Two-A-Days

So, the first week of the new school year has come and gone. And now that it's over, I'm exhausted.

Just over a week ago, on Friday afternoon, I got a phone call as I was heading in to work. (By 'work' I mean my normal job as Quality Assurance Manager at a local market research company.) The call was from the Principal of a junior high school in the district with a substitute job request. It seems they had a teacher who transferred to another school of the summer to deal with some family issues. They'd hired a replacement teacher, who had subsequently decided two weeks before the start of the school year that he didn't want to be a teacher after all. So, after failing to find anyone else for the job, the Principal called the Guest Teacher office. And they'd recommended me.

The assignment, he told me, would be open-ended. I'd be there for at least a week, and possibly as long as the whole semester. Meanwhile, they'd be looking for a full-time teacher using any means they could come up with—student teachers from the local (and not-so-local) colleges, retired teachers, whatever. Until that happened, I would be the teacher.

At this point in the conversation, I asked what the subject was, and the conversation got very interesting.

Industrial Technology. Or, as it used to be called when I was in middle school, Industrial Arts. Or, as it's colloquially known, Shop.

Now, every teacher has subjects in which they're strong and subjects in which they're weaker. Math and science are my strengths. Algebra? Geometry? Physical Science? I can teach those in my sleep. And I know enough about subjects like English, History, Health, and even Business that I can give competent lessons. But Industrial Arts? All I know about Shop is what I learned from one semester I spent in a Middle School Shop class myself—we won't even talk about how long ago that was—and what I've picked up from a few Bill Cosby routines. ("Who put a bullet in the furnace?")

In short, I'm no more qualified to teach Shop than to teach Mandarin Chinese.

Nevertheless, I took the job. I could hear the quiet desperation in the Mr. H's voice, and there'd be people there to help me through it. And hey, the hours would be good. So I reported for duty Monday morning at 7:30. I already knew that first period was my consultation period, so I checked in with the office, got the keys to the room, and set about locating lesson materials. Or, more properly, attempting to locate lesson materials. There was nothing there.

I dropped by the room next door, where a young teacher named Mr. B welcomed me and gave me some ideas about where to start. And Mr. H came by my room (and it was 'my' room at this point) to offer some further ideas for the first day. The school normally runs on a block schedule, which means that you have four classes for about 90 minutes one day and four different classes the other day. But for the first day, I'd be meeting with all 8 classes for half the usual time. Okay, it was only 6 classes with two consultation periods, but still, I was meeting all my new students. With not a lot to teach them.

Every class that day went about the same. I introduced myself and explained why I wasn't Mr. Peterson. We reviewed some of the more important policies and procedures from the student planner. I asked them what they thought 'technology' was. We talked briefly about their ideas and how technology would ultimately (I hoped) be used in the class. I collected what they had written, and then I sent them on to their next class. I was feeling like I was in over my head, but by the end of the day, I was beginning to think I could handle it.

Tuesday morning I spent my planning period reading one of the textbooks in the class. The first section gave a discussion of the similarities of and differences between Science, Technology, and Engineering. I constructed a lesson plan, including a series of questions from the end of the section. And I gave that lesson six times over the next two days to three different grade levels (7th, 8th, and 9th). With the rapidly growing piles of papers I was accumulating, I checked with the office, picked up a grade book, and started grading papers. Ah, all the challenges of being a full-time teacher with none of the benefits, like tenure. And the room was almost oppressively hot, to boot. One oscillating fan I found in the unused room next door wasn't nearly enough to keep things comfortable. Good thing I bring a bottle of ice water to each assignment!

Tuesday afternoon I got a visit from Mr. H again. They had found a teacher! He was a retired teacher who had taught shop for more than 30 years and was willing to come out of retirement to help the district out for the year. In fact, he'd been retired for three years, and had come out of retirement each of those three years to help various schools. That's dedication. Mr. H said the new teacher, Mr. O, would be in the following day and probably the rest of the week, but he'd be spending that time organizing supplies and getting ready for the rest of year. So I was still on for the remainder of the week.

I met Mr. O on Wednesday morning. Nice guy, very knowledgeable and quite obviously a veteran teacher. He gave me a few pointers and we discussed what I'd teach his classes for the rest of the week. Working with him and with Mr. B next door, I got some information on a couple of drawing projects the kids could do to get them ready for shop work. I also found a worksheet on following instructions to help drive the point home to them. (I'll probably include that as a separate post in a day or two.) So on Thursday and Friday, after reviewing the previous days' assignments, I had them do the Instructions Worksheet. We discussed the results, and I told them it was an exercise designed to get them used to reading and following detailed sets of directions accurately. Then I had them draw 3 or 4 objects in the room: a wooden shelf I presume was a student project from a previous year, a metal C-clamp, a video projector, and an adjustable hole punch. Then I gave them a worksheet that had a drawing activity on one side and an exercise in recognizing perspectives in drawings on the other. That was just about enough to keep them occupied for the whole period. Almost.

In the midst all of that, I was still working at my market research job. So I'd leave for school around 7:15 in the morning and return from work just over 12 hours later. That's not something I think I could have continued to do long-term, good money or not.

And the money is good, by the way. I found out that the district raised its rates this year to match the rates in a neighboring district. Broken down hourly, my substituting rate is now over 90% of what I make as a middle manager in the private sector. I earned more than enough in a week of substituting to get Lula fixed, even including the serpentine belt that recently snapped. So its' not like I'm laboring entirely in poverty. But it has been exhausting.

Anyway, back to school. Friday ended with a Welcome Back assembly held during the last period of the day—which was fine with me, because the kids in that class are, in general, a bunch of snotty little 9th-grade brats who are going to be quite shocked when they reach high school and realize that they're not really as big and bad as they think they are. Anyway, the assembly celebrated the completion of the first week of a new year. And for me, it was both a relief and a bit of a disappointment. There are a few of those kids that I got to know and like a little bit. After my 7th grade class on Thursday, I found a note someone had written on the chalkboard: "We love u, please stay!" Maybe I'd reached some of them in our short week together.

So while it's been a tiring week, it hasn't been without its rewards. And I have a whole new set of experiences upon which to draw in the future, which is always a good thing.

But now it's time to rest.