom. She ended up being OK. Her intentions were good and she tried to help wherever she could. But my first impression of her was, to say the least, not very positive. During the first day she was here during the first period she did something completely inexplicable. I was doing a simple lesson on solving polynomial equations. On my first example when I got to the step where you have to set each factor to zero and then solve to find the root I was reviewing the Factor Theorem which says that in a factor x - r, r is a solution to the polynomial.

I then see her get up and approach me. She politely asks for the chalk and then goes on to teach for about 10 minutes while I was just standing there like an idiot. A student told me afterward that the look on my face was priceless. I don't know which look I was giving but I remember thinking that I wanted to tackle her. The funny thing is what she ended up teaching. She showed them that if you set the factors equal to zero and then solve for the variable you would end up with the root. Not only had we been doing this very same method for a few chapters but I was about to show the same thing while comparing the connection between this and the Factor Theorem.

I don't know. Maybe I looked like I needed help. At least she was trying to do something conducive to teaching as opposed to the crazy cell phone lady.