Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
How Substitute Teachers Should Handle Spring Break
Teachers and substitute teachers never truly turn off their "teacher brain," even during spring break. Like comedians and songwriters, educators are constantly collecting experiences, images, and stories that can engage students and improve classroom learning.
• Spring break provides opportunities to gather visual aids that capture student attention better than lectures alone
• Personal photos from places like the Alamo or experiences like holding a sloth create immediate student engagement
• Sharing vacation mishaps (like losing passports or falling in public) teaches students that everyone makes mistakes
• Real-world examples and personal stories create memorable learning moments students remember
• Visual elements help regain attention when students inevitably get distracted
• Even unplanned vacation experiences can become valuable classroom resources
Keep your mind open during spring break. Look for photos, stories, and objects that might enhance your teaching—but remember to enjoy your well-deserved time off too.
Greg Collins. Substitute Teachers Lounge. This is the Spring Break episode, and I almost didn't do one. I figured you know I'll take Spring Break off, everybody else is. And then I got to thinking about it Should teachers or substitute teachers work at all during Spring Break? And the answer is an emphatic no. But how should substitute teachers handle spring break? I'll tell you some ideas that I have accidentally gotten through spring break and how I've used them in the classroom and how they you know, for lack of anything else, they kind of build camaraderie. So this is going to be an abbreviated episode, just a short one. Get your spring break going so that you can have in your subconscious and maybe if I come across something I like that might be kind of cool in the classroom, I'll snap a picture, I'll buy it or I'll do whatever it takes to take advantage of spring break without really having to work. Substitute Teachers Loud. All right, all right, all right, all right.
Greg:You know, in a way I've always thought of teachers and substitute teachers being the same as Jerry Seinfeld describing comedians you never actually turn it off. You always have that comedian mentality in the back of your brain and you're always looking for stuff. Songwriters too. I've read books about Paul McCartney, who they found the strangest ways of coming up with song titles Jerry Seinfeld. There was one episode where he woke up in the middle of the night, had a funny thought, wrote it down on a piece of paper so he'd remember it in the morning. Teachers are sort of the same way and substitute teachers if you really want to do a good job. You're this way too, in that even though you're on vacation, you never actually turn off your teacher brain. Because if you come across something and you think, man, that sign is funny or maybe I've made a collection over the years of signs that are misspelled or improper grammar just to throw them up on the screen and let the students evaluate them. Or maybe come across something funny in a gift shop or, you know, maybe in a in a trinket store, especially if you're a history teacher, a lot of trinket stores will sell stuff about the country or maybe your state, that kind of thing.
Greg:And you know as much as I do is having something visual for the kids to look at. Even I don't know, maybe not doesn't have that much to it to listen. It just kind of keeps them engaged. Do this test Look around while you're talking to the students, you will always see some students not paying attention. I've gotten to the point now where a lot of times, if I really need them to pay attention because I don't want to repeat it, I stop and say, all right, everybody. And then when everybody gets quiet except maybe two kids I'll say, all right, we're waiting on two people to look at me. And then they do, and then they listen. But if you'll look around, you don't have all the students engaged all the time.
Greg:But the instant you throw something to look at up on the board especially, to be honest, if it's not like a historical figure, it's more of a picture of the Eiffel Tower or a picture of the Alamo. Let me give you for instance on the Alamo. My wife is a fifth grade teacher and she teaches the Alamo. So we took a trip down to that area, along with some sporting events and other things, but we did visit. It's kind of funny. She wanted to go to the Alamo, Me and my sons wanted to go to Ripley's believe it or not museum. So that shows where my mentality is. But she picked up on some things at the Alamo that she never used in her class before, and even some things that were like used at the Alamo, that you know maybe some rocks that were sitting around just to have a rock in your hand from the Alamo. That was kind of a cool thing.
Greg:I was in a library the other day moving around with my class and they were talking about sloths and they thought it was cool when I pulled up a picture of me holding a sloth on my last spring vacation that we took. So that's the kind of stuff I'm thinking about. You're not going to turn off your teacher, mind. You can't, you're not built that way. But you'll come across stuff all the time. One of the college campus I used to walk across at University of Kentucky when I worked there. Occasionally they would put up a sign that didn't make any sense, so I'd take a picture of it and then we'd talk about it in a class. I've taken pictures of things out of town that I thought was kind of cool. I've taken pictures of the beach just to talk about various different things. One of my favorite stories to tell and the lesson of the story is everybody makes mistakes.
Greg:Well, one spring break, me and my wife decided to go to Washington DC, and a lot of times when you go to Washington DC and you fly, it's cheaper to fly into Baltimore and just take an Uber over. So that's what we did. So about halfway between I guess it's about a 30 to 40 minute uber ride from baltimore to dc I got a phone call from a strange number and yes, I'm one of those that I don't answer strange phone calls. Well, two minutes later I got a phone call from the same number and you know that's enough to make you think well, well, that might be actually somebody that needs to talk to me. So I answered it and it was the airport that we had just left and they said Mr Collins, I think we have your blue folder here at the airport. And this was just a folder. The folder had both our passports in it. I had a thin notepad at the time, computerized notepad. It was in there and I said well, man, we'll be back there on Friday. Is there any way you can just put it in your office? I think it was Delta that found it and they did that.
Greg:The next day we were walking, they were walking to get dinner and I was holding my cell phone in my hand and tripped over a sidewalk that I didn't see, went down kind of hard. There was enough people around me that some of them kind of gasped a little bit. I banged my knee, cut up my knee, cut up my left knee and my right hand, because my left knee is the one I fell on, my right hand is the one I was protecting myself on with. So I did that the same trip. And then the other crazy thing that I did was there was one day where our watches said that we had walked 30,000 steps. I think it was six miles steps, I think it was six miles. So I got in the shower that night and, not realizing how tired my legs were, I lost my balance and I grabbed hold of the assistive bar on the side of the shower. It pulled out of the wall and I just caught myself on the shower curtain. The curtain caught me before I fell all the way out.
Greg:And the point I make with the students when I tell them that story is that, man, we do dumb things all the time. I did three in three days. It didn't bother me, I just went on from it. So when you do a dumb thing in class, don't let it bother you, don't let it embarrass you, just move on and everything will be fine. And they remember that story, they. There's some stories that occasionally, when I go back to students, they'll say hey, will you tell us the cafeteria story again, and all that kind of thing. And that one deals with security at schools and how in my day we didn't even lock the front doors at the schools. So so that's it for today.
Greg:Just kind of keep your mind open while you're out on spring break. Try to find some things you can use in the classroom, whether that be videos or things you can share. All that good stuff. And, by the way, my friends in Kentucky, my prayers go out to you. We have had, at least at our house, 12 inches of rain, not snow, 12 inches of rain over the last two days and obviously we're having major floods. The rivers are flooded, the creeks are flooded just some of the pictures I've seen. Our yard is saturated, but we got it. We got it pretty good. I mean, we had wind storms during all that and we haven't had any damage from that. But there are a lot of people that have and our thoughts and prayers are with you guys and for the rest of you. Some of you have finished your spring break, but have a good spring break and we'll see you on the other side.
