Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
My Worst Student Ever as a Substitute Teacher
Ever had a day so rough it became memorable for all the wrong reasons? Join me, Greg Collins, as I break my summer hiatus to revisit the chaos of my worst day as a substitute teacher, inspired by the response to my February 6th episode.
This is Greg Collins Substitute Teacher's Lounge. It is July 16th 2024. You know, I wasn't even sure I was going to record an episode this week, but I am going to tell you why I'm doing it, because it's a part two of the most popular episode so far this year, which was from February 6th, and it was entitled my Worst Substitute Teacher Day Ever. What could I possibly have to add to that? Well, let's see.
Speaker 2:Substitute Teacher's Loud.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, here's my plans for the future. I had told you back at the beginning I guess instead of saying beginning of summer, I shouldn't say the end of the school year to say in beginning of summer, I shouldn't say the end of the school year that I was only going to record one episode per month June, july and August because I was going to be busier with travel you guys probably don't listen as much during the summer and since I get ideas for shows out of the classroom and things just kind of dry up a little bit. So that was my plans. But I'll be honest with you here. In the last week I have jotted down enough ideas, things that are popping to my head, things that I have encountered that I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to record an episode for the 16th of July. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to record an episode for the 16th of July and then I'm going to get in a pattern where I'm going to record a new episode every two weeks, maybe from this point forward, because then on the off week I'm going to be recording a new Instagram video to make public, because the Instagram is going really well, I had another one that has crossed 500 views and I appreciate all the new members that I've gotten from that. So this Tuesday, the 16th, is this episode. So then next Tuesday which would be what the 23rd then I'm going to publish a new Instagram video and we'll do that back and forth at least until the beginning of the school year, but maybe from now on, because I really enjoy that and I got kind of a side benefit this last time, I will play the audio portion, although I would encourage you again to go to instagram my instagram account or the facebook page it's on both and substitute teachers lounge and look for this video.
Speaker 1:The last one was called it's a gen z thing which I may actually do an episode about too before the summer's over, but I'll play that, the audio portion, at the end. But it was another one where I kind of you know, put on a flower shirt, try to draw attention to myself, and I had an interesting thing happen. I actually had more views on a different social network platform than I did Instagram, because what I'll do on a different social network platform than I did Instagram, because what I'll do, it's interesting. This podcast, you can now set it up to publish directly to YouTube. Now obviously there's no video in that case. It just publishes to YouTube with my Substitute Teachers Lounge logo and they can watch it like that. Then when I do an Instagram video I publish it you know, recorded just most of the time on my iPhone and I will publish it to Instagram, maybe putting some comments or some text on there. But then I'll also publish that raw video to my YouTube Subst substitute teachers account too. And it's interesting, I got three digits in views on the YouTube version, which I surely wasn't expecting. I think Gen Z is kind of a hot topic right now, so that probably explains part of it. But I'm excited to go forward and I've had that.
Speaker 1:To be honest, the Instagram part, even though it's only like 30 to 40 second video, really requires more work, more time to put that together than it does the podcast. You know, you know me by now. I'm one of those that if you, you could throw a random topic down in front of me and I could probably ad lib and talk about it or make something up about it for 15, 20 minutes, and that's usually what I do with my podcast. I'll just jot down three or four bullets, I'll talk to them. I can talk, you know, five, 10 minutes on each bullet and we go from there. So, but that's the schedule from now on.
Speaker 1:For the moment, I'll do a podcast one Tuesday, I'll do an Instagram the next Tuesday and then podcast Instagram back and forth, that way throughout the week. I admire we're planning a trip slash cruise here soon and I follow travel videos and I tell you what. There's some good travel videos out there that I've subscribed to, some of which record every single day and I'm thinking, man, how on earth do they do that? Now, they do live like 10 minutes away from the theme park area of Florida, so that helps a little bit. And the cruise podcast videos that I've been listening to, they're actually on the ship, so it is kind of cool to do that. I'm not quite that industrious. So I'll give you a podcast one week, instagram the next week, and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:All right, I didn't just pick this topic to talk about because you know I said this is the second part of that topic my worst substitute teacher day ever. This is going to be, I'm going to describe, the worst student ever. It's going to be different for me than it is for you. But if I asked you, if I had all of you all in a room right now, you could tell me. Even if you're not a teacher, if you're just a student, you can look back and remember the worst teacher, substitute teacher encounter you can remember. You can probably picture that in your head right this moment. So I'm going to tell you about the student that led to my worst substitute teacher day ever, from a couple of different standpoints. I'm going to call this part two and maybe even call the next podcast part three, because what I'm going to do, the next podcast, is describe to you some of the changes I plan to make for myself, some of the things that I've described to you that I'm going to start doing this or I'm no longer going to do this.
Speaker 1:Well, I've changed my mind. Part of it has to do with that little short. I told you I took a solo trip. I had time to walk around and just look at people and think Some of it was very touching Families going on vacations from age six up to maybe age 86. And you know it was so inspiring that it got me thinking about my parents. My last parent passed away. It's been over three years ago now. But just seeing those family made me feel like I wanted to. When I got home I wanted to drive over it's about a 40 minute drive and look at their stone and just kind of reminisce in that regard, and I did that. I hadn't been over there in a couple of years, thinking about everything, including as upset as I was perhaps in some of my substitute teaching experiences last year. Am I really so upset that I couldn't make some changes and try some new things? That's more next week.
Speaker 1:This week we'll talk about the worst student. Now, remember week this week we'll talk about the worst student. Now, remember, I'm calling that student worst student, not aimed at the student himself, but at the behavior of the student. I'm sure this kid has great potential in other areas that I didn't see. I only saw this student's bad side. That I didn't see. I only saw this student's bad side.
Speaker 1:And part of the reason that it bothered me is because I grew up. Now I say this, it's kind of ironic here. I grew up in the yes sir, no sir, timeframe. I went to school. I graduated from high school in 76. So I graduated from middle school, which was called junior high. Back then that would have been 72. So the six years leading up to that.
Speaker 1:So now we're back in the late 60s, when I was in school. So I grew up in an era where everybody was still saying yes or no, sir, you respected your teachers. At the same time, perhaps it was one of the more radical times as well, because there was a lot of protests going on. The Vietnam War had a lot of students upset and protesting and I won't go into all the details of that If you're interested in it. There is plenty of history to look at Unfortunate events that happened on college campus by both students and overzealous National Guard type people. So the 60s was a very volatile time frame. Yet it was still a time frame back when we typically said yes sir, no sir, to each other At the same time. You all know me, I don't really go by Mr Collins, I go by Greg, even with my students, and I might change that a little bit, and I'll tell you why next week, because I'm going to tell you that as part of some of the changes I'm going to have going on.
Speaker 1:All right, the student, the student, the reason I said all that about the 60s and how, the respect we at least the way I was raised, we showed to other adults there was no respect of that type from this student in that classroom that day. I will say, even though there was a conglomeration, as I mentioned back on February 6th, there was a conglomeration of similar student attitudes in that class throughout the class, and I blamed a big part of it on them trying to show off for other students, and if those students that they'd like to show up for had not been in there, that perhaps it wouldn't have even been a troubled class, but they were, and the students trying to show off and doing disrespectful things. That that's why that made that the worst substitute teacher day of my life. Perhaps, though, this student, had they not been in this class, I may not have come out feeling as bad as I did. To this day. I am involved with a 10 to 12 year old volleyball camp right now I guess maybe it goes through 14 year old, because I had some of these students in middle school, and there are some of the students there that say, oh, mr Collins, please come back to our class. We know why you left. I mean, apparently it's public, everybody knows why I left and or said I wouldn't come back to that school. They want me to come back and you know I get to thinking it's not fair of me and I'm getting more into next week's episode. But it's not fair of me to that student if, if they request me to come, to not come just because a hand of you know, because of a handful of students, but this student, they were what I called super disrespectful, to the point that I really felt like there is nothing more that I can say to this student. I don't think they are capable of changing. I think they will always be that way.
Speaker 1:I unfortunately had heard about this student from other teachers as well, so that ended up being part of the problem. But he was the one that would say certain words that he knows he shouldn't say in a class and then look around to other students smiling and laughing like he was so proud of himself. I have been known to call out students on this before. I knew it was too far down the road on this student. But I will tell students when they say something like that, just to get attention. I'll say why are you looking around at everybody else? You're talking to me. Are you looking around everybody else? Because you're looking to see if they're proud of you for saying things like that. Well, if you look at their expressions, they're not. So why did you say it? This student was disrespectful. They would say anything to get on the substitute teacher's nerves. As I said, back on February 6th, the substitute teacher the day before me had also left a note about this student misbehaving.
Speaker 1:Back after that my wife was in a classroom situation like this about a year ago and she encountered some students like that and she has a middle or I shouldn't say a middle school, an elementary school background. So she was kind of excited to try middle school and it didn't work out for her and I'm sad for that. But anytime, today I'm 66 years old. I don't want to say it's a Gen Z thing, surely not. Disrespect is not a Gen Z thing and I'm not sure it's different than, you know, my baby boomer era. But a lot of people say that they between Gen Z, millennials, Baby Boomer, generation X and whatever else I left out, and you can just see, not in their attitudes but in the food, what a difference it is between those age groups. So I'll suffice it to say this my worst student ever I can picture. There are others, in fact. I thought about making this like an amalgam of several different students, but I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1:I will share with you some other students that I would put in my top five. Although they've had their good moments. This number one student, the worst student. I've never seen a good moment from this student. I've never seen a Mr Collins or Greg. Could you help me with this? They have no desire to be helped, they just come to school. I sit in the hallway too. This student just comes to school to try to do bad things in front of other people. I don't think he does solo bad things. I think he gets his jollies by doing these types of things in front of other students.
Speaker 1:Now, I told you this is part two of an episode that was on February 6th. This is part two of an episode that was on February 6th. Next week, I am going to talk about some changes that I thought maybe I wouldn't make, but that I'm going to make. It's going to be based on this student. It's going to be based on other students. I will describe to you. It's going to be based on making changes that I didn't think I would make. I would encourage you to listen to that in a couple of weeks and we'll talk about what I'm going to change for the year 2024 to 2025.
Speaker 2:They said I was the Lulu. What does that mean? But then I realized it's just a Gen Z thing. So I studied Gen Z words and I got all the deets. You may think I'm cray cray, but now I can eat. Now don't be jelly, because if you know, you know I won't dish you because you're slow to the show. So I'm just dropping bars with the words I sang. I know it's a sus, but it's a gen z thing. Man, oh man. I slayed that song and this baby boomer thing sits far out and groovy. Can you dig it?
