I just finished this today during writer's workshop. I read the last part to this class, and they wanted to tell me stories about the times when this has happened to them. Maybe you'll have a story at the end, as well! :o)
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V.
Decisions
fifth year
I hate to confess it. My fifth year of teaching is a hazy, fuzzy memory. I know I had an average group of kids, I know we went on some field trips, read some books, and had some fun together. I know I had a few stinkers. Alex, who liked to think he could pick and choose what he was or wasn’t going to do; Cody, the hyper ADHD child who acted before thinking; Robert, angry from a divorce, who sobbed when he had to call both parents and tell them he’d deliberately taken a third-graders glove and flushed it down a toilet. But really, those kids were nothing compared with the spirit-crushing previous year.
The only incident from that year that really sticks out in my mind began on one of those mornings when I couldn’t decide. Was I sick, or just tired? Should I haul my worn out self into my classroom and write lesson plans for a sub, or just suffer through the day? When the lightheadedness began, I decided a sub was the way to go. I made the phone call, threw my hair in a ponytail, and headed off in my pajamas to school.
Sometimes it’s just easier to go to school sick than it is to go through the hassle of writing sub plans. The lunch count needs to be done by 8:15, Andy can take care of that for you. Don’t mark Rachel absent, she doesn’t attend school here anymore. Students have lists of partners in their desks, don’t let them just choose their own or Cody and Alex will beeline towards each other. Make sure you don’t let those two wind up working with each other. The schedule says lunch is at 12:05, but you have to start lining them up at 12:00 so they have enough time. Walk them to gym, make sure to check that the gym teacher is actually in the gym before you leave them there. Have Johanna pass out this packet of papers to go home, but don’t let her do it more than five minutes before the bell rings or they’ll lose them before they leave the room.
Teachers do so much during the day without thinking; verbalizing it for another adult is almost impossible. So, we write the plans, usually not knowing what that early morning phone call will bring us. It could be a retired teacher, who knows all the tricks of the trade and will have those kids behaving better than you do. Or it could be a frazzled, burned-out hippie, who wants children to be free to express themselves. Lesson plans, who needs lesson plans?
On this particular day, my sub would be a familiar face. A local, she’d been in my room before. She wasn’t my favorite sub, but she wasn’t the worst either. She could be mean-spirited with the kids, but she followed the lesson plans and left good notes. I wrote the plans, straggled back home, and poured myself back into bed, thankful for the coziness.
The phone call came at about 3:30 that day. I had made it to the couch by then, Vernors and soda crackers in hand, so when I heard my partner teacher’s voice I was partially lucid.
“Gina, I am so sorry to bother you, but I needed to give you a heads up.”
“Ok,” I croaked.
“You may be getting some phone calls tonight.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she continued, “Mrs. Smith brought up thong underwear in social studies class today.”
“Huh? She what? Thongs?”
“Uh-huh. Apparently the lesson was on Pursuit of Happiness?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t leave anything about thongs.”
“Yeah, well, she took it upon herself to give an additional example of pursuing happiness. I think the exact quote was ‘You have the right to wear thong underwear, even if you have a big fat butt and no one wants to see it.’”
“No,” I gasped. “Why – what – why would you do that?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out either. The kids were very disturbed. I’ll let you go, but I didn’t want you to be caught off guard if a parent called you tonight. I let the principal know already.”
“Thanks, Dawn,” I answered as I hung up the phone.
Thong underwear. Fifth graders. These were two concepts that shouldn’t go together. This woman had children. Would she want her kids spoken to like that in school? “Well,” I thought, “there’s another sub who’s not allowed to be in my room anymore.”
She was in good company. There was the man who let the kids run wild. A woman who left a note saying no one misbehaved and everything was fine. I found out later the kids had thrown books out the second story window on her watch. Another woman was unable to show the video I’d left because she couldn’t locate the enormous, thirty-inch television strapped on the cupboard directly behind my desk. She didn’t bother to ask the kids the location of the TV, either. Another sub informed me that she had helped me out by not using the plans I’d left. Instead, she told my fifth graders a ninety minute story about Bobo the Duck, then let them color. Now that must have been an educationally valuable day.
Maybe I shouldn’t care so much. After all, one bad day probably won’t destroy these children, or their education. They’ll recover. But even though I know that, these thoughts still run through my head when I wake up with an achy tickle in the back of my throat, or after I’ve spent the night running from bed to bathroom and back again. Yet, I do care, and I know that the next time I watch the numbers on the thermometer rise above 100 degrees, I’ll find my slippers and shuffle off to school to write detailed lesson plans for whatever the luck of the draw brings me that day.
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