Hubby Guest Post: Head of the Class

As school starts again, I reminisce about my time as a teacher.  Before I landed my current job, I worked as a substitute teacher for a few years and eventually got my own classroom. 

One of my favorite memories of student teaching was the time a student was supposed to give a presentation. He went up to the front of the class and farted then started doing a kicking robot dance….this was supposed to be a speech about a great American.  I’m still trying to figure out who that was, Benjamin Franklin perhaps…I don’t know how historically accurate that would have been. 

When I was a substitute, I would joking call myself the stepfather of teaching because I saw many parallels in the way students treated me.  I get it, the students probably didn’t like some new guy coming into THEIR room and telling them how to act.  Almost every day kids would say things like, “You’re not my real teacher, I don’t have to listen to you!” or “Stop sleeping with my mom!”  OK, not the second thing, but it was a pretty lonely life.  I did once have a scary 5^th grader tell me he wasn’t going to listen because I was “a grown-ass man doing a woman’s job”…that one cut me to the core. 

As a general rule for substitutes, asking the class to do anything but sleep or make-out was met with boos and protests.  Inevitably every worksheet or test I would hand out had already been taken last week.  (students think any adults are so stupid…but usually they are right)

Also, when you are a sub and the school is not extremely scary, every day is like a job interview.  At any moment the principal could walk in and see the room in utter chaos then throw you a look like, “Can’t you control these animals?... I mean come on, we’re giving you 80 whole dollars for the day.”  And I would give a look back as to say, “You know these kids are awful, the teacher not being here makes it worse, and I was only left with a worksheet they all lied about doing already, so I have nothing to do…sorry I’m not an expert in Chinese algebra.”

When I did finally have a long term teaching job, the thing that stuck out most to me was the amount of parents who would treat the teachers as therapists.  After the parents sighed through the student report, they would unload all of their own personal baggage on me.  The conversations would generally go like this.

-Teacher: Hello, Mr. Smith, your son threw a pencil in class today and hit another student in the head.

-Parent: Oh really, well I’m about to divorce my third wife because I’m having an affair with a beagle.  My boss yells at me a lot for talking on the phone at work and my son’s real mom is a Satan worshiper who put a curse on me so I can’t win the lottery, so that is why little Jonny is acting up.  Please, stop picking on my son.

-Teacher: Ok thanks.

As a teacher you find out that A LOT of people have no business raising kids, which is probably not a shock, but it’s sad to see exactly how parents can mess up a child first- hand.  Many parents think that teachers have some magic power that can make kids act human, they don’t.  In fact, many students’ see teachers as another authority figure out to make their life worse, because that is what they have come to expect from adults.  “Oh your child tried to burn the house down then robbed the liquor store, but you’re surprised I can’t get him to do this worksheet about turtles?”

Despite my joking, I really liked my time as a teacher and hope to return someday…not soon, but someday.