Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Too Many Troublemakers -- In the Same Classroom!
Have you ever wondered if it's better to concentrate all troublemakers in one class or to spread them out? The answer might not be as straightforward as you think. I share a personal encounter with a student who sought my help, a delicate situation where I had to juggle discipline with a dose of compassion. In this thought-provoking conversation, we consider both sides of the argument, stirring up more questions than answers. But that's the beauty of it - the dialogue, the exchange of ideas, the quest to create a conducive learning environment. Whether you're a substitute teacher or a seasoned educator, this debate will resonate with your classroom experiences. It's not about finding the ultimate solution, but about engaging in the journey of discovering what works best for you.
You are listening to a reenactment man. I hate taking these jobs where I get here late because they call me at the last minute. Students are already going to be there. Let's see what I'm up against. I guess it'll be okay. There's one troublemaker Well hate. There's another one. Why are they all in the same class? Greg Collins, substitute Teacher's Lounge. All right guys, here we are. It is the first episode of September 2023. We got those few days of substitute teaching out of the way. I'm excited I'm actually going to be on vacation this week, but when I go back, I've already got that complete week full of substitute teaching jobs. It looks like I'm migrating more towards high school. It just works out better for me that way these days.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you, I guess I had a premonition last week when I mentioned on the show that this week we would be interviewing students. I even said, unless we have some kind of glitch. Well, that's exactly what happened. It wasn't bad. The bad part was I still got to meet them at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe in the area, so we still got to bond that way. I interviewed them four years ago to basically the same questions, although they gave much more intelligent answers now. But basically what happened was we interviewed outside of the cafe, which is fine. They had nice seating out there and I thought it would be great. I had a nice directional mic, but unfortunately it was a mic that senses when there's no sound and we had background sound from traffic there, so the mic was shutting off and on so often that it made the show, the recording, choppy. In fact, here's 12 seconds of what it sounded like Greg from 2024. Matt, greg, if you're missing it. So we got out of here and I think this very well. Ladies. Okay, so you can see my dilemma there. It actually ended up being sort of a blessing in disguise, because I ran into a student this week who's also a senior. As athletes often do, they play a lot of sports when they're younger and then as they get into high school, especially the later years, they start concentrating on their best sport, perhaps looking at maybe scholarships. So she was no longer on the volleyball team, but she passed me in the hallway and said Greg, you can't do that interview without me. So it made me think maybe that was a blessing in disguise and we'll do that in the future. I think the next time I'll just do it through a Zoom call or something like that what other little housekeeping tidbit? And then we'll move on with today's episode.
Speaker 1:If you're trying to figure out why the show is becoming available on different days, I am experimenting based on the recommendation of the podcast. My podcast publisher was his Buzz Sprout on which day of the week I should release this podcast to maximize the listening. It's been Sundays forever. That's not very traditional. I've done it on Monday. This one comes out on Tuesday. I'm not going to play around with seven episodes that represent every day of the week, but Monday and Tuesday seem to be the most popular days to release, so we'll see how it goes and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:All right, something happened this week. It really didn't happen badly in the classes I had, but I talked to one of the co-teachers in a class and this seems to happen all the time, so I thought I would bring it up. In fact, I think I'll do it in the style that I encourage. I talked to a lot of sophomores, juniors and seniors this week those who were already in career mode and I always like to ask how many of them have their career already picked out and there's a few in each class? The majority do not. They don't know what they're gonna do yet. But then I'll ask how many of you wanna be a lawyer? And there's usually at least one hand in every class that wanna be the lawyer and I say, all right, the way you know you can be a good lawyer is that I could give you a topic and you could argue either side of the argument for that topic. Do you think they can do that? And most of them will say yes. I do think that In fact, I've actually picked out a topic in the classroom. Ask one person who said they wanted to be a lawyer Just tell me what side you wanna argue. I'll let another person tell me what side you were gonna argue. And just as I was getting ready to have them debate each other, I said oh, by the way, I want you two to switch. You argue his side and you argue her side. Well, that really throws them for a loop and it really gave them a good feel for whether they could be a lawyer or not. I think I'll do today's topic that way. I'm gonna argue both sides and see which one makes sense.
Speaker 1:Let me set the background first. It seems that most of the schools I go to. You cannot get away from a few troublemakers in the schools. They're just out there. Sometimes it's for attention, sometimes it's I don't know, maybe they're just having a bad day. The worst part is sometimes it's students that you don't normally expect to be a troublemaker. Sometimes you have some of those, but after you substitute, teach for several days or even several years, you're gonna walk into classrooms and anticipate having trouble with a student you see in there because you've had them before. Now, that's not fair. In fact, I saw this week an incident of a student in a classroom was doing something they really shouldn't be doing, but there were other students in the classroom too. This was when I was co-teaching with another teacher. The teacher singled out one student out of that bunch that were all doing the same thing and started disciplining them, and it seems so strange to me. I was wondering why in the world did she just pick out that one student? Well, it's because she had a history with that student. So that was the.
Speaker 1:Whether you think that's right or not. Should you go into the classroom and have everybody equal as soon as you walk in, or should you go into a classroom and say I've had trouble with this student before, so I'm going to have a shorter leash with them than I am with the others. That's an argument in and of itself. That's not even what I was going to talk about today, but more times than not to get back to my original thought it seems schools are putting it's like they're concentrating the troublemakers, putting as many of them as possible in the same classroom at the same time. So here's one side of the argument. Let's argue that that is a good thing to do, all right. So that's out of the argument.
Speaker 1:For the teacher or the substitute teacher, it's a way to deal with most of your issues that you've had with students all in that same hour. When that hour is over, the rest of the day, smooth selling, right. Also, usually, when the school has done that and I'm going to say almost always when they've done it with me they've had a co-teacher come in to just add a little extra help, and it'd be somebody who's familiar. It's not just a random co-teacher, it's a co-teacher that comes in there every day to help with that class. Sometimes it's a paraeducator, sometimes it's a teacher, a credentialed teacher. Sometimes I've seen principals come in for situations like that. Now, ironically, as you show that you're better and better at handling situations. They may not show up as much as they did in the past, but that's another side of the argument. You do have additional help in the classroom to help out with that.
Speaker 1:Here's the tricky part for substitute teachers. Generally speaking, if you separate the students that like to congregate, you'll separate the problems. But perhaps all you've done is create a situation where they're now going to be yelling back and forth across the room. They're trying to get attention, all that good stuff. So the first side of the argument is let's see where you stand. Is this your side of the argument? Do you like, as a substitute teacher, having all the quote? Now, I'm not talking about physical troublemakers. I'm talking about one's excessive talking, not listening to the teacher, not doing their assignment, showing off in class purposely being a distraction. None of those are worthy of a suspension, but they are certainly worthy of some discipline, and when they're all in the same class it's harder to discipline.
Speaker 1:I will tell you this Don't say, all right, you guys straighten up, or I'm going to, and then not do that, because then they have you right where they want you. Okay, now some things that I have said. This is probably the harsher side of me. I have been known to say two things, two things, and a lot of them will straighten up because of this. I will say all right, guys, I'm a pretty nice substitute teacher. Okay, sometimes students interpret that as a weak substitute teacher. So if I catch you trying to take away my niceness, I'm not going to be nice anymore. And some of the things that you do, I may make the whole class be quiet for the rest of class just because of you guys, just to put the pressure on you, because I'm not going to do that, because I know, even though you don't care that much, what I want. I don't think you want to put your fellow students in that situation. Sometimes I'll approach it that way, the more harsher thing I've done.
Speaker 1:I don't do this very often, but if I see they're saying something and then looking around at their buddies to see if they're laughing, especially if the buddies aren't really laughing that much, I'll just say something. You realize you did that to get their attention and they're not even laughing at you. You're just making a fool out of yourself. I've been known to say that before A lot of times. That will work, but you've got to decide yourself whether or not, or maybe I should say how you're going to act.
Speaker 1:When you have a classroom that has a whole bunch of troublemakers in it, how are you going to deal with that? If you do have another teacher, ask how that class has been in the past. I had a co-teacher for two classes one day when this happened and I was thinking man, so many troublemakers that they've got to put them in two classes. Well, it turns out that the second class was much more in control than the first class. In fact, the first class that day really wasn't bad. It just wasn't a typical class. You had to watch for several things. When friends congregate, it will be worse. Mark my word.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go to the other side of the argument. One of the students that I had in the past no longer in the school. It's so funny because in fact, I could think of two students like this. When I pass them in the hallway or just when they've occasionally come to me one-on-one to ask me about a problem, they're as nice as they can be, but when they are in a classroom and they've got their buddies around them, this sounds like I'm talking about all male students. It's not always the case, but I will call them buddies in that way, because that could be a boy or a girl, either one. They've got their buddies with them and they have someone to show off to. They will be worse.
Speaker 1:So the other side of the argument is for the school, instead of putting them all in the same room, putting a few of them into each class period all day long. Do you like that? I'll tell you this One of the students that gave didn't really give me a lot of trouble, but just caused a lot of trouble in a classroom when his buddies were in there. I noticed when I had him for another class later on, where he didn't have any friends around him In fact I think he was a junior in a sophomore class because he had transferred in and needed this class and there wasn't anybody around him he could relate to. He was totally quiet and did his work. So there's the positive side of splitting the students up and putting a few in each classroom.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, the negative side is, if you do it this way, you've got a few of those troublemakers in every classroom. You're going to have troublemakers from period one all the way through period six and you may have to deal with them. I said troublemakers like to show off with their friends, but there's plenty of troublemakers that it doesn't matter what class they are in and who's around them, they're still going to cause trouble. You still have to try to motivate them to get their work done. You know you are different in me, and I don't mean this in a negative way. You're different in me that it kills me to leave negative comments about a student.
Speaker 1:I don't like doing that. I like to leave positive comments about the best students and that I understand that. That's not. Not only is that unusual, that's not even school policy. You're supposed to tell students. Of course, if you got to a fight or something like that, I would have to report that. But you have to decide how you're going to handle this situation as well. I handle it as well as I can. A lot of times I will move the students up to my desk and make them set by themselves and I'll tell them you got a right to earn your seat back. Show me you can behave up here and I'll let you go back to your normal seat. That tends to work.
Speaker 1:I have had one student tell me that he didn't want to do.
Speaker 1:That Could have taken him to the office. I didn't. Ironically, that student later, maybe weeks later, came up to me and said Mr Collins, I realized that I might have gotten off on a bad foot with you and I'd like to apologize. Now he was selfishly saying it for one reason because he needed me to help him with his work. And I did that and I could tell he admired me for that.
Speaker 1:I could have just been mean and nasty and say there's no way you sleep in the bed you make. I didn't. I didn't feel like that was my role. I said all right, I'll help you out with that. In fact, I have to stick around. After school today I knew he was a driver and I said can you stick around? And he could. So the relay. He didn't stop causing trouble, but I don't think he caused as much as he used to. In fact he was a student that caused trouble in every class, it wasn't just my class. So there you go, both side of the argument. Do you like having all the troublemakers in one class at one time, with a teacher in there helping you, or do you like it spread out board to maybe dissipate some of that trouble, I think I'll lead towards the second side of the argument that I just presented. You have to decide what you're going to do. Okay, let's go out, have a good week of substitute teaching and I will see you next week.
