Indefinite Employment

First of all, I have to apologize for not updating this through the summer. I could have (and should have) written something about summer school which I decided to teach this year for some reason my mind still hasn't divulged, but I was just too busy. After summer school came vacation and since this blog is about teaching I decided no one needed to hear about my sunburns and photo ops of August.

Now on to the actual article.

I am a supply teacher this year. You may know the term better as a "substitute teacher," but here in Ontario we're 'supplies'. Actually, our technical title is "Occasional Teacher," but I personally hate the term since it implies that I'm just a teacher occasionally. You know, whenever I feel like it. Like I wake up in the morning and go 'hmm, should I be a teacher today?'

Most supply teachers find themselves working throughout the week at various schools and for varying amounts of time. You could teach at a one school in the city and then the next day you're needed for the afternoon in the country. It's a normal thing for us and we're resound to the fact that until we get something more long-term, it's our life. The plus side is that, since you don't have a class, you don't mark or prepare lesson plans (unless you are supplying for a teacher who has nothing ready for you - then you're making it up as you go along).

This year I find myself supplying in a constant setting. The classes aren't mine, but I'm running them like they are. I'm preparing them and marking them and I'm bonding with the kids all the while knowing that with the new contract imposed on Ontario teachers, I will not get the job when I apply for it because I am not very senior on the list. I keep weekly logs of what I'm doing and my observations on the student's needs because I know that someone else is going to take over and I want them to be as prepared as possible.

But it's not fair.

I know what you're thinking - life isn't fair. And as long as you're not reciting it from this ridiculous list I will agree with you. However, it doesn't make it suck less. I'm the one who has to walk into class and get asked by the students "why aren't you our teacher yet?" I don't have a real answer for them. These students have gotten used to how I mark and how I teach and where the proverbial line is in the classroom. Soon they'll have to start all over again when they should just be learning the material.

It's frustrating.

But here's the thing - it's steady work. That should be verbal irony when attach to the term 'supply teacher', but it's not. I have been teaching (read: supplying) these classes since day one. I'm invested. I'm working hard. So I should be grateful, and to some degree I am. I just wish circumstances were different.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go prepare this week's worth of work for my classes that I may or may not be teaching next week.

You Are Not Helping... sometimes

I know what you're thinking - another post about parents, ugh! And while I do have a list of topics I want to write about, this one kept nudging itself to the front of the line and so, here it is.

I am not a parent yet and so I realize that I look at life in a different perspective than someone who is in charge of another human being in which they have placed all their hopes and dreams on. I don't know what it's like to see a little mini-me or adopted-me running around and growing up and becoming an individual. What I get is a person in the middle of their academic career (usually) who is starting to figure out who they are and realizing the world is more than marshmallow manipulatives and sock puppets that teach you French.

I understand when I phone a parent to tell them that their son or daughter is not being the best they can be, they will be defensive. In general, though, I have found most parents are very supportive of me as a teacher and are behind me 100%. (Hopefully I didn't just jinx it). Sometimes, however, they can try to be helpful in the wrong way and as a teacher it's hard to tell them they are being the opposite of helpful.

For example, this one time I had to discipline a student and remove the student from class. A standard tactic that I'm sure was used since the beginning of time when they made all the bad cavemen who refused to hunt sit by themselves forever alone. Being a teacher who likes to keep parents informed, I phoned said parent to inform them of their child's behaviour. The result was that, as punishment, the student would be sent to school that day (it was a 'snow day' so she had allowed her children to stay home... except there are no snow days at my school).

Hello rock and hard place, I am in between you.

On the one hand, I could have told the parent that isn't a good idea to equate school with punishment. He should have been at school anyways. But doing that is basically saying "Parenting, you are doing it wrong" and I don't have that right. On the other hand, the student is by no means actually punished or received the message (particularly because in this instance, he just skipped my class anyways).

What would be nice when we find ourselves in this situation, is that both parent and teacher work together to find a solution/tactic/plan of attack to help the student get back on track. It shouldn't just be left up to the parent or the teacher to discipline. Like in war, the most successful operations are when simultaneous, well coordinated attacks take place on a target.

I know that realistically there is no book on how to have parents and teachers team up to help a struggling kid not be a meanie-poop-face (a technical term, I believe). But you'd think since schooling has been going on one way or another for centuries, that someone, somewhere, would at least have some do's and don'ts that we could all hand out at teachers' college and the maternity ward so we're all on the same page when your child jumps into the education system.

I'd even settle for an IKEA instruction manual.

It's a Hard Knock Life

Teaching is probably one of the few professions where you are reminded almost daily how hard high school is. It's no secret. High School is hard. If it wasn't we would need any 'it gets better' campaigns or high school counselors or Teen Help Phone. If it were easy, we'd all just be able to hold hands and skip to school together and sing kumbya in all of our classes.

For most people they survive their four (sometimes more) years of high school and leave it behind for good. They go off and get jobs and do their own thing and even if they have children, they see high school through completely removed eyes. Teachers, on the other hand, essentially volunteer to go back into the war zone.

Teaching grade nine drama this year has shown me many instances on how hard it is to be a student. Looking back, I honestly never felt this pressure to conform or 'fit in', but then I'm not the type to do that even as an adult so I think I was spared a lot of the ridiculous peer pressuring that I see every day.

Every day I see kids having to make choices on their friends, their clothes, and even their reaction to other people.

You didn't get the latest iPhone? Loser.
You're friends with so-and-so? Loser.
You're a virgin? Loser.
Don't play a sport? Loser.
Like your parents? Loser.

It's frustrating as a teacher because sometimes it's so blatant you just want to take the student by the shoulders and shake them and tell them they're being ridiculous. No one is worth being embarrassed over. No one is worth endangering yourself for. And yet, these kids find themselves doing and saying things I can sometimes literally see the regret on their face.

What am I supposed to do?

Sometimes I talk with them about life choices, but how many of them listen and take what I say to heart is very slim. Sometimes a student will agree with me - "You're right, miss. When I'm around Student A, I make bad choices" - but you know what they do? They still hang out with Student A. Drives me nuts.

It breaks my heart when I have to reprimand a student for their behaviour because they were hanging around Student A again. It can get even more frustrating when you phone the parents to discuss their unhealthy relationship or choices and the parents think you're crazy and that they know what's going on with their kid, No, parents, you don't. Not entirely, anyways.

It's probably one of the hardest parts of my job is to watch kids struggle with figuring out life. Some of them are very good at it and others are barely treading water.  I try to throw them life preservers, but....sometimes they're in the very deep end of the pool and I need more rope.

Do I Have To?

You'd think with a title like the one for this post, it would be about how the students whine. They do, don't get me wrong. Some of them even whine in a whiny voice and you're stuck standing there blinking at them with an incredulous look because you know you're teaching high school, but it feels like there's a five year-old in front of you.

But no. This is about phoning home to parents.

When I went to teacher's college, I had a teacher (who taught mostly primary) tell the class that at the beginning of the year you should phone home to each student and say something positive to the parents so that you start off with a good foot forward with the parents. This is all fine and dandy and I would love to do it, but I have so many students and not for the whole year either and the practicality is not really there. At least for me. Maybe someone will be able to tell me the magical secret on how to do it.

However, even if I had the time, the truth is - I hate phoning home. I hate talking to parents. The truth is, it's scary. I have no idea how people in telemarketing do it, but at least they have a script to follow. My first year of teaching I would actually write down my spiel to the parent before phone and it would inevitable that the conversation would go somewhere that my script did not and I would get flustered. I end up doing a lot of 'uhs' and 'ums' and by the time the phone call is over I wonder if the parent even thinks I'm competent anymore.

Let's face it. Most teachers phone home when there's a problem. Usually we phone home when the problem has either persisted for a long time or serious enough to warrant a call home. Since they're not fun to begin with, we're not about to phone home every time little Bobby says a bad word or little Janet stubs her toe. In fact, most teachers (or maybe just most young teachers, I don't know) put up with a lot in their classroom before they'll pick up the phone and plead for help from parents.

When you do have to phone home because a student crossed the line or you've reached the point they haven't handed in any of the 16 assignments and are about to fail, you look up in the student's information and then pause for a moment by the phone before you dial. You never have any idea who will be on the other end. Sometimes they are super supportive (hooray!) and other times you find yourself on the end of a raging lunatic who thinks it's your fault gas prices are too high and pollution is ruining the ecosystem (ack!). I had to phone home once for a bullying issue and the parent had the nerve to tell me that it 'takes two to be bullied'. I was so flabbergasted I had no idea what to say at the time and the right choice of words only came to me on the drive home.

I don't hide the fact I hate phoning home. I tell my students all the time. I plead with them. "Please. Just do the assignment. Don't make me have to phone home. It's awkward for me, it's awkward for you. No one wins." Sometimes this works and sometimes you still have to head for that dial tone.

With technology, a lot of parents have adopted emailing and I much prefer that because it gives me time to form responses I'm happy with, but I don't think the school system will ever get rid of 'the phone call home'. It's a part of my job I extremely dislike and like my students on occasion, I whine and say to myself "Do I have to??"

It's the Little Things

There are some things that teachers have in common with parents and one of those things is finding the joy in the little things that our students do. We all want our students to do the big things, of course. Who wouldn't want to say that they teach the smartest kid in Ontario or who wrote a novel that got published or is the school's champion in synchronized hacky sack, but chances are these students are few and far between. 

Like a lot of things in life, students fall on a very wide spectrum that range from completely studious and attentive to.... not even sure they're breathing or cognitively aware at the moment. I had one student in my first year of teaching who would constantly fall asleep in English class. I wasn't usually upset about this because it was his mark and his choice and, truth be told, he was passing the class with a good mark so, whatever. But there was a day when I tried to talk to him and got no response. I raised my voice and still no response. I tapped him on the shoulder and... nothing. And for a long moment I thought he might be dead, but then he snored and I was like: "Dude, teach me your sleeping powers."

But I digress.

I had a teacher friend of mine tell me once that sometimes you "just have to find the little things" to feel good about. Maybe you have a super quiet student in your class and today they let out a small grunt when you asked them a question - HOORAY! Right now my current 'little thing' is when a particular student is able to keep his hands, feet, and other objects to himself for a whole 75 minutes. I actually flat out praise him at the end of a class if he hasn't been aggressive and he is so proud. And that's good, because I know that it's a stepping stone and eventually, maybe (hopefully), it'll grow to bigger and better "things" to praise. If not, well, we still have that stepping stone.

A whole class can be like this too. Some classes can be particularly difficult just because of the particular make-up of the classroom. This is especially true when you're dealing with kids who have known each other forever and are either sick and tired of each other or knows everyone's dirty little secrets. It's sometimes like watching a Real Housewives episode on SLICE except with less nose jobs and collagen. 

I had one of those moments today and it seems like the silliest thing, but I was (and am since I'm bragging to the internet right now) so proud of them. We spent half of a period going over Lockdown protocols. We practiced it and they did it IN COMPLETE SILENCE and only took them three tries the first time to take it seriously and I was impressed. Of course, I'll be springing this exercise on them again and again throughout the year, but it's a good procedure (because it can save lives), but also because it teaches valuable skills to the students.

And it's important to remember these little things for the days when your classes make you feel like everything sucks, you suck, and even an ice cream sundae can't solve the problem.

Shawshank

Gerry Dee (or Mister D) has a book out called Teaching: It's Harder Than It Looks. I won't sit here and recommend it or dissuade you from it because the book is very much like the once-teacher-now-comedian. If you've ever watched his TV show or seen his stand up and liked him, then you'll probably like the book and if you want to roll your eyes at him or strangle him to death with a bendable ruler, then you should probably steer clear. My point is that in the book, he talks about how people, even other teachers, think that gym teachers have it easy. This is the same for drama teachers.

Sure, our marking can be pretty easy in the sense that when exam time comes around we are not usually swamped with 90+ exams to mark because most of our exams are performance-based. But while our marking is easy, our profession make up for that in how hard it is to run the class. In a regular classroom you have desks and chairs and a chalkboard (or whiteboard) and the students are conditioned to sit. You can move students around if they can't be near each other. You can make one face the wall. You can even place a kid in a desk outside. In drama you have an open class room with no desks or chairs and sometimes there are props and other things students can get their hands on to 'play with'. It's been compared to a lot of things: herding cats, a war zone, a jungle. My comparison at the moment is that high school is like prison.

In prison (at least stereotypically  I haven't had the opportunity yet to stay in prison to get an accurate depiction of the place) you have your cells where the inmates spend most of their days. They're small, confined, and the prisoners are generally well behaved. The cells are like the 'academic' subjects. Math, English, Science - anywhere that there's a structured environment.

When the bell rings, it's the same as when prisoners move to the cafeteria or for showers or to work. There's chances here of something going wrong, but it's kept to a minimum because there's a lot of teachers/prison guards around. Even the cafeteria is the same since every day there's the worry/threat of a fight breaking out and how will or won't sit at your table while you eat. Sometimes the students (inmates) even question the cafeteria food and if you're lucky your favourite relative sent you a care package of cookies that you can eat or share with your enemy that you need to make friends with.

And then there's Drama. Drama is like the free-time yard in prison. It's an under-staffed confined space where you can roam around and interact with anyone you please. You know that guy who's really annoying to you every other class? That girl who wrote something mean on your Facebook wall? Now's the time to get revenge. If you want to "shank" someone, it'll be in drama. And if you're smart about it, you'll do it within the confines of a drama activity so the prison guard (teacher) has a hard time disciplining you for it.

It's hard as a teacher to always see this coming. Sometimes you do and you can be all over the situation before it develops into something more and sometimes, much like a prison guard, you get distracted by something over to the left and then the people to the right take full advantage and make their move.

Now it's not always like this, but sometimes it can feel like it is. I'm sure some students feel the same way, too. There's not a lot that can be done about it. You throw enough adolescences into the same place and make them put up with each other, you're bound to have some issues.

"I almost, like, cried. Seriously."

Student: "Do you hang out with other teachers?"

Me: "Yep."

Student: "REALLY?!"

Me: "...Yes?"

Student: "Oh my God! That is too cute!"

Me: "It is?"

Student: "Yes!! When I found out *Teacher A* and *Teacher B* did things together with their children, too, I almost, like, cried. Seriously."

~*~

I had this conversation with a female student I taught last year. Who, by the way, says I'm her favourite teacher (yes, I know, she probably tells that to all the teachers), but I did give her an apple and some chocolate after school because she was hungry and she told me that she learned that the word 'a lot' is two separate words and not 'alot' because I showed my class last year a website on it (Thanks, Hyperbole and a Half!)

What's interesting, too, is that after this conversation she went on to say that she thought there'd be a lot of bullying and resentment in the workplace (she works at MacDonalds with, no doubt, people her own age so I'm sure she's speaking from experience.) And you know what I said back? I told her the truth. Yes, there is bullying and resentment and petty arguments. People are people. Sometimes the arguments change and sometimes they don't, but it never really goes away. I mean, I remember my grandmother once complaining how she knew another elderly lady in the apartment complex must have hidden the last piece of the puzzle just to spite her and her friends who work on puzzles in the common room because that woman was "a miserable woman." It was then I realized that a part of high school always travels with you.