Substitute Teachers Lounge

Hiding Substitute Teacher "Miscues"

August 28, 2021 Greg Collins Episode 119
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Hiding Substitute Teacher "Miscues"
Show Notes Transcript

Substitute teachers sometimes don't know or don't remember things that they should.  Here's how to keep your students from seeing you sweat it out!

Sometimes you don't want your students to know that you don't know. Here's some tricks of the trade that I use. Alright guys, I am setting in my truck recording this week's episode, I'm in the middle of a volleyball tournament, been working the sport every night this week. So this is about all I can do. So I did bring a halfway decent microphone with me. So hopefully it will be fine. I will talk about last week's episode called the funny substitute teacher. Let me tell you what happened right after I released it. I've got a Facebook group that you know about, I want you to join it is called Substitute Teachers Lounge, several 100 members on that. I always try to spur some discussion. Some of it takes off, most of it doesn't. So I'm trying to get that going. I would love you to join and have some conversations with us. But that's on Facebook, of course. But he ever did what happened last week within our maybe 30 minutes of when I posted the link to our episode, the funny substitute teacher, somebody made a comment. So now I have to be funny in the classroom to know thank you. And I'm thinking, Oh, man, that episode is going to go over like a lead balloon. Now I could tell they and they said that so quickly that it was somebody that really doesn't listen to the episode. They just thought they'd get on there and make a comment. So I kept watching it. And sure enough, shortly after that somebody else posted. That's obviously a substitute teacher that just doesn't get it. So I'm thinking man, here we go. I thought we were going to have a little Firestorm. But neither one of them replied anymore. And I didn't see too many more comments. And I am happy to say that you have to go way back to Episode 54. In fact, 54 was our most popular episode, it's had close to 1000 downloads. And it's on video version two, it's when we interviewed Jen Stephens about intermittent fasting. If you're interested in that, look back at that. And between YouTube and the episode it's, it's I think it's up to like 6000 views or listen now. So that's awesome. But anyway, last week's episode, the funny substitute teacher, you have to go all the way back to that other episode to find one that got more listens in the first week. So whether you like that idea, or you just wanted to complain about that idea, you just want to see what I had to say. A bunch of you listened to that last week. So I'm glad it was our most popular episode in its first week of any that we'd had since way back before COVID. All this COVID stuff started. It is August 29 2021. If you're listening to this in the future, if you are listening to this in the future, I hope you have your mask off, I hope everybody has their mask off. But for now we're keeping everybody safe by wearing them still I still wear them as a referee. Anyway, that was great news about that episode. And I hope now that we're back in school that everybody is listening more and more. As I mentioned last week, it's probably going to happen every week now that something will come up in school. And that will prove to be our topic for the week. So same thing this week. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations as teachers that we wish we knew something, or we wished we remembered something. And we didn't. And I don't get embarrassed about it. But I know I might be in the minority. I mean, if you have to admit some things you forgotten or some things you don't know why your substitute teaching to your students. Sometimes they can be embarrassing. I mean, as I've gotten older, even things that I might know tomorrow, I might not know today, I might have been able to give you the formula for the area of a triangle yesterday and blank my mind today. And that happens all the time. So I'll tell you how I cover for myself when I do that. I don't lie, but I've found some ways just through practice. I didn't search them out. But as I got better at what I was doing, then I was able to come up with some things to help out in that regard. And I think it will be ideas that you can take and save that embarrassment because it's a way to make it not obvious, whatever the word is that it won't, it will no longer be obvious that you had forgotten something, or you don't know something. So I'll give you some ideas in that regard. Let me just start with the one that prompted me to record this episode here. Here's a situation that as a substitute teacher, you will find yourself in often, it just so happened that I had given a test this week, couple of quizzes, they were short, but you know how students are. I'm in teach I'm subbing in high school classes right now. But this applies to all levels. As soon as they take a quiz, if they know that it's already graded. For instance, if you design it on Google Forms, it's great. And as soon as they take it, they might not see their grade, I gave another test this week that is actually with a Kahoot template, not from a competitive standpoint, or a time standpoint, or anything like that. It was just a Kahoot template. But it still would show them immediately when they answered a question where they got it right or not. And most students like that, it's a little To be honest, it's a little stressful for some, there's just some personalities out there that they really don't want to know right away what they got on their test. But most of them, they would want to know as soon as possible, rather than having to wait for the teacher to grade them. So if you're ever in that situation where you're giving a test, and it's in an automated format, and it's scored right away, I guess this actually came up in the Google Form type of tasks where they couldn't see the answers, but they knew I could tell what their scores were, I told them, I would share that, well, it's I've still just had them for seven days of the school year at this point in time. And I know a lot of them, I probably already know about 75% of the names, I probably know 100 names, but some I don't. And I'm the kind of guy I just don't want to make that obvious, I kind of want to hide the fact that I don't remember their name. And to make things worse. Now I could take the approach. A lot of people do this, that they just say, I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name. But if you're a teacher, I don't think that's an option. If you're a substitute teacher, I don't think that's an option. You need to learn their names, and you need to call them by their name. So here's what I did. I didn't want to just call the ones I knew by their names. I didn't want to tell admit to some that I didn't know their names. Here's what I did. I just said when they walked up. And this is true, although it helped out in this regard. I said alright, you can line up here. And then when I saw the people standing in line, whether I knew their name or not, I said the same thing to everybody. I just said, Alright, it's going to be easier to look this up for you. If you remind me of your last name. Now, students in that regard, they're all right with that, because they know I'm probably going to know their first name, but probably 90% of the time, I don't pay that much attention to their last name. In fact, it kind of bothers me to know their last name. I don't want to think it's not creepy but it's just maybe more information than I think I should know not want to have to know both their names for attendance and that kind of thing. But the memorization part is with the first name so I just told them All right, everybody come up, remind me of your last name. That worked well they reminded me of their last name and also helped me conceptualize in my head that when I looked up their name, and then I saw their first name, it would help me remember those. So I think that is a good idea. Anytime you have forgotten somebody's name now in my case, it worked out well because I had test scores laying there. I did have their name so when I told him I needed their last name. It worked out okay. Now if you are in a situation where they come up and just ask you a question, and part of the answer kind of requires that you know their name, come up with something similar. If you're looking up some something for them, say remind me your last name. If you're handing out some, maybe some paperwork that you have to log out, have them sign their name. At our school, they have to carry a hall pass when they go to the restroom, and we make notations on it with their name. So to hide the fact that I may have forgotten their name, I have every one of them that uses the hall pass, I'll put down the date, I'll put down the period that we're in, and then I'll tell them to sign it. So that's another way for me to confirm their name, by knew everybody's name, I would just write their name in. So I try to be consistent and do that with everyone. So that's the first thing that we'll talk about that will help you hide the fact that you've forgotten or that you haven't taken the time to learn their name properly. Now, let's talk about lack of knowledge. and bless our hearts that are getting older. I always jokingly say, although this is the total truth, that typically the things that I used to know that are forgotten, if somebody asked me that question, pretty consistently, I will remember it within 15 minutes. I won't remember it right away. But once my mind starts ticking, once I turn that key, I usually remember it in about 15 minutes. But let's face it, I think if you remember, if you're a frequent podcast listener, you know that last year, I taught sixth and seventh grade math and computer applications the whole year, this year, at least for these first two months, I'm teaching the biomedical field. And I always take care of myself in that regard, especially math. First of all, let's talk about math. That's my subject. Maybe English is your subject. But maybe you haven't hit English hard for years. But now you find yourself substitute teaching. My very first day as a substitute teacher, I was teaching protons and electrons and all that kind of stuff. And yes, I not only knew it when I was in school, but I was good at it, I would, the teacher would let me help others that were getting behind on their work. I was good at it, but I forgotten it. So there's two things you can really do in that regard. Now, I'm kind of obsessed when I teach, especially a long term role that I know a little bit about it. So I think I've told you before that when I knew I was going to teach anatomy, I went out and bought an anatomy and physiology book for Dummies. Now I'll tell you what, guys, those dummy books are the best. Because everything is explained in simple terms. So if you've got that option, buy those books. Now on the other hand, if you if there's not a book, maybe in the field, you know, you can't just go out and say, give me at least for dummies, that's just too broad of a topic. But you can probably find some things that will help you in the class. If you don't have that, do this. If you're friends with the teacher, or even if you're not, try to see if they can offer you some information about what you'll be teaching the next day and then take the time, it's probably just going to be 15 minutes or 30 minutes, take the time to go over that material the night before if you have it. But if you don't have it, go in there. If you don't have it at all, before you go in for that day of substitute teaching, go in early enough that you can look through the material. The great thing now is guys that we've got Google. So if you see words and what you're getting ready to teach, you can Google that bad boy in just a few seconds. And all of a sudden you're ready to teach the class. So you then hide the fact that you really didn't know that material. But take your substitute teaching serious enough that you want to be able to help those kids when you can. It was not fun. It's not the right word, I guess. But it's been a couple years ago now. I was at a middle school where they actually let those working on iready and stuff like that to sit in the hallway and work on their own just sit on the floor and chose between classes. Or maybe I had my class my students doing something that stepped outside. I saw somebody there and he was struggling with it. I said All right, I'll explain it and I'll actually walk you through and I'll do one for you. And then I'm gonna watch you do the next one. And he was so impressed that I remember that it just happened to be something that I probably was not a percent sure of my answer. But sure enough when he clicked it in, it was correct. Keep in mind a lot of these iready Type programs don't mess up their score because the way they work. If you get one correctly, or if you probably if you get several correct, then it will kick you into the next tier. If you get several wrong, it will drop you down and tear. So don't mess up their score. If you don't really know, you can say, oh, man, I remember doing that back when I was your age, I'm going to get you some guidance, then Google it, you know, they're not supposed to be on the phones, but you can Google it, Google it, help them out and go for there. So there's so many ways you can buy materials, you can take all these other approaches to make sure that you can kind of cover the fact that you either don't remember right now or you've forgotten, prepare ahead of time and be ready to come up with an answer for them as as time allows. Now, if you've ever brought up a story about a student that's not in your classroom, was in another class, but you enjoyed the story. And you told them that, be aware that those students are going to be going immediately until the other student, you've been talking about them. Let me tell you what happened. I actually told you this last week, there was a couple of freshmen in the high school that were that are dating. I last had them when they were in the sixth grade, so three years ago, and we're, I'd still call them good student friends of mine, and to the point that we can joke around and enjoy being in the classroom together. But I've made the comment, and this is what I mentioned to you last week, there was a couple and I said okay, well, how long have these two been a couple? And the students in the room said, really about the seventh grade? Well, I knew that that would get back that I brought up their name. I did when they said since the seventh grade, I made the comment. Don't you all think that they are both just really nice people. And everybody in the room? Agreed. So I made sure the next morning, it wasn't just to make sure they didn't hear it from other students. I made sure the next morning to go out of my way and tell both of them, I usually see them in the hallway, every morning and I say Listen, I want you to know I talked about you guys, let me tell you what I said I was curious as to how long you all had been a couple. And by the way they corrected. And so we actually had been a couple for three years since the sixth grade. And I said well, I made the comment in one of my classes that I thought you were a cute couple. And how both of you were so nice. And they laughed and they said, Well, thank you. Well, the next day, that girl came back up to me and said, Mr. Collins that I hear you had been talking about me in class. And I said, Well, no other than the story that I just shared with you. Now, had I not already shared that with her, it might have been a little bit more uncomfortable, because you know how the old telephone game works where you whisper into somebody here and you go down a line of about 20 people, and it's never the same when it comes out at number, person number 20 as it was when it started. Well, that's how these stories get started. So if you've ever talked about a student to another class, make sure when you leave that classroom, you tell that other student, and of course, don't talk them about them in a negative way. I don't talk about students ever in a negative way, you'll have a price to pay if you do that. But when you talk about them positive to another class, make sure you tell them that you've talked positive about them and they want that you want themselves to feel good about that. And shared in that way. Then when it comes back around that Mr. Collins has been talking about me in class, well, you know what, how to handle that. And you can tell in this case, I just told the girl I said no, no, I haven't said anything other than what I've already told you. And she smiled and said, well, that's what I was hoping I was just wondering make sure. And I'm glad that those kids feel friendly enough with me or comfortable enough with me I guess is the best word that they will come up to me and just ask me a question like that. They know I'll give them an honest answer. And I appreciate that. And as always, you know, I told them, I was sincere and that I thought they were two really nice students really nice people, but find ways to build your student. up that way, I talk about them positively all the time, there is good and everybody so rather than ripping them apart, rather than criticizing anybody find the good part in them first, and then we'll all grow together. I'll tell you one last thing that happened to me in the classroom this week, that kind of surprised me. Sorry, guys, going back to a volleyball story again. And I don't know, I'm gonna make some of the guys mad here that played volleyball. But here's what I said this week. And you know, the world has changed. For the good. Some things that we realize have been very chauvinist, DEEK comments that are just not proper anymore. That might have been said all the time, maybe 4050 years ago, and those of us that are in our 60s now, we don't think as much about the sensitivity, maybe as we should. I tried to be as sensitive as possible. Let me tell you what happened. It kind of caught me by surprise. I made the comment one day that I thought that girl, volleyball players are actually smarter players than the guys are. And I said, usually the guys, myself included, we're concentrating on just hitting the ball as hard as we can. Whereas girls use more finesse. They think things through they think through the strategy better. Yes, they want to attack the ball hard at the end. But they think the strategy out a little bit better. And I really feel that way. I've done boys and girls leagues ball. So I made that comment. I said, I think girls are smarter volleyball players, then guys, our guys might be stronger as a stereotype, but girls are the smarter players. Well, it's interesting. One of the girls in there not a volleyball player, one of the girls, and they're actually said, I take offense to that. So there wasn't really anything I could do other than saying, you know, I shouldn't have said it. Let's just move on. So and that's what I did. I closed it in that way. But then that day, in my cafeteria duty, I walked up to some of the volleyball players, they all eat together, and I said, Listen, let me tell you what I said in my classroom. And I told them, and I said, you know, people like me that grew up in the 60s. We don't think that offensive. But you all tell me if it is. They told me that no, we don't find that offensive. In fact, one of them said, I think that's flattering, that you feel that way. So I'll say all that to say this. There are things that we used to say, I'll give you an example, even from the 90s. But there's things that we used to say that we need to correct ourselves on. This is I'll let you decide this. And I'm not going to give an opinion because I'm just going to describe a scene from Seinfeld. I love the old Seinfeld shows. I still watch the reruns. But there was an episode where Jerry had gotten an accidental phone call from a Chinese woman. He made the comment that he got her phone number, he's going to call her back. And Elaine was there in the room with him. And so he starts dialing, he says, I love Chinese women. And Elaine says, isn't that a little bit racist? And he made the comment. If I like the race, how could that be racist, and it got a good laugh. But that kind of comment is not quite as acceptable now as it was back then so just be aware, you can say all you want to that I don't think somebody should take offense to this, but if they do, they do. So there's ways we can accomplish the same thing and not offend anybody. So that's what we need to work on guys. So let's close it out by saying you're going to find yourself in uncomfortable situations that really don't need to be uncomfortable. So work on figuring out ways that you can cover for yourself that use ways to hide the fact that you've forgotten their names. Use ways to cover up the fact that you've forgotten how to do something in English or in math, or that you're just don't know it. Don't remember it when it's something basic you should do. There are things you can do. I hope you learn from this episode, but that's the tricks of the trade when you want to cover the fact in front of the studio. That may be you don't know something that you should have known