Send In the Sub!

I had my first Guest Teaching experience last Thursday and Friday. I filled in for a teacher at the district’s technical institute, an advanced vocational high school offering training in health sciences, dental assisting, computer science, engineering, and a few other disciplines. It’s a neat idea. The students are bused in from all the other high schools in the district for these advanced classes, and almost every class offered at the school includes concurrent enrolment at the local community college. It was a great experience for a first substitute job—all the students were there because they chose to be there.

I had two two-an-a-half hour classes each of the two days. However, the school was having its orientation those two days, so I really only had to cover about 90 minutes for each class. On Thursday, my first class was a CNA training class. There was a vocabulary-building activity and a video on checking for vital signs: temperature, pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. The video showed proper technique for checking the pulse and observing respiration without letting the patient know you’re watching them breathe. It also showed the proper use of a sphygmomanometer, which is the technical name for the blood pressure cuff (or the pressure gauge that makes it work, to be more specific). Finally, it showed the three different ways to take a patient’s temperature: orally, axillarily (in the armpit), and rectally. In detail. With live examples. Yep, they spun some poor old guy over on his side, pulled up his gown, and took his temperature. One piece of advice they gave with this section: you need to hold on to the thermometer the entire eight to ten minutes necessary to get an accurate rectal temperature. You never want to leave a thermometer, especially a mercury thermometer, just sticking out there. Ick. Makes sense, but ick.

The afternoon class, as well as both classes on Friday, was for a Medical Anatomy and Physiology class. The students had to assemble an information packet to take home for their parent(s) to sign. Then they did an activity to learn about the sagittal, coronal (or frontal), and transverse planes of the body. They made a little person out of Play-Doh, then cut it into the appropriate sections. Some of what I saw in this exercise made me think that some of my students were a little disturbed, but they’re high schoolers, so that’s not entirely unexpected.

The other activity for that class was also vocabulary-related. They had a handout, about six pages long, of medical abbreviations they need to memorize over the course of the semester. The day’s activity was to cover the first twenty terms. They made flash cards for those terms, then quizzed each other. This, the regular teacher thought, should keep them busy for the remainder of the period. Not so, as it turned out. They were finishing up and starting to act restless with about half an hour of class time left. So I improvised, split up the class into three teams, and we played Medical Terminology Jeopardy. Some of the students found out they didn’t know quite as much as they thought they knew, so I think it was a good thing.

One funny part of that Thursday afternoon class came when one of the students, a young blonde girl, asked about one of the abbreviations, AX:

YBG: What does 'axillary' mean?
Me: It has to do with the axilla, or armpit.
YBG: Why do we have to know that?
Me: It’s one of the three ways you can take someone’s temperature.
YBG: Ooh, that’s disgusting.
Me: Well, then you’re really not going to like the other one.

Fun and good times.

By Friday afternoon, I felt pretty good about things. I’d made it through my first substitute teaching experience without any major problems. I’d shown that I could manage a classroom and think on my feet. The other teachers and administrators seemed impressed with my professionalism and my knowledge. I even got an invitation to come back next week and sub for one of the other teachers there. All signs are good. It should make for an interesting second part-time job.

Or so I thought. More on that later.