Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
When Kids Act Better Than Adults
Let’s highlight the times when children are the ones leading by example. Amidst tales from the gift shop to the pickleball courts, I uncover a parallel universe to school where the expected roles of decorum are often flipped.
This Greg Collins substitute teachers lounge. It is January 23rd 2024. I am actually recording this a few days early from a cruise ship, balcony. I'm using some observances I've had this week To kind of compare that to the schools and I thought the interesting type of topic would be what happens when the kids had better than the adults. So let's get into it. We are Just finishing a week here in Kentucky where the entire week was out because of weather. Let's see what we can talk about today on substitute teachers lounge. All right, guys.
Speaker 1:So I actually recorded the opening two days ago when I was sitting out on the balcony of the ship. I am inside our cabin on the ship now. This is our last day. Since the last time I talked to you. We have taken a bridge tour. It was it's. They surprised us. We ate at a restaurant One night and they just walked up to us and gave us passes to a bridge tour. So it's kind of cool seeing it from the captain's point of view and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:I thank you also for listening to the last four weeks. They've all been repeats. I listened to them too and the two things I noticed. Where I don't say as much, I still edit the show all the time, but it really. Some of those early wins were really unprofessional in that regard. But I had forgotten some of the information I shared myself, some of the things I've gotten lazy with and don't do as much now, but it's been a great trip and you know, I've substituted taught long enough now that I see and I'm always looking for new topics to talk about because I don't Want to just talk about the same thing over and over I Wanted to make some observations on the cruise ship to see if it would remind me of Situations in the classroom, and I didn't have to go far. In fact I wrote down three or four, decided to choose this one.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you a couple of the funniest things we did all week. You know, the crew started on Saturday, last Saturday, and, and two days later it was formal night in the dining room and I was so depressed because I put on my pants and they were tight and I'm thinking how in the world Can they get tight in just two days? Well, it turns out I had put them on over my athletic shorts and it just made them tight. So that's the first thing we got a good laugh out of. And then me and my wife once tried to take a short cut out Of a room, did a loop and came right back out to our room again. So that's kind of this Crazy things you do when you get to be my age. Maybe that's why the kids like me at school, because I do those same crazy things in the classroom or I tell them the stories and it breaks the ice.
Speaker 1:Two things had the. The main two things that happened that I considered doing a show title show subject about, were these as we were Leaving the first airport, we were in the gift shop and a lady had just gotten off a plane. I don't know where she was from, it really doesn't matter but she walked up to the register, lady, and she said do you all sell cigarettes here? And the lady said, oh god, no, I'm thinking, oh man. So the lady walked away and she just said something like don't judge. And then I got to think it Well, with judging others be a good topic.
Speaker 1:But then something happened to me the very first Full day, full C day, when all your time has spent on the sea, because from 8 until 11 they have open pickleball. We had just taken the clinic the night before. So here's four of us Getting ready to play open pickleball. Except that me and my wife showed up a few minutes early, so they were already playing. People were already playing the game.
Speaker 1:The common etiquette that you do when you play a pickleball in that court is you stack your pickleball paddles and I looked it up, they're called paddles, not rackets pickleball paddles and Stacks of four, and then that holds your place and then the next four stack their paddles behind you, and so on. What we didn't know at the time was if you stack two paddles down because we're the only two there, even though it was six Slots away, you had to wait for six parties to finish. When we put the, I just put down to and then somebody put their paddles on top of it and I moved it, and then I guess it was kind of a no no in the etiquette. And then one guy came up to me and he's he started having this conversation with me was a road jerk about it and I'm thinking you know now that I think back, I'm gonna use that as my example today, because I've been in situations at the school where the kids acted better than the adults.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you where I'm coming from. First of all, that situation, one other situation that happened while we've been the motel the night before actually, we stayed two nights before the cruise left. The first day. The day before our cruise, there was a Disney cruise ship in the harbor. So in our hotel there was kids everywhere, but they were better behave than a lot of the adults. That the adults just kind of seemed entitled, some of them, whereas the kids were just there for the joy of the moment. It made me think, man, that so much like life in the classroom sometimes where the kids could be better behaved than the adults. So I had that situation. I had the guy on the pickleball where the all the kids around me were behaving fine, but he decided to be a jerk about it. So I thought maybe I can think back to the times when I've had that situation in the classroom.
Speaker 1:Here's there's one at the top of my list in fact I hate to admit it, but it actually called calls me to not Substitute teach at that school as much. Now, that's not really fair. To be honest, I didn't go there that much in the first place because the parking was just so inconvenient and I had other schools to choose from, but in this situation they were set up. It's really the only school I substitute teach at where students leave at different times a car riders leave at one time, one batch of buses leave at the other time, whereas the other schools they just send everybody to the gym and wait for their turn. Here it was the teacher's responsibility. Well, the students were really nice about it. They knew I had to referee volleyball that night and One of the other teachers used to be a volleyball coach and they said why don't, instead of making Mr Collins wait, why don't you all go ahead and leave the room at the first bell and come down to my room and wait here? So Now, that was a case obviously been adult being very accommodating then that way I could scoot out, avoid the worst of the traffic and make it to my body ball game on time. Well, they did that.
Speaker 1:I walked out and one of the newer teachers ironically, it was one of the teachers that the kids were talking about in the classroom, how they yell at them all the time, and he yelled at me. He actually said where do you think you're going? I mean exact tone of voice and I'm thinking, man. He could have been a little bit more diplomatic about that and, to be honest, I just ignored him and walked out. I said there are no more students in my classroom and he said, well, where did they go? And I didn't feel like I owed him that information. But you're going to run across maybe some Teachers like that that may come across. I've run through some that I shouldn't say look down, that's too strong of a phrase. But they just Don't consider substitute teachers. This is a rarity, but they don't consider substitute teachers important. It's probably more proper to say as important as teachers, and that might even be true. But you know, just that makes me and that makes me more uncomfortable than anything any student encounter I might have. So I just walked out, didn't go back to that school for almost a year, went back here recently and they were really. The students were really good. I talked to teachers too, but the students I could really see. We're glad to have me back in the classroom. So that's a situation where the students, the kids, did in fact act better than the adults.
Speaker 1:I've had one situation where Two things happened. Now I know you all are going to disagree with me on some of this because you know, I like to go by my first name and most people don't have a problem with that. But there was one middle school where an eighth grader was walking down the hallway and said good morning Greg. And the teacher next to them just jumped all over him and I'm thinking. I told her, I said well, I gave them permission to do that. And she, and she said you really shouldn't do that. And I started. I started to say why? Because I'm one of the oldest people in the building right now anyway. So I think it's respectful. It doesn't bother me in the least, and she just expressed her opinion and moved on that same school I would also. There would be times when I would hear one male teacher yell down the hallway at kids at the other end. You could just hear him all over the building. The kids, on the other hand, were pretty well behaved in that school. I don't go back there as much. There are people, of course, that have different opinions on the first name situation, and that's just the way I am. That's probably the way I'm always going to be.
Speaker 1:The final story I was going to share with you way back the first year that I was substitute teaching, and it might have even been the first day, I can't remember. It was a situation in which I was substitute teaching but the teacher was actually in the building at a car. They were having some kind of conference all day and at the end of the day the kids were fine. They were standing in the doorway ready to be dismissed. There was no kids any louder than the other, but apparently her meeting was right across the hallway and she heard this one kid that apparently had been in trouble with her before, and of all the kids standing in the hallway doing about the same thing. She jumped on his case for being too loud when it really shocked me because I'm thinking well, first of all, he wasn't any louder than anybody else in the hallway. Second of all, should I now feel bad because I didn't pull him back in and make him be quiet? I learned later on that I didn't. Ironically, I don't think that teacher teaches anymore, but you know that doesn't have anything to do with that particular situation.
Speaker 1:So here's what I would encourage you to do, and this is the only reason I brought this up everywhere you go on a vacation, whether it's on a cruise ship, where you're driving to it. You're going to encounter people, other people that are on vacation. Some of them will feel entitled. Some of them will feel like If they don't get what they want, they're going to be a jerk to you. I hate to wait to see how vacationers sometimes treat employees at the resort or on a ship or, however, if I don't know, their bacon's not crisp enough one morning. I mean, there's different ways to handle that situation. So when we're talking about the classroom, then just remember, just as in life in general, when we're encountered by either a child or an adult, sometimes the kids may act better than the adults. The dizzy cruise was a perfect example. All the kids were just excited, all the parents were frantic and it was just kind of funny to see that go on like that. So I would encourage you to, even if you haven't encountered with an adult whether that be a teacher, a principal, whatever the case may be it's going to be okay. Don't take it personally. They really don't mean to single you out.
Speaker 1:Work on your always being on time, always being talked about in a favorable way by the teachers and the kids. I actually had a teacher text me while I was on the cruise ship to see if I could teach for her. In fact it's the day, it's today actually I'm recording this early, so it would be this day that you're listening to this most likely, and I couldn't. I already had a time. You know, I had a time booked at another school and she made the comment to me everybody speaks so highly of you, the teachers and the kids, and that's important to me. It almost made me feel like that. This is my kind of teacher because she went out of her way to emphasize the kids. She was happy, not just that the teachers liked me when I come to their class, but that the kids did. They enjoyed having me in their classroom.
Speaker 1:So you're going to encounter some bad times sometimes. You're going to encounter some confrontations, possibly with adults. So you just have, we all just have to learn to do our best and keep providing the type of substitute teaching that we think is important and that we continue to keep the kids positive. So that just makes education more fun. Really strange week this week, because we've been in the Caribbean all the way down to Aruba for the entire week and every day of school last week was canceled because of snow and cold, I think as I speak or at least earlier today it was in the negatives where we live. So I hate that for everybody back there. I pray that our car will start when we get home and that you'll have a good week of substitute teaching coming up. I've already got three days scheduled this week, so that's good. Three days scheduled, three volleyball matches scheduled to officiate and a weekend tournament. So that's just the way I like it.
Speaker 1:Please do your best when you're a substitute teaching, be prepared. You know, anytime you have a confrontation, if you haven't prepared yourself or what you're going to say, you're most likely going to say the wrong thing. So I tell students always think about right now, think about it right now how you're going to handle a situation if it ever happens, so that you don't have to think on the spur of the moment. You're already prepared for that. And that's the same way as a substitute teacher. As substitute teachers, we need to practice now how we're going to handle certain situations, whether we have a confrontation with a student, or whether we have a confrontation with an adult while we're trying to substitute teach, or maybe while you're on a cruise ship trying to play pickleball, because if you get in your mind how you're going to handle it right now. You'll handle it correctly if and when that situation ever happens.
