My sixth grade teacher, Mr. McDonald, was becoming eloquent one day when he made the following statement:
There are three types of people in the world: geniuses, who instinctively see what lies ahead and plan accordingly, average people, who learn only from their own mistakes, and idiots, who make the same mistakes over and over again. .
Since then, and that was many decades ago, I can honestly say that I have played all three roles in my life. There have been times when I have been clairvoyant enough to avoid mistakes before they occurred. I also had the experience of learning from my mistakes. And of course, all too often, I have found myself the idiot who makes the same mistake over and over again. I may not have been the genius at the beginning of my understudy career, but I am bound and determined not to make the same mistakes more than once.
I really wanted to be ready for substitute teaching, but I just didn’t have any reference points. During the first days and weeks as a substitute, I made small adjustments as I learned to move. After a few weeks, I felt pretty confident that my years of experience as a parent would help me.
For that reason, I had high hopes the first day I taught in high school. The week before, I had taught at an elementary school where the teacher was with me in class for part of the day. He was in another position for most of the day, but was able to make several trips back to his class to help me and was able to observe me in action. When we were able to speak at the end of the day, she was very complimentary and told me that she had done a great job. To be specific, she was impressed with the kinds of questions she was asking and even more impressed that her students were able to answer them. This was not the first compliment I received for my teaching style, so I thought things looked promising for the future. At the end of the day, numerous students came up to give me a hug and asked if I could be their permanent teacher the following year. I surely had a gift for teaching and had finally found my niche.
During that week, I had been looking at my computer for future assignments when I noticed that there was a week-long assignment at the closest high school to my home. This was a real blessing for me. Often I don’t know overnight where I will be teaching. It’s not unusual for me to get the call minutes before class starts, so having an entire week of knowing exactly where I’d be working was a pleasure. I was a little worried that homework would be at a high school, but honestly, how bad could it be?
I was about to find out.
On Monday morning I arrived early at the high school office; I always try to arrive earlier than required. From the beginning I have sensed that those few quiet moments in the morning were critical and experience has confirmed that notion for me. Although she intuitively knew she had to be there early, she didn’t know exactly what to do during those first few minutes. That knowledge would come with a little more experience.
When I got to class, I discovered that the teacher had done an excellent job designing assignments for the entire week. The class was in language arts and almost every day required students to read something and write a response. That was encouraging, a plan for every day. There was also a seating chart for each class during the day so you could tell who was who and identify the rioters. Until now, it seemed that everything would be fine.
A few minutes before the first bell rang, I went to the next class to introduce myself to the teacher. One of the strategies that I had been encouraged to use at another school was to send disruptive students to an adjacent classroom. This sounded like a great idea, but I wanted to know a little about who I was sending them to and try to get permission first. The teacher was a kind man who said that except for the fourth period, his planning time, he was happy to take on any of my problem students.
Moments later the doorbell rang and I stood by the classroom door and said “Hello” to the students as they entered. Most ignored me. My philosophy at the time was that the time between bells belonged to the students, so they were free to do whatever they wanted. My time would start after the bell rang. He didn’t know it then, but the school day hadn’t officially started yet and he had already lost the first skirmish.
When I finally entered the class, my students were doing exactly what students of that age usually do when they are alone; the fool. Paper planes were flying, no one was at the desk and absolutely no one was paying attention to me. It took me several minutes to get his attention long enough to take on the role. I was losing at an alarming rate and didn’t even realize how bad things were. What alarmed me a bit was the fact that the students I would bet were good for their other teachers were giving me a hard time and if I was having a hard time with them then the less disciplined students were going to be more than I. could handle.
During that entire week, there were very few occasions when I had everyone’s full attention. Maintaining even the most rudimentary sense of order was nearly impossible. People talked constantly. The girls completely turned around in their chairs talking to each other and completely ignoring me. When I walked and asked them to look in the right direction, they would roll their eyes and act like my request was a huge imposition, then as soon as it passed they would go back to what they had been doing before.
I felt like I was in one of those movies where a teacher is given a classroom of incorrigible abandoned children and makes them cooperate, except that no one was cooperating. He secretly wished the return of corporal punishment, even though he knew that was not going to happen. Of course, I know better, but I didn’t think anyone would blame me for having that secret fantasy.
The pencil sharpener worked constantly. Electric pencil sharpeners can give you a fine point on a new pencil in a matter of seconds and yet students would stand there for minutes to polish until their pencils were bumps and then ask me if I had a replacement. (One student pressed his pencil into the pencil sharpener until he could no longer retrieve it, jamming it in the ‘on’ position. I finally had to unplug it to get it to stop grinding.) Now the sounds of electric pencil sharpeners haunt my scariest nightmares.
This does not mean that there were no good times during the week. Moments in which the light was turned on in someone’s understanding, when I made a connection with some of them on an intellectual level. More than once a young girl would write something on the board about how submissive she was and on several occasions the students asked me if I could be a regular teacher. Of course, despite how badly they were behaving, I couldn’t help but wonder if some of their kindest statements didn’t come with ulterior motives.
At the end of each day that week, he was emotionally drained. On Friday I realized that I had caught some kind of virus that made the task much more challenging. I had a meeting with my wife and the pastor of our church that night and I sat in his office on the verge of tears with my nose dripping like a faucet and my voice choked with emotion. It had been the most challenging week of my life and I knew something was going to have to change.
That something was me.
