Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Pocket ESPN and Missing Students: A Substitute Teacher's Comedy of Errors
Every substitute teacher knows that what works in one classroom might fail spectacularly in another. This revelation hit me hard recently when several teaching strategies I'd successfully employed with teenagers created unexpected chaos among elementary students.
Greg Collins Substitute Teachers Lounge, may 20, 2025. Man, I almost called this week's episode my Week of Mistakes. Then I got to thinking they didn't all happen this past week, so I don't want to imply something else, but maybe the better one is. Things I wish I hadn't done in elementary school, that I had done in middle school and high school, and because of that I had students crying. It was innocent enough, but they were crying about it. We're going to talk about the things that I wish I had done differently in elementary school, that I had been doing in middle school and high school. Substitute Teacher's Loud.
Greg:Let me start out by saying an unrelated item that I came across this week was a program called we Will Write. I loved it. I used it in the fourth grade. It kept all three classes in there, completely occupied. Students got a chance to write on whatever the subject they were given. Then their fellow students voted on what they wrote. Man, we had some stuff written about Russia and the Cold War. This is fourth grade. We had stuff written about how families sometimes split up and have to go their separate ways. We had some written about love stories. So it was really pretty fascinating. How well this program. I would encourage you, if you get a chance, to use wewillwritecom. All right, here we go. I've got several of these written down. You can probably tell already. I think I just heard the doorbell go off at the school. I am in a sixth grade classroom right now. I'm doing it out of convenience because I've got a lot of stuff going on this time.
Greg:Let me tell you first of all what I did in fifth grade within the last few weeks, and it was innocent enough. It was actually intended to be positive. Well, here's what happened. You know, I've done enough high school, especially to I let them brag about themselves. I asked them who do they think might be the valedictorian? Well, just for the heck of it, in fifth grade I asked them if they knew what a valedictorian was, and they said yes. And then I said who do you think the valedictorian of the fifth grade is going to be? Well, they all indicated the same student. He wasn't around. But then they got to thinking about who would be second, like the salutatorian. And I tell you what there was a lot of students really proud of their grade and they were making arguments for themselves, to the point of saying things like I'm better at you than this, and another one saying well, I did better on the last test than you, and it really got kind of heated and I was glad this was actually taking place during the recess of all things, that we weren't able to go outside I wouldn't have brought it up otherwise and that's what we were talking about and that's what developed and we really had some tough few minutes right there because they're still fifth graders, they're still just 11 years old and they were a little bit emotional to think that someone else would not see them as a high ranking, as they thought they were. So, man, there was some tears shed again.
Greg:Of all the things that I brought up in high school I wish I hadn't brought up in elementary school. That was the top one. I'll give you a warning Think about I love elementary school. I'll give you a warning Think about I love elementary school. I love this particular fifth grade so much that I'm going to come back more to the elementary school to which they're going next year because I know I'm going to miss them. I hate to say this because I know some of the sixth grade students are listening so far, the sixth graders that I've had today in the school they're going to are less mature than they are as fifth graders at the school they're at. So I hope they really help the schools out.
Greg:Now one other thing that happened in the classroom, and I guess this was totally accidental. I used to turn all my sound off when I was in the classroom volume, text, text, whatever you call that the silence button because I didn't want that to affect the class. But then I got to the point that I would turn the volume back up so that, mainly, I could hear the sub-alert notifications from the other side of the room if I had happened to lay my phone down and get over there and accept that job before it goes off. Well, I'm going to rethink that now and I'll tell you why. I don't know what happened this week, but I had my volume turned up and apparently I had been on some kind of. It was an education-related item, but it rolled advertisements at the bottom. Well, apparently I had put my phone back in my pocket. But when I did so I touched one of those advertisement banners. Well, it just happened to be an advertisement for ESPN and Stephen A Smith started talking while he was in my pocket and he used a couple of words pocket and he used a couple of words not terrible words, but the H word and stuff like that.
Greg:That should not be heard in a fifth grade classroom. Now, thank goodness that there was only a handful of students that heard it and they giggled. It didn't begin, it didn't become an issue. I got it turned off before it got any worse. But you know how those sports shows are. Sometimes they will tell it like it is. Well, I don't want them to tell it like it is in my classroom. So I guess my lesson there is that I am no longer going to turn any of my volumes up so that when that happens again, all that will be happening is it'll be playing, but it'll be playing silently. So that's the second thing I learned. It wouldn't have bothered me as much in high school, so I guess this is another time that I have to do things just a little bit differently in elementary school than I would have in high school.
Greg:One other thing that had happened recently and shame on me, but I was in a fourth or fifth grade class, I can't remember which one we were doing some work that required what this school called. They call them shoulder partners. It just means the kids that's sitting at the same desk as you are to work on projects together. Well, a lot of those students have. The teacher has established finger signals so that you can quietly request something and the teacher can tell you to go ahead. When they want to go to the restroom, for instance, they cross their fingers, hold their finger up in the air. I see that and I'll just wave them out of the room.
Greg:Well, that happened to one student, and we got to thinking that student's been gone about 10 minutes. In fact, one of the other students brought it to my attention before I even thought about it and I said well, go to the restroom and see if she's in there and make sure she's okay. Well, they came back. She wasn't in there. Well then I got kind of worried because I didn't know where the student was. So I sent one of the students to the office and they didn't know anything about her either. So I began calling around and about that time one of the counselors called. I guess they had gotten wind of it too. They said Mr Collins, we're sorry, she's actually in here with us. So thank goodness for that.
Greg:But I guess the moral of this story is make sure you know where those students are going when they leave that room so that you don't have to track them down later. I think she gave me the signal that she was going to the restroom. Maybe she said she was going to the counseling office and I just didn't hear her. And I've learned a lesson from it Make sure I hear what the student says as to where they're going. I've already told them I mean, there's a lot of them in those grades going to the, you know, leaving the room for water or restrooms or whatever, for whatever reason, and I've already warned them. I said listen, when you all get to middle school, there's a lot of teachers that will let you maybe take three or four times to leave the classroom in a whole week. You'll have to sign out and be prepared for it because it's going to be a big change from what you're doing now. Let's face it some of the students, when they're in the hallway, going to the restroom, whatever, they're moving as slowly as they can. They really just did it, probably to get out of work, and you really have to stay on top of it. So learn from me don't ever let students leave that classroom unless you know exactly where they're gonna be now.
Greg:The last one's a bit comical and it's not. I'm not sure how I should address this. You know this podcast has become popular enough that the students at the school know about it, even if I haven't really said anything about it, and they know from their friends, and especially their high school sisters and brothers who have played them, that I usually do some kind of video every couple of weeks on Instagram. So they know I have a podcast. They know the same name for both the Instagram and my YouTube channel that supports the podcast. But you know Instagram, anybody can follow that.
Greg:So we had that indoor recess and they thought it was going to be cool to sit around Mr Collins and watch some of those Instagram videos, because those are really meant for probably the students more so than the adults anyway. So they were playing it, they liked it, they laughed. I don't know how I could change that. Maybe there's a situation where I definitely tell them that they're not allowed to listen to it in the classroom. They're not allowed to listen to it in any other classroom because, if nothing else, they're going to get me in trouble.
Greg:But it was recess, we were just playing games. Anyway they wanted to listen. I let them listen. Some of the songs I had done had a beat to it, so they thought that was funny. It was actually quite comical, but I'm not sure that. Maybe I need to chill out a little bit on promoting it to the students.
Greg:The high school students are fine. Most of the ones that listen to that are probably 18 anyway. But I don't know about elementary school. I won't mention it to them If they ask me about it. I'll admit that I have them, but they're not allowed to listen to it in school.
Greg:Now, to be honest, I'm trying to get permission by the end of this week from an elementary school to interview some of their students for the podcast. Of course that involves parental permission, school permission, all that kind of thing, but I'm actually excited and hoping that it's going to happen, because it'll be the first time ever that I've been able to interview students that young. Now we'll take all security precautions. We won't let them identify themselves by name and of course it'll have parental permission anyway. So that's basically it. I hope you guys have a great summer. I'm going to go ahead and call it quits for this one because, like I said, I'm in the middle of my planning period and the bell is getting ready to ring here in a couple of minutes. So you all have a great summer. Hope we all get to sub as much as we can when the fall begins.
