I recently had to take a day off from teaching and the substitute teacher I brought in provided one of those rare glimpses of how my students see me. This sub works at our school as our after school coordinator, but recently he’s begun subbing for different teachers.
As I came to my class this morning after being out yesterday, I did my typical scanning for any “trouble notes” from Chris, the sub. Thankfully, there were no trouble notes to be found. In fact, I typically receive only good notes from the teachers who cover my classes when I’m out. I’d like to think that I’ve groomed my students well enough for them to understand that my expectations hold even when I’m not in the class.
Hard to say for sure, but I have heard that the same students aren’t as well behaved in someone else’s class when a sub’s in there… Curious, these little creatures we call students.
I did find one note. It was a short list of five words written out below the brief plans I’d left for the sub.
doughnuts
veggie lover
the fro
laid back
one of us
I figured the sub had asked the students something about me because I often speak of loving donuts. I use the term donuts when I’m coming up with sentences for our spelling tests. I’ll come to school on Monday reliving a donut I enjoyed that weekend and encouraging other students to tell me about the donuts they ate. Veggie lover? I’m vegetarian and my students had quizzed me extensively about that early on in the year when they found this little tidbit of information. “The fro” comes from a picture I’ve got behind my desk of me holding my first born daughter just minutes after she was born. I didn’t actually have an afro, but I was having an exceptionally big hair day, and the shadow from the flash made it look just like I had a fro. Of course, I wasn’t going to dispell my students’ ideas…
I loved hearing the students call me laid back. For the first couple of years of my teaching I was anything but laid back. I would get openly frustrated, loose my temper, even yell at the students. All this until I learned the simple classroom management method I still use today. Laid back. They couldn’t compliment me any better unless they said something like…
“one of us”
That about brought tears to my eyes. I ask a lot of my students. I push them hard. I don’t waste time in class generally, and I don’t quit early. My students know I work from the moment class begins to the moment it ends. I don’t try to be my students’ friend, but I do manage my students with respect, dignity, and love.
For them to describe me as “one of us” was truly the highest compliment I could have ever hoped for.
I’ll sure miss this group of students when they go.
Darren