Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Who Let That Verbose Substitute Teacher In Here?
Have you ever caught yourself rambling to a classroom of increasingly glazed-over eyes? You're not alone.
Inspired by Henry Winkler's candid admission about losing acting roles due to excessive talking, this episode dives deep into the complex world of classroom communication. As someone who self-identifies as verbose, I share personal strategies for managing my "gift of gab"—including the somewhat humbling practice of giving students permission to call me out when I talk too much. But this isn't just about those of us who can't stop talking; it's equally relevant for the quiet educators who might need to step further out of their shells.
Throughout our conversation, we explore both ends of the communication spectrum, from the rambling storyteller to the terse responder, examining how each approach affects student engagement and comfort. I share revealing anecdotes about student interactions, like discovering fourth-graders prefer substitutes who use their generation's slang, and how my tendency to launch into tangential stories sometimes leaves students more confused than before I tried helping them.
The goal isn't to fundamentally change your personality but to find that elusive communication sweet spot where students feel both guided and respected. Whether you're naturally talkative or reserved, achieving the right balance makes you both approachable and efficient—the hallmark of truly effective teaching.
Ready to reflect on your own classroom communication style? Listen now, and maybe catch yourself before your next five-minute explanation turns into a fifteen-minute monologue that has students wondering what the original question was!
Greg Collins Substitute Teacher's Lounge. This is the March 18, 2025 episode, episode number 283. I can't believe that I have been reading or, I guess, listening to an audio book called being Henry the Fonz and Beyond, written by Henry Winkler Fonzie from Happy Days in the 70s, and he said a word in there that I said you know, I'm going to base a podcast on that word. He talked about how he thinks he lost some parts because he was so verbose and the way he was using it was that he talked too much. And, boy, if that ever fits somebody, that fits me. So I thought I would talk about it. And we're going to talk about verbose substitute teachers. We're going to talk about what to do if you're one. We're going to talk about what to do if you're the opposite end of the spectrum, the non-verbose substitute teacher. We'll talk about that. I'll share some stories that will go along with that. Well, we're not going to say what's best being verbose or not but in preparation for this episode, I said well, let me look up the dictionary definition of what verbose really means really means and the definition is actually using or expressed in more words than are needed, and the example they use was much academic language is obscure and verbose. So I thought about it for a while and I'm thinking, man, that definition describes me too Subst loud. All right, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You probably realized it anyway. This podcast used to be quite a bit longer, maybe 10 minutes longer, and it's pertaining to the topic we're talking about today. There were times when I thought, well, if I don't hit over 20 minutes, I'm not giving you a good podcast, when, in actuality, if I just draw things out and say things over and over and just talk and talk and talk, well, that will take away from the podcast. So that's kind of how we settled on the current type of timeframe.
Speaker 1:Another story I want to talk to you about sort of verbose. I went to a workout at a YMCA in my local town once and they normally have towels setting on the tabletop when you first go in and there were none. So I looked up at one of the guys and real friendly person and said do y'all have any clean towels? Well, he launched into a what, what seemed to me like a 40-second description and ordeal about why they didn't have any towels and at the end of it I just looked at him and said, was that a yes or a no? And he just laughed. He said, boy, you're one of those that just wants to get to the point, and I am. I'm a 90% left brain guy. So even though I'm verbose, I like to get things to the point. I'm a logical thinker. I just want this just to accomplish something and move on, that type of thing. So I've got all that type of stuff wrapped up in this. You know, I just listened back to some that I had already recorded today and I'm thinking you know you all can probably tell by the excitement in my voice that I kind of like this topic. I like to talk. Unfortunately, I probably like to hear myself talk.
Speaker 1:Let me describe first how you may be verbose and not even realize it. If the majority of the conversations you have you see people kind of gloss over, or you can tell they're just kind of waiting for you to be finished, or they can respond to you, or maybe they're verbose and whatever you say, they're not going to listen to. They just want you to listen to them. All that has to do. I think the word is verbosity. I hope I didn't just make that up, but that is what being verbose is.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you how I try to handle my situation, because I like to talk a lot and I probably sometimes talk longer than I need to to accomplish the task at hand. Now let's not be confused. Sometimes a certain degree of over-talking, I think, is required to be friendly. If you just give kids three, four word answers, that's not going to come across as very helpful. Yeah, you helped them, but then you moved on to somebody else. If you instead say oh, you really gave it a good try, let's try it this way, see if you like it better, well, I could have just said no, you're wrong, but I think the first version was a better version, even though by definition that was probably a little bit verbose because I use more words than I really need it to. So there's a happy medium there.
Speaker 1:I talk so much in class that the last class that I had for more than one day, I gave them permission by day two to say raise their hand and say Mr Collins, you're talking a lot. Again, we can't get our work done, you know, and some of them would say it and they would laugh about it. They probably thought it was third grade, they probably thought it was cool to say something like that. But they were right and then I'd say, okay, I'll try to settle down for the next 10 minutes. I don't know if I ever got through 10 minutes without talking, even though one of my disciplinary actions is they just won't be quiet. I'll tell them all right, you are required now to be quiet for the next 10 minutes and then you can talk again. But if anybody talks I'm going to add five minutes to that. You know that used to work good in middle school. It doesn't anymore. We've talked about that in podcasts past. But those are different things that I try.
Speaker 1:But being verbose is kind of comical. A lot of it comes naturally. My father always told me that I was shy going into college. I was an introvert going into college and I came out after year one an extrovert, and I guess he was right. I mean, I give some credit to my fraternity. I was a Lambda Chi Alpha and I enjoyed it. We were founding fathers at my particular university. I was elected treasurer in my first full year because I was studying accounting. I was elected president in my next year, probably because I talk so much, I don't know. But you know I like to get things done. I like to talk and be friendly to people. Sometimes that just naturally requires you to talk more to come across as friendly rather than just abrupt conversation.
Speaker 1:Now let's flip it a little bit and talk about non. Let's talk about extreme, the opposite extreme. In fact, I'm going to look up right now in my antonym dictionary, type in the word verbose, and see what they say is the opposite of verbose. All right, I'm looking at it right now and it's very interesting. The first two antonyms listed are almost ones. The first one is positive, the second one's negative. The first one is concise, that's okay. The second one is terse, that's a negative word. Succinct is a positive, that's a negative word. Succinct is a positive word, blunt is a negative word. So I'm not even sure the dictionaries can figure out what the opposite of verbose is.
Speaker 1:But if you're not a talker, okay, I'm going to talk to you again before this podcast is over about what I do as a talker. But if you're not a talker, I would still encourage you not to be verbose or not to talk when unnecessary, like I often do. But I would encourage you to try to come out of your shell a bit. Okay, don't. Just, I don't know why I thought of an officer and a gentleman. I just watched that old movie last week and two of the girls that went to the base of the Air Force were trying to find a man to fall in love with. They went to a party where they had to be introduced by officers and one of them was just talking and talking, and talking and you could tell she thought she was doing the right thing, showing how she knew a lot. And really the officer finally looked at her and said ma'am, you'll have to move along. Well, she was embarrassed, she had talked too much. I do that sometimes. If you don't talk enough, I would encourage you. You at least need to figure out how to be.
Speaker 1:Some of you don't want to be popular, but you need to be popular with those students from the standpoint of they feel comfortable walking up to you and asking a question. I'll be very honest with them In English, for instance, or maybe it's best to say social studies. I'm not a very good social studies student or I got A's, but I didn't enjoy the class. My wife is a teacher and she enjoys that kind of stuff. In fact, when we watch Jeopardy in the evening. Yes, we're old people. When we watch Jeopardy in the evening. Yes, we're old people. When we watch Jeopardy in the evening and it comes up with a history question, I always ask her in case she's involved with something else, and she usually knows the answer, but not me. I like to. If you're not the kind, I should say, to interact with students a lot, I want you to be more popular. You're going to be more popular by interacting.
Speaker 1:I ran into some of the fourth grade students the other day that they tell me that I'm their favorite substitute teacher, and then they went on to say, yeah, we like Mr this guy as well. And I got to. I tried to get them to say why do you like him? And one of them one of them said he uses words like slay, which, if you don't know, is a word that the Gen Z generation uses for something that's really done well, so to speak. Now that was what they came up with. They like that other substitute teacher, who I'm sure is younger than me, because they use words like slay. Now, I didn't have the heart to tell those kids that at your age you're not Gen Z anymore, you're Generation Alpha and you've got your own set of words. So I jokingly told them and of course this is being verbose again because it's a description that I probably didn't need to told them, and of course this is being verbose again because it's a description that I probably didn't need to tell them. But I told them you're not allowed to use the word slay anymore because you're not Gen Z. Oh, and I had them tore up too.
Speaker 1:But then it was interesting with the last five minutes of class. They asked permission to look up Generation Alpha words and of course I had to be careful because I didn't know what they were going to look up generation alpha words and of course I had to be careful because I didn't know what they were going to come up with. So I let them look for a while and they said, ok, here's what we're going to have, we're going to start talking and all that kind of stuff. So I thought that was cool. We have different ways. We are verbose. If you're very shy, don't change because of this podcast episode. But I would encourage you to try to come out of that shell some, so that I think the more students tell me this all the time, the more interaction you have with them, the more friendly you are going to come across to them and the more helpful On the flip side, on my side the more you show them that you're not.
Speaker 1:You're going to tell them interesting stories, but you're not just going to waste their time. I've told you the cafeteria story on here before. I always tell every new group that seems to fascinate them more than any, because it was back when I was in the school, when you never locked the doors of the school and people could just wander in and I told them a story related to that. That is my verbosity. I struggle with it sometimes. I interrupt people. Sometimes, ironically, the people that I interrupt most seem to be the ones that interrupt me as well, and that's probably just part of it. Think about which category you fall into Verbose or just using the perfect amount of words all the time. I guess the second is optimum words all the time. I guess the second is optimum. That makes you both come across as friendly but helpful, to the point of not wasting their time.
Speaker 1:If every time some, a student, asks me a question and I walk back to help them and I would say do it this way. This reminds me of a situation I ran another school and then I reel off a five minute story of a situation at another school when all they really wanted to help. I've probably hurt more than help. I've given them guidance to how to answer their question, but yet I've shared something with them that by the time I'm finished they may be so confused they don't even remember the answer I told them or are going to be led astray for their next question. So those of us that I hate to call it the gift of gab, I'm going to do it just for my sake. I have the gift of gab. It's hard for me to stop talking. I'm going to start working on it, just like Henry Winkler did in his book.
Speaker 1:He went on to say that he had to really work on putting on the brakes and the amount that he was talking so that he could get more jobs. He was not getting acting jobs because he came across maybe the right word in his case. He didn't use this, but maybe he was a little full of himself. He never really thought of himself as a Fonzie type. He was short. He jokes how he never was cool in a day in his life. I've said that about being a substitute teacher the only time I ever heard the word cool used like we've got the cool sub today was as a substitute teacher. I didn't get a whole lot of that when I was in high school or college. But anyway, work on that perfect pattern of talk level so that you know how to help those students. I'll work on my verbosity and the rest of you can work on the other situations from a talking standpoint that you find yourself in as well.
