Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Do You Size Up Students When They First Walk In?
Join me as I unfold the intriguing debate - should substitute teachers read notes about their students? You'll hear about my experience as the upper referee in a varsity volleyball match, and how I used that perspective to transform my approach in the classroom. Experience the shift from dread to anticipation as I share the strategies that can change the way students perceive your class.
Let's just say you walk into the school and you see a folder laying on the stand that has notes about the students you're getting ready to teach. Do you read them? Or what if the teacher left you those notes out on purpose so that you could read them? Do you read them or do you ignore them? I'm going to try to argue both sides of that based on my experience the last four years. So it's September 12, 2023. This is Greg Collins Substitute Teacher's Lounge. All right? All right, here's what we're going to do today.
Speaker 1:I guess substitute teaching last week made me think of this. It didn't necessarily happen in the room, but it made me think of it. I've got several stories to share about sizing up students when you get to school. By the way, this is episode 225. It just seems like that has a nice ring to it. At one time I considered stopping at 200, and here I am, almost six months later, and we're still going. I appreciate that. I think that way I will probably allow Tuesday now to be the permanent day on which I released the podcast. It did go up 20% from the previous week. Now that could be topic related or anything like that. So we're going to try it for a while. So Tuesday morning is when this episode will pop up. You can easily listen to it on your way to school or on your way to wherever you're going. All right, one volleyball story that relates to the topic, but it'll be the only one I share with you this week, I promise. I don't know if I could make myself get through an episode without talking about it, but it relates so well.
Speaker 1:It was six years ago. I've been refereeing seven years. Of course I'm an assistant coaching now, but I'll go back to that in the spring. Six years ago. So I'd be refereeing a year. Apparently, our scheduler thought I had done a good enough job. She was now going to make me the up referee, the one that stands up in the stand for the varsity match. It's kind of a for lack of a better word a prestigious thing, because you're now the person in charge of that game. Well, when we got there that night, that meant that the guy that wasn't the upper referee for varsity would be the upper referee for freshmen and JV, and they knew that he was sort of the second guy. Now, this guy is a really nice guy, but at the same time I don't think he particularly enjoyed being second to anybody.
Speaker 1:He made the comment before it started that he was happy that I was going to do that. But I could tell even when he said it he was just trying to overcompensate for how he really felt. So he proceeded to tell me he had refereed this teams many times. He proceeded to tell me what I needed to watch for on this player, what I needed to watch for on this player, and after he got through about two players, I said listen, I don't want to know that. I want to be put in a game situation and make up my decision based on what I see, not what you tell me I'm going to see. And he stopped. We had known each other for years, so he did stop and I called it that way.
Speaker 1:It relates to the classroom in the same way. Would you rather know everything there is to know about students and therefore maybe watch for certain situations, or would you rather not know anything about any of them and go from there? Several things as they come up. I'm going to argue both sides of the argument. Let's say that you know. You know the details.
Speaker 1:My favorite story about that. It didn't come from a teacher. I was substitute teaching a math class one time at a high school and I walked in. I get there early. It's funny. My wife went into substitute teaching today and she left about. The school was only five minutes away so she left in plenty of time, but she left like 15 minutes before she was supposed to be there and I'm just the opposite. I like to be there a half an hour early. Does it make either one of us any worse than the other? But it's funny how different people, including regular teachers I'll see teachers walking down the hallway all the time about five minutes before class is supposed to start. So I just thought that was a funny observation.
Speaker 1:But anyway, this class they had had a substitute teacher the day before. The teacher just left scathing notes about every class. One class in particular she just basically ripped into, talked about how one really big guy was mean to her and so on and so on. And you know, I over assumed. I think it was a lady that left these notes. I don't know that for sure. You can't tell with names anymore. But I said, all right, I'm going to take that class and I'm going to tell them listen, I was honest to the test and listen. The sub yesterday wasn't real happy with this class. Here's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:I always like to leave notes at the end of day, not about the bad stuff but about who was the best class of the day. I've told you guys that before. So I told them all right, I want it to be this class. I didn't come right out and say give them information off of that confidential report, but I did make sure that I met the student that she had talked about specifically, and you know he was a big football player, but you know I would describe him more like a teddy bear. He was a nice guy. So I told them that I had a goal of making them the best class of the day. I wanted them to be the best class of the day. In fact I said, if you guys do a good job of it, I might let you, one of you students, write up what I'm going to leave for the teacher and then I'll sign it. Well, you know they took that as motivation. I don't know if anybody had ever told gave him, gave them that opportunity and, sure enough, one of the best classes I ever had.
Speaker 1:I would joke around with them, we would have some fun with things that were in the classroom. You know I've probably gotten a bad habit. One of my pet peeves is spelling. So I've been known to. When our teacher has written something on the board, maybe from the day before, and I see a spelling error, I'll just ask them do you see a spelling error up here? And I said don't tell the teacher. Now they probably told her anyway, but I don't know. It's just one of my pet peeves, so I'll tell them that. Just things I saw around the classroom. They were legitimately now if I would have told them, I said guys, you did well, but I'm not sure you're worthy of my best class of the day. That wasn't the case. They were legitimately the best class of the day. So I'll let one of the students write it up. They were very sincere about it. They mentioned some things that they could have done better. They mentioned that they enjoyed having me in the room, which made me feel good, and I was able to leave a glowing review of that class for that teacher when the previous substitute teacher had done just the opposite. That's just me.
Speaker 1:You're going to be faced with situations where you size up students. You're going to hear teachers talk about students. In fact, I mentioned this last week. You'll see a teacher single out a student when other students will do the same thing. We're doing the same thing because they had been troublemakers before, right. So it doesn't matter whether you want to size up students or not. When you go in the classroom you will. It's just called human nature.
Speaker 1:Here's what I've found out works well. I do mainly high school. Now, you know, the thing that popped into my mind is they're allowed to bring in snacks, to bring in soda water, whatever, into the classroom and eat it during class. And I have no problem with that either. And one of the conversations I've had with the student, I saw them bringing a big bag of Takis. I assume you know what that is. It's a very spicy corn snack which I love as well, although I can't eat as many of them as I used to be able to, or my heartburn will let me know about it usually the next day. But very tasty, very good pepper flavor. And I'll just ask them you know I might break. It's kind of like breaking the ice. I might just say are you going to eat that whole bag today? And they kind of consider it bragging if they say yes, just starting with a conversation like that.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you see somebody drawing and saying do you like to draw? Maybe you see an area of the classroom where it looks like the more talkative students have congregated to show off to each other perhaps. Well, walk over there and give them some kind of crazy story about yourself To just kind of let them know I see you over here. I could look towards you and say you might create potential problems for me today and instead I will poke fun at the very problem, perhaps talking, that I expect you to be involved with. I might go over and say I can out talk any of you in the room Now. That backfires a lot, so I don't say that as much as I used to, because they might actually take that on as a challenge. But here's the deal you're going to size up students when you walk in. I would encourage always get to class soon enough that you can at least see some of the notes that the teacher left. Just thought of another story and I'll tell you what I did here.
Speaker 1:Most of you call the internal in school suspension ISS. Most people call it ISS. I had a teacher once who was a very good friend of mine. I knew her from church and other activities as well. And she said now, this gentleman here you probably won't use pointing their roster, she's getting ready to leave for the day. She said you won't have him in class, he's in ISS. Well, it turns out his ISS was over the previous day and, instead of looking towards him as a student I really needed to keep my eye on.
Speaker 1:First of all, I didn't really see that I could see maybe he might be upset. He could be upset quickly, but I made a comment to him that made him realize that I knew he had been in ISS. But I was very friendly with him and it just so happened that this period was one in which lunch took place. So he walked back with me after lunch and said Mr Collins, can I share with you what happened and see what you would have done? And he said oh, my goodness. Well, it turns out he punched the kid in the shoulder, which obviously requires some disciplinary action. He punched the kid in the shoulder because the kid used a very vulgar word about his girlfriend, so he punched him in the shoulder. And it's amazing how many people I've shared that story with and they say, yeah, I would have punched him too. Well, I'm not one of those that would have punched a kid, but he at least felt like he could open up to me and share the story. I guess what I'm saying in all this.
Speaker 1:You could react to ways the both sides. The two sides of the argument are you could see notes about students and ignore them, or you could seek out notes about students so that I don't know. That's almost paranoid to me that you go in dreading that you've got a certain student in class. Instead, go in every day when you have found out something about students where you can try to make that students day special, just like you make the other students special. That wasn't on one of those lists.
Speaker 1:Sizing up students, sizing up people in general, I mean you've got teachers you prefer to work with over other teachers. You've got students that you prefer to have in class over other students. Regardless, that doesn't mean that you are allowed to treat the students that don't fall into that category more negatively. You're not. I would encourage you to do this. Size up students, do it, have a conversation with them when you first walk in the classroom Some type of icebreaker, but nothing like answer roll call with your favorite animal. They hate stuff like that. Instead, walk over to them, have a social conversation. If you see them eating something that you've never seen before, get them to talk about it. If you see them with science homework out in class, out in a math class, before you start talking, don't say you're in math class now. Instead, say what kind of science project are you going? Loosen the ice, make things more tolerable.
Speaker 1:A lot of them love being at school.
Speaker 1:A lot of them think that school is just a chore.
Speaker 1:You're going to run across students that aren't particularly motivated to do anything, but yet you still owe it to them.
Speaker 1:To make the best of your time in the classroom and when you size up students, try to take that positive approach.
Speaker 1:Don't take all the notes you've seen and go in thinking I'm going to have a negative problem with this child. I need to be ready for it and address it. Instead, go in and say if this kid does some negative things, this is how I'm going to turn it around into something positive, so that we can both learn from the situation. So that they feel comfortable talking to me in the hallway the next day if they see me, so that they don't dread being in my class the next time I'm here and therefore make my life miserable. Seek out ways to make everything a happy occurrence and size up those students in such a way that you can get some kind of positive performance out of it. So we'll see you next week. I am still trying to put together some ways in which I can interview students. I'll probably end up doing it in pieces and then editing those together, but either way, it's always good to know what students think would be the perfect substitute teacher or funny things that they've seen substitute teachers do all that kind of stuff.
