Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Embracing the Chaos of Long-Term Substitute Teaching
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Embarking on a new chapter in my educational journey, I found myself transitioning from a day-to-day substitute teacher to a long-term mentor for a lively sixth-grade math class. The emotional rollercoaster and the rich tapestry of experiences that ensued are tales I'm thrilled to share with you. From the strategic deployment of a seating chart that became my compass in navigating student connections, to the integration of technology and game-based learning that revolutionized my teaching approach, this episode is a deep dive into the real-world classroom dynamics. Revel in the anecdotes of my adventures, where a simple math equation blossomed into engaging debates and the occasional serenading of tunes with my students.
Transitioning to Long-Term Substitute Teaching
Speaker 1We have had so many new subscribers in the last couple of years that I'm going to play an archive episode from before that . Since we've had this podcast for five years , I want you to hear some of the episodes that made this podcast popular . So enjoy this archive episode this week that you probably have never heard before . So you've substituted taught for a couple of months . Different subjects every day , different kids every day . Everything's going great and then someone says would you like to be a long term sub ? We'll talk about that today on substitute teachers lounge . All right , we're at episode three . This is going to be a good one .
Speaker 1I had been a substitute teacher for about two months . I had enjoyed myself so much . I was getting close to a lot of different kids . I was actually learning some of their names , which is really tougher when you have a different class every day . You've got to learn 150 names every day and the only time you get some return practice is when you return to that same class . So that's one of the toughest parts starting out . But I had done a lot of fun things with them . I had tried to make class fun . It's easy to do that when you're there for one day and then gone maybe for several days before you see that bunch again .
Speaker 1I taught a science class one time . That was about the phases of the moon , one of which is a blue moon . So of course , at the last couple of minutes of class , a couple of kids came up with me . I pulled up the lyrics to the song Blue Moon and we sang those together . I've done things like let them debate over topics again at the end of class , over topics like do you think your parents should have the right to follow you electronically everywhere you go ? So I like to do fun things like that . I showed them a clip of a magician convincing someone that he was invisible and we talked a little bit about how easy it is to convince somebody of something if you're not careful and how you could use that later in life . We've talked about , you know , for the first time ever , I had to analyze a Robert Frost poem that had to do with trees and a lot of its meaning related to death . So before it was over , we ended up having a conversation about not only burial but cremation . So I've done , in addition to trying to get through all the material that the teacher leaves I tried to do something fun at the end of the class .
Speaker 1I told you last week that I think the reason they enjoyed having me to come and teach their class is because I only got to see them once every few days and it was kind of like a little mini reunion when I got back . So I even had one . One middle school principal asked me oh , he knew that I had been to several different schools , in fact all the schools in the county teaching and he asked me which of the eight I enjoyed most . And of course that was a difficult question to answer . I did end up . There was two middle schools that I particularly enjoyed . I think it was mainly because I was there most often , and that's what I told him . I said if you're not first , your second . So all that had come along in two months . I had really enjoyed myself . And low and behold , one day at one of those two middle schools Somebody in the office came up to me and said mr Collins , the principal wants to talk to you .
Speaker 1So I'm already in trouble with the principal . You know I'm gonna be the shortest term substitute teacher They've ever had . I wonder what I did to get in trouble . Well , I found the time to go talk to the principal at the end of the day and they informed me that they had a teacher that would soon be leaving on maternity leave and Wanted to know if I would be interested in taking her sixth grade math class For the final weeks of school . We didn't know how much that was , how long that was going to be , yet she wasn't sure when exactly she was going to leave . Of course , that immediately made me a little bit nervous , because instead of just showing up and teaching whatever information the teacher had left for that day , I now would have to teach multiple weeks . I would have to make sure they learned something . You know , if they , if they ended up dumber than when I started teaching their class , I would take that personally . So it was very exciting . It was also very nor nerve-wracking . I of course mentioned to them now you know I don't have a background in teaching , right ? And they said , yeah , but we know you're an accountant and we know you're good at math and you've been good at the math at the math teaching classes You've already taught . So we would really like you to give this a try . And of course , I said yes . So what I did is I shadowed that teacher for free because I thought that was important For me to get down how I should teach that class .
Speaker 1The teacher was Extremely organized . She had everything that should be taught . Every day I had copies to make . That was probably the most time-consuming preparation for the class and of course I did that either during a planning period or in the evening after school , often umpire or or refereed Softball I'm sorry , refereed volleyball in the evening , so I would have a couple of hours between when school was out and if my game was in the same area , a couple of hours to kill . So I would do the work during that time . But she was very organized . I made copies , as you often have to do when you're teaching math , because they're going to be working on problems , they're going to have homework , they're going to have Definitions and descriptions . So all that was beginning to take place .
Speaker 1I shadowed her for one day . I did normal substituting for a couple of weeks after that and we I kind of had a general feeling that she was going to leave soon . So I chose to go back and shadow her again on a Friday and , sure enough , in the middle of that day she informed me that Greg , I think this is going to be my last day here , so my timing was good . I was there exactly when I needed to be to be ready for her to leave . We got to go over several things and that is what this episode is going to be about how to make that transition from being a single-day Substitute teacher different class , different students every day to a long-term Substitute , and in this class that was a total of nine weeks .
Speaker 1One week was off for spring break , but I started the week before spring break and then eight weeks after that . So the first thing I did I thought I would at least be prepared for Monday morning . I actually came into the school over the weekend Prior to the first day I would teach . The principal gave me access to get into my door , so I was able to do that . I went ahead and made my copies . That teacher that normally teaches the class had a little slot for all the days of the week , so I would put my copies in those slots and we were ready to go for Monday morning .
Speaker 1I noticed that one of the first things I ran into as I'm getting adjusted to the flow of the day is the things that slow you down , in this particular case , my early morning periods were 10 to 15 minutes shorter than the afternoon periods . And then a small thing I had to deal with the first day and it took me a couple of weeks to get it figured out is just pencils and sharpening pencils . And why in the world do we let these kids need a pencil every day ? My first day the teacher had a pencil sharpener that only she would operate , so they would have to bring the pencils to her . She would sharpen them , I guess because the pencil sharpener was so noisy . So I started doing that too . And , man , when you do that in a class that's only 40 to 45 minutes long in the first place , that takes away a lot of your class . And you also have to deal with the students , the other students , the ones not getting their pencils sharpened while all this is going on .
Speaker 1Things I tried to do to solve it . I did a log out sheet . I bought a few pencils , did a log out sheet . That didn't really work . We forgot to log things , pencils back in . Then I tried something that had heard other teachers try is take a student's shoe while they had a logged out pencil and they had to bring the pencil back to get their shoe . But of course I had some students that would then do it just so they could take their shoe off . So that didn't work . So I finally went with the Amazon approach . You can get a I think it was 150 pencils for about $8 and that was well worth it to me . I had a pencil sharpener a cheap one that was really fairly effective for $8 . And so a $15 , $16 investment , and then I had plenty of pencils . I was ready to go . Got that distraction out of the way .
Speaker 1One of the things I also was worried about was the administrative side . It's hard enough to teach those kids and make sure they learn something , but the administrative side . I had to learn the systems that they used to . It was called infinite classroom . Not only was for daily attendance , so I had to take the time at the beginning of each class to check off the attendance and click save to get that going . And then , of course , as the weeks progressed , I had to turn in both midterm grades and into the year grades . And when I finally learned those systems I felt like I was doing a good job of keeping up with grades and I was keeping all their test input and I would use my planning period to do that .
Speaker 1For the most part it was about three or four components . One component was testing . One component was a computer related learning tool called IXL . They also had a learning tool called IREDI that they also did on their computer . It was amazing because the share , the percentage of their grade that each of those were , it was about 25% . So if they got behind on their computer work it looked like maybe they were a D student when they could very well be an A or B student . As soon as they got that work caught up . Some of them had late homework to turn in . I gave them credit for additional homework . So we had to put all that into the grade system and I thought I had mastered it .
Speaker 1I thought I was all ready to turn in midterm grades and I got everything updated and there was one button called final or complete or something of that effect that I forgot to click . So I had to go back in the last minute and click all those for midterm . I didn't knew what to do for finals . So that wasn't quite as hard . But as I learned the system it was very helpful to me because when the kids would come up to me and say Mr Collins , I think I'm behind in that area . Could you help me with that ? I actually not only could help them with that , but tell them what effect that would have on their grade once they got all their work caught up . So that helped me learning those systems
Teaching Sixth Grade Math and Connecting
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Speaker 1The teacher had made use of a seating chart , so that helped me a little bit . I actually made copies with my phone of the seating chart so that I could then load them into my iPad , pull up the screen and I could take attendance that way and , of course , that also helped me learn their names . Some of the names I didn't get right for a while because some of them didn't go by their first name . There were some names that were very popular , like Caitlin and Kaylee , and some of those names there was multiple names , so I got confused a lot . Some of them would go with shortened versions of longer names , so I had to get used to that . But they understood . I think it bothered me a lot more when I messed up their name than it did them . So that was just getting used to things , but it's amazing how well you get to know their names when you're with them day in and day out for a while , so that worked out all right to .
Speaker 1Of course , there's always in every school you teach at there's different level students . Now I think all my students were great . I would call them average students . In fact , I wouldn't even . I would call them average students , good students and great students , and I had classes that had mixtures of all of those .
Speaker 1I noticed when I did electronic tools of learning like Kahoot . That is basically a game system , way of learning where I can actually design test . There's plenty of test I could pull up from their system to use and I did notice that the average student seemed to I would even venture to save learn more when we were using that tool . We it's a tool that will run on Chromebooks and I'm not going to give too many details about it because it's a great tool and I want to spend a future episode just talking about Kahoot . But I did notice different tools worked more effectively with different types of groups average to good students . They enjoyed playing Kahoot . I would even say the average students . They put more emphasis on learning when we played a game like that .
Speaker 1Some of the most the upper A students , some of them would actually get tired with it . They would like to play it maybe once a week , but if we did it multiple times in a row , just because of what we happen to be doing at the time , I could tell they would tend to get bored with it . Some of them even asked me for worksheets to do so . That's good . You have a lot of different levels of students . I would even say , and feel free to argue with me , that math is much more than any other subject , has a lot of different levels . I think a lot of your while a lot of your math is learned . A lot of that you're kind of born with as well . So we dealt with all that .
Speaker 1The seating charts worked well . They asked me if they can move around and set with friends and I knew there was reason why the teacher had seating charts . I let them do that maybe the last couple of weeks of school after we had had the year in testing to see how the students had progress through the year . So the seating chart was very organized by the teacher the lesson players had to do . The students worked real well in class my go to usually if I thought they were getting just a little bit carried away in class or wanting students attention . I would just have them come back and set with me for a little while and and then , after 10 or 15 minutes , I would have them move back to the normal seat , and that seemed to work out well . So that's what we did in that regard .
Speaker 1And again , I had a great teacher that I was filling in for . She would send me text . I would return text to her . We talk about students in general , just how much Fun I was having , how much she was missing them . She would get a . I gave her my email address . She did a good job of sending emails to me that were sent to teachers and I otherwise not might not see . So we did all that . It was a great time . I think the kids learn well and I think I hope they enjoyed having me as a long term sub as much as I have them .
Speaker 1My nervousness was unfounded . I was nervous in the beginning . I did use a couple of tools when we thought we were behind in a certain area . I had students in probably every class that I could look at and I knew that if they didn't understand it , I hadn't yet done as good a job as I could in teaching it to them . So there's all kinds of tools on the internet that will help teach . You can even just type in sixth grade teaching , and there are tools on there that help explain maybe more difficult topics . I can think of when we got to the statistics unit again , this was a sixth grade math class , and these two topics were eighth grade in the eighth grade curriculum only two years before , so I had to teach them in statistics enter quartile range and mean absolute deviation , and even though I wrote it up on the board and they took good notes and I gave them some notes of my own , I found some really good videos for that level age for those two topics . That explained it to me real well , and I showed that in class one day , and a lot of the kids gave me a thumbs up because they thought it helped them quite a bit . And then , ironically , when we got an end of year standardized testing , which we call K-Prep in Kentucky , there wasn't any questions on either of those two topics . So I'm glad , though , that they left there and they had learned about it more . So you know , we got the learning part of those two topics complete , one of the more enjoyable things we did .
Speaker 1We had a couple of fun days during this time where they just come in and they have fun all day . They can dress down , we would go outside and play games like kickball . I would play with them . I wanted to be a part of what they were doing and I think that's another reason why we got so close . We would tour shrines and that type of thing . Some days , when they had a fun day on on their campus , we would go to inflatables , and a lot of times I think the two fun days were split into three parts . One part was the inflatables , one part in the gymnasium , one part was outside and then one part was back in the classroom and the teachers were free to pick what they wanted .
Speaker 1Now , my thing is , I've always been a big music fan , so I prepared a video playlist for them . You know , obviously , mainly their songs , clean versions of their songs . Some the other teachers would show movies in their room . Some of the other teachers would do crafts , but I ended up being the music video guy , so they would come in my room to both play board games and things like that and then watch the videos in the background . So that was an enjoyable part of the job and , yes , I did get very close to those kids by the time the year progressed .
Speaker 1I remember walking around the day of our standardized testing , which is within the last two weeks of the semester , and watching them do their work and being proud of what I saw . Of course I couldn't talk to any of them , I couldn't even make a motion , I couldn't even point to a piece of paper . The rules are so strict on that . But we did very well . I will not find out until October . Today is July 1st . I will not talk , find out until October how well they did . I might not ever see those kids or those teachers again although I don't really believe that's true because I'll be back substituting for them . But it was such an enjoyable job . I would encourage you , if you ever fall into that situation , that you jump on it . It's a very neat way to go to the classes . Go to the same class every day . It's funny .
Speaker 1I got close to those kids are . My welcome didn't wear out at all . They came up and they considered me a friend . They knew I would let them talk to me about anything . We talk in the hallway . Sometimes they they would share stories with me about how one of the kids was not happy with them and I would just let them talk and listen . So I tried to be both their teacher and their friend . So it was a very , very enjoyable experience . We will talk about some of the tools I use for that in the future .
Speaker 1I will tell you that as and we got closer and closer and I went to their graduations and all that type of thing , I got so close to to them that I had already told them that I would probably get emotional that a last day of class when they came in some of them chose not even come to class that day . But I thought it was kind of funny that three of the young ladies that I had taught all year they were joking around that they wanted to try and go back and make Mr Collins cry at the end of the day . And sure enough they did it . They came back and gave me a hearty goodbye and I got a little emotional . But all those kids were such good kids is one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life . It's one of those experience that has told me that you know , after 38 years as an accountant , I really think I wish I had gone into this for a career so very enjoyable
Long-Term Substitutes and Upcoming Topics
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1Do not turn down the opportunity to become a long term substitute if you're ever put in that situation . In fact , if you have been put in that situation , I would really love to learn all the things that you encountered , things that you tried , various different things that would be very appropriate for us to share here in the substitute teachers lounge . I've got a new email you can send it to either . If you wrote down the one I had last week , that's fine , I'll still get it . My new email is we're starting to get our website up is greg at substituteteachersloungecom . So that is my new email address .
Speaker 1Please feel free to share with me anything that you thought of as we've gone through these first three episodes . I haven't decided exactly what the next episode will be about , but I think it will probably be about Kahoot and some of the tools I use for on the computer for these students , because I think it worked out very important . Kahoot has had a recent workshop in which they invited a lot of people . I didn't get to attend I think it was in Pennsylvania , but very , very powerful tool , and I will talk about that a little bit , if not next week , at least on a future episode . So again , thanks for being here for episode three of the substitute teachers lounge podcast music provided by Ben soundcom .