so profesh

I subbed a class today. Not even joking.

I'm sitting there by myself in the student lounge doing physics work (which is going to end up killing me, by the way) and I see Mr. B walk by and I sort of make friendly eye contact.

About three minutes later, he comes back and into the student lounge.

Mr B: Hey, what are you working on?

Me: Physics.

Mr B: Cool. I'm going to ask you something, and it's going to sound really bizarre.

Me: Alright.

Mr B: Will you sit and watch a class of eighth graders do their English as a Second Language work? I was looking for teachers to sub but everyone's busy, and I've got to go sub for a class myself, because four or five teachers haven't come in today. Sick or something.

Me: Ah, yes, the first day back from break. I think I pulled that once, in like, fourth grade.

Mr B: Yeah. So can you help me out?

I was already getting up. I figured, I could read my textbook just as well in a room full of eighth graders as I could by myself.

I get there; there are four of them. That's actually a pretty average class size at my school. I sit down and Mr B. introduces me as "You remember our... well, I was going to say student council member, but she was our talent show winner!" and the eighth grade guys sort of nod. They know me. I recognize some of them. One of them is Linus, this kid who was in my ski group for a couple days, the one that we all wanted to smack.

Super.

The first half hour was pretty uneventful. Then they finished their worksheets, and their other assignment was to study for a test they had the next day. The studying they were supposed to do, apparently, was to read stories from these little booklets and answer exceedingly obvious questions, such as "How did Miko feel when he saw the shark? a) afraid b) angry c) cheerful."

I decided it was time to intervene.

First I tried to read one of these (horribly written) stories aloud and critique the style. I couldn't even get through it.

Me: Okay, what's your test on?

Kid: Grammar. Prepositions.

Other kid: Can we play hangman?

Me: No. You guys should study. I'm going to tell you about Ms. Allen and the Scotty Dog and the Tree.

I think they were anticipating some kind of horrible condescending story.

Me: When I was in... sixth grade, our english teacher was named Ms. Allen. She was kind of retarded [sorry Ms. Allen. I really didn't like you] So this one day, we were learning about prepositions, and she had these little paper scottish terriers and she handed them out and she drew a tree on the board. And she wrote on the board, "The Scotty Dog runs _____ the tree." And we all had to think of words to fill in the blank, and those were the prepositions. But we were like, "what the hell is this? We're twelve. We are way too cool for this" because it really did seem pretty condescending. But we all went up and said useless things like "the scotty dog runs around the tree" and "the scotty dog runs beneath the tree" and... well, it does help you remember whether something is a preposition. It seemed pretty useless, but I do still remember it...

Then someone started singing Tik Tok, so I decided the best course of action would be to write the lyrics on the board, and have them identify the prepositions.

Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy

Grab my glasses; I'm out the door; I'm gonna hit this city.

Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of jack

Cause when I leave for the night I ain't coming back.

After that we did "Right Round."

Kid: You should be a teacher.

Me: I'd get fired.

I feel like a lesson was learned today. That lesson being that if these kids were legitimately stimulated and educated by twenty minutes of humoring my ADD, there is a serious problem with this school.

Love always,
Clara