Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Top 10 Unexpected Joys and Challenges of Substitute Teaching 10-6
Ever wondered about the unexpected joys and challenges of being a substitute teacher? Join me as I share my personal top 10 list of things I didn't expect to enjoy so much in my substitute teaching journey. 10-6
I've been wanting to do a top 10 list for a while now. I figured maybe summer was the best time to do it. So I got to thinking should I do something? the 10 things that you will enjoy about substitute teaching? Then I got to thinking well, most of you probably already are substitute teachers. So my list. I decided it was gonna be the 10 things that I didn't realize I would enjoy so much as a substitute teacher. And you know what, when I got to thinking about it, those two top 10 list would probably be the same. This is Greg Collins substitute teacher's lounge.
Greg:["subsistitutes of the Sound" As I told you last week, last week's episode was the first one where I used the new feature from Buzzsprout called I'm not even gonna tell you what it's called it builds artificial intelligence into your podcast, which means it's gonna automatically choose a title, choose a description, give you chapter markers and include a transcript So that if you wanted to go back and read it, you could. I was just amazed. I said that before I actually saw it work, and when I let it work it took about 20 minutes, probably because it takes a little while to create a transcript, but it was pretty amazing. The title that you saw was automatically picked out for me. I've chose one I like I'm used to shorter titles, so it was an adjustment for me And just playing around about halfway through the week, i'd change the title to something shorter just to see if I thought it would make any difference. But it's pretty amazing, kinda looking forward to what it's gonna show up as the title for this week. But anyway, we're going to do a top 10 list today And my thoughts about this it really, if you've listened to all 212 episodes so far, well, bless your heart, that means you started listening, or at least you went back and listened to episodes as early as the summer of 2019.
Greg:I started this after I had been substitute teaching for about six school months, i guess. It was, so bless your hearts for that. So it's nothing new, but it's kind of things all in one place. So here, if you're thinking about becoming a substitute teacher and you stumbled across this and you said, well, i'll listen to it through the summer to help me decide, this might be a good list for you. It's a list I compiled and I tried my best to think about things that shocked me a little bit, things that surprised me a little bit Things that I didn't realize about substitute teaching. That keeps me back more and more. It's funny. I've jumped from doing a day at a time to doing long term probably six jobs that were about two and a half years long, if you can buy them. Then I've gone back to doing more day by day, just so I have the luxury of having that day off when I want to. I'll still do some long term. There's some ideal situations that I would still do that, but all that is what has brought me to this top 10 list.
Greg:We're gonna go as you usually do, just like David Letterman. I hope even you younger people will understand. Well, remember who Dave Letterman is. It's funny. Every now and then We're starting a volleyball club in the area and we're talking to kids, mainly girls, but it's open to boys too that are in age group eight through 14, i guess it is, and I'll bring up something old, and there's always somebody there that has heard of that. So that's kind of funny.
Greg:Maybe the first one should be I don't use old phrases anymore. Related to it is number 10, improving my use of English language. Now I'm not just talking about, i talk funny. I'm from the South. I'm from Kentucky. We just talk different than everybody else, but so do people from New York, so do people from New Jersey. Everybody's kind of got a different dialect. Well, i'm not talking about.
Greg:I'm talking about improving my English, knowing when to use words and when not to use words, and the example that I've used before was I'm trying. I never knew this would want me to do this, but as I substitute teach more, especially more ELA classes, i want to get my English correct. Where is that correctly? That would be correct, and I try to make sure my adverbs are right. I shared this just a few weeks ago on things you can share on the whiteboard.
Greg:One of the example that I always use is you did real good. Well, there's two phrases wrong in that. That I discovered when I decided I wanted to do better. Instead of you did real good is you did really well. A lot of you knew that. A lot of you probably make fun of me. You know, even after I've said that, i've noticed as I go back and edit podcasts, i never do edit out. If I talk funny, i edit out extended spacing, i edit out us, things like that. But it's substitute teaching has helped me work on my noun, adjective, my adverb verb type of thing, and it's helped me to talk better. Now I think I talk not good. I talk well. I can actually hold a conversation with the class on when to use adverbs, when to use adjectives and all that good stuff. So that was number 10. Number nine I learned phrases that really don't work that well in the classroom. Now you may immediately think of shut up, and that is what I was gonna include, but there's two other phrases here that I wrote down that I think might surprise you.
Greg:I try not to use shut up at all. Have I ever been pushed to the point that I've used shut up? I have, and four and a half years, i would say I could count the times I use shut up on one hand, and it just got to the point where I would. Sometimes I wouldn't tell them you're taking advantage of me because I'm nice and they wouldn't listen to me. Now the good thing about not using shut up very often it's just like threatening to discipline somebody your kids maybe for somebody and then not following through, where they're going to know that you're not going to do anything.
Greg:I don't use shut up, or I use it selectively. Okay, i use it when I have to use it. There's no other alternative. I don't use it loosely. The good thing about that, since the kids know that I would rather say phrases like be quiet instead of shut up. They know that when I hit the words shut up they better be quiet because they don't see Mr Collins like that very often. They know that they have pushed me to the limit and they feel kind of bad about it, to the point that I really said it harshly one time to a class and one of the students felt so bad She composed a letter of apology, walked it around to every student in that class. I guess she caught him in the hallway. Whatever, they all signed it and gave it to me. I almost got choked up when they did that, but I don't like to use that phrase. The others I hear this all the time. I hear it from coaches too.
Greg:When a student is trying something and they use the phrase that was a good try. Well, guess what? That's really kind of a negative reinforcement because they know right away you wouldn't have said good try if you thought they couldn't have done better. Good try, they might have thought they've done well until you say good try, and good try is not a particularly flattering thing. To say it automatically now makes them realize I didn't do that right, or my teacher thinks I didn't do that right. I would try to get away from good try because it's not the type of reinforcement they need. Good job Say good job, you're not saying best job. You could say good job even if one student didn't do it as well as another student, because they did it better than the last time. So get away from good try.
Greg:And then the last one I thought I would mention is a little bit different. I heard a teacher say once I was kind of co-teaching I think I might have had a class that day, like for exceptional children, so I was moving with them and co-teaching other classes. I heard a teacher say you could be as smart as her. Well, they actually meant that to be positive. It wasn't positive by saying you could be as smart as her. That just made that student feel like, first of all, they probably didn't think they'd ever be as smart as her, even though the teacher's intention was, if you applied yourself, you could be just as smart as her. But that one really rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe there's something more diplomatic. Maybe we could have just said if you apply yourself, you could be as intelligent as anyone in the room or one of the most intelligent people in the room, that kind of thing. All right, now we go to number eight.
Greg:I have learned how to practice restrained discipline. You're going to have to discipline sometimes, but the main thing that I try to do is, when I discipline, let it cool for about five minutes and then make an excuse to go back and talk to that student, not about what happened, let's just forget about it. Talk to them about something else. Talk to them in an uplifting, jovial way about something else, so that they know yes, i had to discipline you, but I'm not mad at you. It's over. You probably did something that I may have done in class when I was your age, so don't come across as a person that disciplines and never gives the kid another chance or never lets the kid realize that they're better than that momentary time when you had to discipline them. Okay, so here we go.
Greg:Number seven I learned that little things matter. The two I wrote down and you're going to have your own and some of you. It doesn't matter how much I say you're not going to do it, that's okay, that's who you are, all right. One of them is I went in one time that I was a long-term job and the teacher's pencil sharpener was terrible, so terrible. I co-taught with her a few days so I knew what I was doing. Before she left, students had to go back and sharpen their pencil. It worked so badly that she would have to squeeze it together with her hand while the student was sharpening the pencil and that distracted from the class. It was so noisy you couldn't hear what she would say. There's so many kids that want it to sharpen their pencil, so the first thing I did, i went on to Amazon. I spent $8 on a pencil sharpener that was super quiet and actually shut off when the pencil was sharp That little thing those kids love. They made excuses to sharpen their pencil because they loved it so much, but it didn't matter, they weren't distracting anymore. That's a little thing. The other little thing I'll mention I'm sorry I'm going to mention these Jolly Ranchers Again.
Greg:Find a cheap candy. Jolly Ranchers are better than chocolate, because some kids don't eat chocolate. You don't have to worry about accidentally maybe giving a kid a nugget of a Mr Goodbar that has peanuts in it. The peanuts scare me that these days I stick with Jolly Ranchers and I always use this phrase. It will amaze you How much work the students will do if they know they may get a Jolly Rancher. It's hilarious Students that don't? I hate to say this phrase. You've got students that you actually categorize in this category, even if it's not right. You categorize them as students who won't do anything All of a sudden, if you put it in a competitive environment and reward with the Jolly Rancher, maybe try to think of ways where a lot of students can get a Jolly Rancher Maybe not everybody, because then they're going to expect that without working that hard. Maybe you've got a big project that they get a Jolly Rancher at the end, but think about that. That's a small thing. You can add.
Greg:Number six My poor family. I've shared my corny sense of humor with them so much They know every joke I've ever told. My sons will sometimes repeat things to me that I've told them that I don't even remember telling them In fact they use it again the jokes that I've liked to share with my family, that I continue to share with strangers when we go on vacation together, because that's just who I am. And the strangers laugh and my family just rolls their eyes. Well, guess what I have? a number six is I have a new audience with students. I can share those corny jokes, those corny tricks, all those things. And here's six to 12th grade laughing at those. Most I've had students tell me that the reason they like me as a substitute teacher. I don't just make class fun, i make class funny. They know I will joke around with them.
Greg:Joking around keeps the students loose. It keeps them on task too. If you joke with them maybe you're distracting for a little while, but all of a sudden they're laughing, they feel looser about what the assignment is, they feel more comfortable about talking to you for sure, and I think it works out real well. Guess what? That was number six. This may be the first episode ever that I actually planned to have a cliffhanger. I knew that I wouldn't get through all 10 of these today. I think maybe it would be too much if I got through it, if I tried to do it faster and got through all 10 of those. So next week's episodes we're going to have number five through number one of what surprised me in my top 10 list about substitute teaching. That keeps me coming back, so stay tuned for next week. Now, pardon me, while I go see what the title of this podcast is going to be.
