Ever had one of those weeks where everything just clicks -- and how about a new way to take attendance. And let's not forget about those entitled students we sometimes have to deal with.
Ever had one of those weeks where everything just clicks -- and how about a new way to take attendance. And let's not forget about those entitled students we sometimes have to deal with.
This is Craig Collins Substitute Teacher's Lounge. It is October 24, 2023. Lots of stuff to talk about today. Two things that I had never encountered in five years of substitute teaching happened to me this week. Other things that made this one of my most enjoyable weeks since I started substitute teaching. And then, finally, what we heard from flight attendants on an airplane. We talked to them for about 10 minutes and you might be surprised what they said about pretentious people. So I said well, you know, I think I can relate that to the classroom, so let's see what we can do with it. All right, all right, let me start with what made this one of the most enjoyable weeks of substitute teaching. And, yes, I'm going to tell one more volleyball story. We're into postseason right now, so our team won the first two rungs on the ladder in postseason and we're moving forward. Now. I'm recording this a couple of days early, so I will know by the time this airs whether or not we won the third rung as well, but I think we should, and we have as good a chance as advancing further than that as any team that's in it, so I look forward to that. This week, one of the happy moments I got two happy moments and made it an enjoyable week.
Speaker 1:The volleyball players continue to shock me, so to speak. After we won the second run of the ladder I was talking to you about, in fact, my sons, my 30 year old twin sons, were actually streaming the game live and they were watching it. And one of them said, after it was over, and they cut to commercial and came back and they said, dad, what kind of shirt are you wearing? Because it wasn't what I was wearing during the game. Well, those crazy girls I mean they know I like Hawaiian shirts. They once went to, in fact, the only tournament I wasn't able to make this year because I was out of town. They saw a guy, a parent probably, that was wearing a shirt, a Hawaiian shirt, with pictures of the volleyball team on an individual pictures throughout the volleyball shirt. So those crazy girls bought me one of those. They handed it to me after the game and, of course, I was excited. I put it on right away and that's what my son was taught saw me in. It's kind of funny and some of you might think this is in bad taste, but I don't. Everybody laughed, I wore it purposely. Then show it off the next day, when I subbed at that school and of course all the volleyball players came by to look at their pictures and even though some of the students probably didn't even know it was the students pictures, I went ahead and made a joke out of it and said all right, now listen, you all know I'm a volleyball coach. I am not in the habit of wearing pictures of students on the shirt that I wear in, but they gave this to me and I appreciate them a lot and we all got a good laugh with it.
Speaker 1:The other enjoyable thing is actually going to lead in to our topic for today, which I'm going to relate to last week's topic, which, by the way but it sounds like I'm rambling all over the place. By the way, last week at the beginning of the show, I mentioned that the two previous episodes. It's obvious from their first week listens that they're gonna finish top five for the year. Well, guess what? Last week show the show about what schools know about you. Not only is it gonna finish top five, it might finish number one because it got as many listens as the previous two shows in its first four days. So I hope we're the. The listening has always been great. I'm kind of hoping we're turning a corner a little bit, that there's more people listening and I don't know. You know I thought it was kind of goofy to move the show to Tuesday morning release. Maybe that's helped a little bit, maybe our Facebook group page has helped a little bit, who knows. But I appreciate all of you guys out there and I'll relate that to what happened to me. First thing that happened to me Well, I told you the first thing the shirt. The second thing Caught me by surprise. There's two things I'm getting ready to tell you that you can use as a substitute teacher. One of them I substitute. It's for an extremely Thorough, organized teacher, knowledgeable. It's human anatomy, biomed classes. It's a pathway at the high school. You kind of take three classes in order. She teaches all of them. I know her well because I was her substitute teacher two years ago, long term, after she'd had a baby. Her baby is now two years old. When I went in there I actually got to talk to her because the reason she was going to be gone was a field trip and she told me and I knew she, I knew where to find all this stuff, but she told me that anyway, we talked about Kids I had four grandkids at the time when I last sub for her. I now have six had a pleasant conversation Teaching the classes.
Speaker 1:It's always great to teach those kind of classes because At least 90% of the students chose the class because it's part of their pathway, maybe for their career. There's a some students that just got put in there because they had to have another class and they didn't know what else to fill it with. Great classes, great students. You know it's always I Hate to say it like this every kids deserve a chance, but you just know that, generally speaking, the AP classes, the honors classes, the dual credit classes Probably gonna be students that are really serious about their education. So they're just easy to teach, let's face it. So I Was teaching going through my day it was about 12 30, just happened to be in the middle of her planning period and here she comes, 12 30.
Speaker 1:She's coming back and she said she said Greg, she said we took our field trip, but I know the kids hated it. But I realized at about 12 o'clock that there wasn't really anything else there to kill the time with. I got thinking was some kind of college fair and I guess it only took so long to go through it. So she said you know, I am great, I just brought them back. So here she was, at 12 30. So here I am, two and a half hours. They're paying me for two and a half more hours. And I said Well, are you back to stay or did you want to go home? And she said, no, I'm back to stay. And then she's so conscientious oh my goodness, she's so good at teaching that class. I like to hear her teach it. So she stayed.
Speaker 1:So here's the first thing I did. That was an enjoyable thing. The first thing I did and this is the first thing that you should do I could have easily walked out to my car. There was a way I could walk to my car without going through the office. Go on home, relax. I knew the substitute teachers were in such great need. In fact, our pay scale just went up, by the way, almost twenty dollars a day, and if your long term, it went up almost let me calculate in my head eighty dollars a day if you teach more than ten days in a row. And it's still not going to be as much as some of you are making because we live in a smaller area. Alright, so I digress.
Speaker 1:So I go down to the office. I didn't just leave, I was too conscientious for that. I would recommend you do the same thing. It's always best if you do things that way. Even if I did, they probably would have let me come back as a substitute teacher, because I have a good reputation and they need me that badly.
Speaker 1:But I went down there, secretary, and one of the assistant principals was down there, probably the principal at the school that I feel like I'm closest to, because when I long term taught for a science class, she helped me because at that time she was the head of the science department. She helped me. She even zoomed into my class where she knew one day I was really struggling and didn't know how to teach it. So we did a zoom day of two classes. She was in there eating her salad and I said listen, guys, the teacher has returned from her field trip. What else do you need me to do? Can you do that? I mean that will really gain you some points. Here you are, you could go home, you've already filled out your paperwork, you're going to get paid.
Speaker 1:Maybe some of you are in fact in a situation where if you just left, it would come down on you a little bit. Maybe you'd be disciplined for it in some way, if for no other reason not letting you schedule substitute jobs at their school. I guess that could happen. It wouldn't happen to me, but I'm glad I went down there. She thought of two situations. The principal thought of two situations. She knew I was sincere. She wasn't just trying to say you got to stick around, she was being very friendly about it. She knew when I said do you have anything else for me to do? And I said yes, they looked at two situations, called the teacher and they said no, we got that covered. No, we got that covered. And she, the principal, just finally said Greg, everything's covered. There is no reason for you to stay. Enjoy your afternoon, man. I never had that happen before. That was so cool.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I had never seen happen in a classroom as much as I like us to just acknowledge the fact that cell phones are a part of the curriculum, now they should be made part of the curriculum, first time I've ever seen this. I walked in and laid, said I want you to, or the who have a substance to to to left notes. That said I want you to take attendance from the phone pockets. And I said well, isn't that a unique idea? So probably all of you have those pockets on the wall Sometimes when you go to high school. You don't really I don't enforce it too badly. But she said I want you to take attendance from it. So it was a way to get those phones out of their hands, because they knew if I walked over there, took attendance by the phone slots and their phone wasn't there. I was marking them absent.
Speaker 1:Now the teacher was very organized. She made notes on the sheet. I took attendance from students that didn't have phones and I just asked to make sure they were there. But what a unique approach. I liked that. There was no reluctance. The kids actually put their phone there because they didn't want to be marked absent. You know, heck, I might do that on my own, whether the teachers told me to do that or not. It's just kind of a more organized way of getting them to put their cell phones up. If you just tell them over and over put that down. It's just more disciplined than I enjoy. Alright, let's shift now.
Speaker 1:We fly Allegiant a lot, because in my area of Kentucky. They fly to Florida very cheaply. I think I got these flights. We had to go to a wedding in the Fort Myers area. I think I got these tickets for like 80 bucks. So it was the first time since they were so cheap, that I went ahead and splurged, paid for front row seats and, my goodness, there is so much extra leg room. I probably shouldn't have done it, because now I'm going to have to do it every time, but we got to talking to the flight attendants right in front of us for about 10 minutes while we're getting, you know, up to the proper flying altitude. They were super friendly and we ended up talking about the flights that we talked about how long their days were and what else they had to do that day, what flights they enjoy most, and then they told us what flights they had blocked. They didn't tell us at first, but they agreed to let us know if we guessed, and we sort of guessed.
Speaker 1:But interestingly enough, there's various different reasons and I am not going to mention the area they're talking about because I don't want to use any lose, any listeners and I don't want to cost a legion any business, but one of the areas they went to surprise my wife, but as soon as they said it I thought I bet it's pretentious passengers, passengers that feel like somebody owes them something because they're here, like they're entitled to things. Well, that was exactly what it was. They told us that when those passengers are on the plane, when they have that route and it's like that every time they go there the passengers feel like they are servants, that you're there to make my life happier. You got to treat me nice, do everything I say, no matter how I treat you. Well, let's face it, that can happen in the classroom too.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure We've talked about trouble students before. Have we ever talked about how to handle students that just think they're better than everybody else? I do call out students that will occasion if I say something to them about working and they say well, you know, so-and-so is not working either. You know, I'll just say listen, maybe the one thing I hate even more than people not working is people tattling telling on others. I don't like that either. Maybe you're okay with that, maybe you encourage that, but anyway, you occasionally hear see pretentious students in your room, whether they're smarter than everybody else, whether they're I don't know, for lack of a better phrase more attractive than everybody else, dress more expensively than everybody else, maybe the biggest one, more athletic than everybody else, maybe more of a teacher's pet than everybody else? There is all kinds of reasons to be pretentious, or not that that should be the case, but there is certainly case, and you encounter that with adults in your life as well.
Speaker 1:So quickly, what do we do with pretentious students? It's easy, but first I want you to think about something. Those students that look like they're more affluent, maybe even smarter than you, especially in high school. They could teach the class better than you could. Maybe. Do you do things to get on their good side? Do you encourage their pretentiousness? Here's I mean here's the answer. There is no hard and fast rule, but remember we are there for every student. I'm just like you. I enjoy some students more than others, but we need to figure out a way to teach everybody equally. What I do, if I can. I see that one student maybe thinks they're better than everybody else.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I have been known to play a little game with maybe five students and I'll include one of the pretentious students. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you. That's why I say her that's shit and dress. I guess I'm thinking about the way they're dressed, and females a lot of times dress more fancier, I guess, fancier than the males do. Here's what I do.
Speaker 1:I will play a game and say, all right, before we get started, here's what I want you to do. I want you to. We're gonna go around the room, I'm gonna draw names at random and you're gonna tell me the two best things about yourself and the two things I don't wanna say worse things, but the two things that you could work on. And when it gets to the pretentious student, normally what will happen is they'll say the two things that they need to work on. Maybe it's something surprising. That's the other students, and to me that seems to kind of equalize it.
Speaker 1:You certainly don't want to give them favors because they're dressed better than everybody else, because maybe you don't like students that color their hair blue and this one's just a traditional haircut. We gotta get over all that. For whatever reason. Whatever students do to stand out, it's not our job to look down on them because they're doing that, or not our job to look down on them because they wanna think they're better than everybody else. Look for your own ideas to build things into class to make sure that we're doing our best to teach everyone equally, from the student that gives you a hard time to the student that thinks they're better and entitled, they're better than everybody else.
Speaker 1:I'll leave you with this one thought it's kind of a joke. It's not a joke, but if it's just a line I decided to use. I had to cover for a class during my planning period and did not have a roster. So I just said something I guess I think this is a line from an old Steve Martin album and I said all right, I do not have a roster today, so raise your hand if you're here today. They all raise their hands and then they look kind of confused and I'll just leave it at that.