Every educator has a day that tests their limits, and I faced mine head-on in what became 'The Worst Substitute Teacher Day.' It's the raw and unfiltered account of a day that shook my foundations, challenging the idealism I've cherished throughout my six years on the frontline of teaching. This episode isn't your typical narrative; it's an emotional journey through the moments that led me to a crossroads, deliberating if my passion for connecting with students is enough to weather the storm of disrespect and turmoil in the classroom.
Every educator has a day that tests their limits, and I faced mine head-on in what became 'The Worst Substitute Teacher Day.' It's the raw and unfiltered account of a day that shook my foundations, challenging the idealism I've cherished throughout my six years on the frontline of teaching. This episode isn't your typical narrative; it's an emotional journey through the moments that led me to a crossroads, deliberating if my passion for connecting with students is enough to weather the storm of disrespect and turmoil in the classroom.
Greg Collins substitute teacher's lounge. It is February 6, 2024, episode 246. You guys have accused me of being a Pollyanna, that I would never talk about things that have gone wrong and that I always look on the bright side of everything. I do try to do that, but today's episode is going to be more solemn. I feel like it's time to talk about something that happened to me in recent history. I won't be any more specific than that, but I will call it the worst substitute teacher day I ever had, and it made me quit Alright. So here's what's going down.
Speaker 1:The week this happened, I had to decide. Am I a little bit too naive? Do I think? Keep in mind I come from a background. I've been substitute teaching for six years now. I wasn't a teacher before that.
Speaker 1:I'm a retired accountant and I loved it. I loved it when the seniors on my volleyball team last year I'm going to sub them last year, I'm going to work with them in volleyball and they went out of their way to spoil me during the season. They bought me a shirt, they bought me gifts throughout the season. They spoke about me as they were on their senior night, so I was spoiled. In that regard, I wanted all students to be like them. I wanted all students to like me. It hurt me when students did not like me. I loved having, I guess, coming in one day when I had had the students in the past and them excited, them saying, hey, mr Collins is here today. And when I then encounter what I will classify as my worst substitute teaching day ever, I started to say the worst class ever, and I'm thinking you know that's too harsh. Under any circumstances, I'm going to call it the worst day ever. I'm going to tell you what I did as a result. I'll let you be thinking about what I did. They gave a little bit of it away in the opening. I talked about quitting, which I did, but I'll talk about here in a moment. Did I shoot to find something positive about that class or did I give up on them? We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm naive I mentioned naive. Maybe I'm naive to think that I'm not going to have any problems. Maybe I'm naive to think that we live in an area of the country where we don't have to face issues that maybe other schools you know, even a hundred miles away from me, might be facing. Maybe I think I don't ever have to do that. But let me describe what happened and you can make up your own decisions whether I made the right decision or not. I'll tell you why I made the decision I did. I say that I'm going to humble age the wrong word but I'd say that knowing that some of the students who are probably going to speculate that I'm talking about them are listening right now. So I've got to take all that into consideration. I'm still going to tell the truth. I'm still going to tell how it made me feel and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you just come across a class that will not cooperate at all. It's not that every student in the class is being disrespectful or even defiant. It's more. They're just ignoring everything you say. It's like they could care less anything you say.
Speaker 1:Part of it might be that I think this particular class personally had too many students in it. Too many students that had resources available that they could immediately go to and just tune out everything else. Too many students that had become good at doing things in the classroom instead of doing working on their work and have figured out ways to hide it. You know I'm not gonna say too much about them in that respect, because you know that was done when I was in school. We just didn't have computers to do it with. We found out ways to do things.
Speaker 1:I've told you the story before. I found out ways to listen to a baseball game while I was in class and hiding it from the teacher. I did that, didn't get in trouble for it, but didn't get in trouble for it because I didn't get caught. This particular day, though, everything in this class was challenging. Nobody listened to me. I'm used to people listening to me. I'm used to people enjoying that I'm there. If they no longer enjoy it, why should I be there? I told the teacher, and the teacher asked me. I told the teacher that I didn't use the word quit, but I did say I wouldn't be back substituting that class again. In fact, in my heart, I probably won't go back to that school for a long time maybe not the rest of the school year because I thought the behavior was so bad. So, especially given what I'm used to maybe that's the best way to say it it was so bad in comparison to all of the other classes I've had this year that I kind of gave up on them and I said I'm not gonna come back. And I'm not gonna come back to the school, possibly because I don't wanna see those students in the hallway. I don't even wanna have to deal with them there. So that's how bad it was. Maybe you think I overreacted, and it's okay if you did. I'll tell you why I reacted this way. You've got to react in whatever way you want to, given similar circumstances.
Speaker 1:Now, granted, there are different types of substitute teachers. I'm not even talking about personalities now. I'm talking about situations. Some of you are substitute teaching in anticipation of a teaching job. Some of you are teachers retired teachers perhaps that are doing this in your retirement. My hat goes out to you. You deserve every accolade you can receive and I appreciate you for that. That's not me, though. I am retired from a different industry.
Speaker 1:I do substitute teaching for fun. I do. I've had so much fun. I don't do it for the money, but the money makes it nice to be able to take vacations and things like that. I won't turn down the money. I, as you know, I sports, officiate and that kind of rolls into the package. But here's my point of all this I do this for fun. Not all of you are in that situation. But I do this for fun. So If I'm not having fun, why do I continue to do it Now? I haven't quit being a substitute teacher. I've quit that situation. I've quit that school for a little while. I'm not even. It's a great school. In fact, I'll be honest with you, one of the best classes I've ever encountered in six years is also a part of this school. So it's kind of a catch-22. Is the wrong phrase? What phrase am I looking for? It's a unique situation, and it was a situation where kids kind of fed off of each other when it was almost as if, when they could see that they were getting on my nerves. They relished in it, they enjoyed it, but I've got to tell them. If any of them are listening, the reason I'm not coming back to your class is you took the fun out of it for me. You basically ignored everything I was saying. And if I'm just doing this for fun and I've got other schools to choose from not to say that they couldn't happen there too it just never happened to this degree before. If I'm not having fun anymore, I'm not going to do it anymore, because that's why I was doing it. Substitute teaching has been so much fun for me compared to my previous job of accounting. Sorry, accountants, but that's the way it was for me. Personally, I love numbers, don't particularly like accounting. It was my career. I did the best I could. I don't think I was the best accountant in the world, but I did what I was told to do and did the best I could. But now that I'm in this situation I have to decide for myself what I want to do. It made me think of now.
Speaker 1:The same week that this happened, I went to a different school and I could tell that maybe I was less tolerant of things I was at least partially tolerant of before I came. I don't want to say heated up, because that sounds like I got really mad, but I became less tolerant of things going on in the classroom. It's kind of like an old old story Back years ago when my wife brought a cat into the home and it was cute. She then left that night to go on a trip it was a church related trip with some ladies and, lo and behold, I ended up in the emergency room with an allergy attack that night and my allergist ended up telling me because of that one situation it sensitized me to be allergic to other things now that I wasn't allergic to before. That happened. So this kind of reminds me of that a little bit. It's almost like I have changed. This class made me change.
Speaker 1:Anytime Student challenges me now, before I would give them second chances, I would give them the benefit of the doubt. I would try my best. I don't know what's going on in their family. You know they shouldn't bring it to school, but still you have to be sympathetic, empathetic whatever the correct words are for that and try to do your best to put them in a learning environment. So I did that before. I can tell that I have changed now. So all of the other podcast episodes that you've listened to where I laid out this is what happened, this is how I react it, this is how I correct it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not sure I have that today. I'm saying I encountered a class I didn't enjoy it. I removed that class from my future. I will not be going back to that class again. Now are there individual students in that class that were great? Yes, it was such a small group of that class it was almost like I couldn't even deal with them properly because I had to deal with the others. Are there trouble? I hate to use the word trouble makers. Are there students like I have been describing, who are in good classes too? Of course there is. Sometimes they're easy to deal with that way. This particular class that I've been talking about had so many of them in the same class. It was overwhelming, to the point that I don't have to put myself in that situation.
Speaker 1:I got to the point I used to be in a situation where my favorite days were where I would sub in the day and referee volleyball at night. Now I kind of do one or the other If I've got volleyball evenings. Maybe I don't want to schedule myself to substitute teaching. This I'm specifically asked and go from there. But all of us have to make decisions. You're going to encounter situations that makes you uncomfortable. I before I probably made you feel like it's going to be okay. Well, I've not told you that maybe even this situation would eventually be okay. I just don't want to go through it like that. I'm not in the mood anymore. I want to stick with classes that have been enjoyable for me.
Speaker 1:I look for specific teachers now. I look for subjects now, because some subjects just kind of lend themselves to this better. I look for an organized that's not a good word, I structured classroom environment. I don't do as many PE classes because the teacher definitely leaves notes, but it's just more of a haphazard environment. Even bands like that a little bit, because more times than not when I've had to sub for a band class, they're showing a movie, they're not doing something band related. That's another where it just creates kind of a haphazard environment. So I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1:I want you to know I didn't do this just because I had been accused of being a Pollyanna. I did this because I want to be open and honest with everybody in this podcast. There's no doubt, of the 246 episodes of this podcast now this is the saddest, most solemn, most negative perhaps, episode that I've ever had. I want you to know that if you ever find yourself in a situation, don't let it get bad before it gets better.
Speaker 1:If you have options, look out for yourself and put yourself in a better option. Put yourself in an option you enjoy. You're valuable as a substitute teacher. All the schools know that you might as well. If you're in the situation of being selective, be selective. Go to your favorite classes. There's nothing wrong with that, go to your favorite situations, your favorite schools. And again, I've said this before we'll all grow as substitute teachers together, and I certainly don't feel bad about, at least for the moment, crossing classes off my list. I don't want to go back there, and if you need to do that, I don't think you should feel bad either.