Further Adventures in Substitute Teaching
Feb. 17th, 2026 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gremdarkBusy day today, but at least I can feel my momentum in a positive direction.
I got up early and went in for what had been listed as a one hour substitute gig at a nearby middle school. When I showed up, they asked me to stay 8:30 to noon, as apparently there had been a mistake in the coding on their side of the app. With an inner wince at the derailing of my morning, I agreed.
As it turned out, the school needed about 40 minutes of substitute teaching from me. It wasn't my favorite 40 minutes I've had as a sub. A student called me a faggot before 9 a.m. I was grateful to hand the class off to their regular teacher. For the remainder of the morning, they asked me to sit in the empty auditorium and keep students from entering it. When I got to the auditorium, I found out that I was the second sub they'd asked to sit in there. The two of us sat together for three hours, during which maybe six students total poked their heads in. Still, we had a nice chat, and I've certainly done more strenuous work for less money.
In the last hour I was there, the in-school suspension group was moved into the auditorium. I quickly developed a very low opinion of the teacher running things. He responded to one disgruntled twelve year old's needling by going off on a tirade about how children have no rights, then settled in to watch tiktoks on his cell phone without headphones. At full volume. His weapon of choice for keeping the students' volume under control was a metal whistle. Every time he interrupted his scrolling to blow it, the students responded with a cacophony of high pitched sounds of their own, then steadily ramped up the volume until it hit the prior level. To say I was glad to escape out to the parking lot is an understatement.
The library across the street from the school is hosting early voting, so I swung in and filled out a ballot. There's a larger-than-usual effort to primary my state's evil, Trump-crony senator, so I held my nose and voted in the Republican primary to help move the needle away from Trump and towards the candidates who at least pretend to care more about farm subsidies than making life worse for immigrants. I like everything about my state except the people who run it, so here's hoping local politics shift enough that I don't have to plan a cross-country move in the next few years. There are people here I'm loath to leave behind.
The rest of the day promises to be a good one. It's my neighbor's day off, and he's coming over with a box of free cookies from his bakery job. The plan is for him to get writing done while I finish my interview prep work, and with any luck we'll keep each other on task. I'm excited to hug him. I'm glad we both found jobs this month, but with him working evenings and nights and me going in at 7 or 8 in the morning, I'm seeing much less of him than I prefer. He's off Friday too, so I'm cooking him dinner. That'll be a good emotional reset.
I finished my slides and speaking notes for the sample lesson last night. I had to cut out some content from the beginning to make it stay under five minutes, but it still feels meaty and reflective of the things I'm best at as a teacher. Now I just have to get the slides and citations for the data analysis piece together and make sure I've practiced delivering those. One way or another, the interview is tomorrow at 11 a.m. After that, I can breathe a little more easily.
I got up early and went in for what had been listed as a one hour substitute gig at a nearby middle school. When I showed up, they asked me to stay 8:30 to noon, as apparently there had been a mistake in the coding on their side of the app. With an inner wince at the derailing of my morning, I agreed.
As it turned out, the school needed about 40 minutes of substitute teaching from me. It wasn't my favorite 40 minutes I've had as a sub. A student called me a faggot before 9 a.m. I was grateful to hand the class off to their regular teacher. For the remainder of the morning, they asked me to sit in the empty auditorium and keep students from entering it. When I got to the auditorium, I found out that I was the second sub they'd asked to sit in there. The two of us sat together for three hours, during which maybe six students total poked their heads in. Still, we had a nice chat, and I've certainly done more strenuous work for less money.
In the last hour I was there, the in-school suspension group was moved into the auditorium. I quickly developed a very low opinion of the teacher running things. He responded to one disgruntled twelve year old's needling by going off on a tirade about how children have no rights, then settled in to watch tiktoks on his cell phone without headphones. At full volume. His weapon of choice for keeping the students' volume under control was a metal whistle. Every time he interrupted his scrolling to blow it, the students responded with a cacophony of high pitched sounds of their own, then steadily ramped up the volume until it hit the prior level. To say I was glad to escape out to the parking lot is an understatement.
The library across the street from the school is hosting early voting, so I swung in and filled out a ballot. There's a larger-than-usual effort to primary my state's evil, Trump-crony senator, so I held my nose and voted in the Republican primary to help move the needle away from Trump and towards the candidates who at least pretend to care more about farm subsidies than making life worse for immigrants. I like everything about my state except the people who run it, so here's hoping local politics shift enough that I don't have to plan a cross-country move in the next few years. There are people here I'm loath to leave behind.
The rest of the day promises to be a good one. It's my neighbor's day off, and he's coming over with a box of free cookies from his bakery job. The plan is for him to get writing done while I finish my interview prep work, and with any luck we'll keep each other on task. I'm excited to hug him. I'm glad we both found jobs this month, but with him working evenings and nights and me going in at 7 or 8 in the morning, I'm seeing much less of him than I prefer. He's off Friday too, so I'm cooking him dinner. That'll be a good emotional reset.
I finished my slides and speaking notes for the sample lesson last night. I had to cut out some content from the beginning to make it stay under five minutes, but it still feels meaty and reflective of the things I'm best at as a teacher. Now I just have to get the slides and citations for the data analysis piece together and make sure I've practiced delivering those. One way or another, the interview is tomorrow at 11 a.m. After that, I can breathe a little more easily.
