The Sub Life - 9/20/06

Get call at 7:20 a.m. Am told that the assignment is on the west side just off highway 290. I fire up my computer and do a quick map on Google and see that the school is not far from Garfield Park. My knowledge of the city tells me that this is a pretty tough, high poverty, largely African-American neighborhood and that the assignment could be challenge. I could not have been more correct in that assumption.

I arrive at the school just before 8:30am, so I at least I am on time. However, after clocking in I proceed to sit in the office with another sub for 30 minutes waiting for our assignment. “Sometimes I have been a floater and not assigned to one room for the day, so maybe that’s what we’ll do,” the lady says. Nope. “Room 109,” the receptionist tells me at 9 a.m. just as the kids are arriving on the bus.

When I get to the room I realize that: a) I will have no assistant for the day so it is just me and the kids; b) There are 32 kids, by far the biggest group I have ever seen and way more than one teacher should have; c) The teacher has left me no plans whatsoever, nothing. Not even a sub folder to get me through the day. So I have 32 kids pouring into the room who will be my responsibility for the next 6 hours and absolutely no idea what I am going to do with them. Other than that, I am off to a great start!

The other 3rd grade teacher, Ms. Connelly, comes in and quickly flips through the teacher’s guide and gives me suggestions but that is it. I get no more faculty/staff input for the rest of the day in terms of lessons and activities to do with the kids. From that point forward it was a constant battle for control of the room as the children will not sit still, be quiet, or (with a few exceptions) do what I ask them to do.

Periodically, a child will come up to me and whisper “Mr. Blair, are you going to write my name on the board for being good?” and I tell them that we’ll see how it goes. At this point that would be a short list. A few students suggest that I use the “123 all eyes on me” method to quiet down the class and I thank them for their input.

I slowly and loudly work my way through the suggested lessons, one on compound words (basket + ball = basketball, story + book = storybook) and another on writing a personal narrative about their first day of school. The kids are so noisy that they can be heard from the main office down the hall, and every few minutes a different faculty member comes in to scold, yell at and in some cases remove a student, which helps for about as long as that person is in the room. After that it is right back to the storm that otherwise characterizes the room.

The hardest thing for me is to see the small handful of the children in the room who actually want to work be demoralized and overwhelmed by the misbehaving masses. The low point for me, and the moment that absolutely breaks my heart, is when a girl asks me if she can read her narrative in front of the class. I say yes and after repeated futile attempts to quiet the class am unable to get them quiet enough to hear her. The frustrated girl went back to her desk and told me “I am going to write (transcribe) it again.” I dress down the class for disrespecting both her and me but it is of little use.

When I first got into the class I think that I was so shocked by what I was witnessing that I considered walking away. It was very traumatic for me to be in a class like that. However, the longer I was in there raising my voice, sending kids out of the room for punishment and observing children doing no work whatsoever a strange sense of calm came over me. Like I knew that I was not going to be able to change the situation and that what I was doing had little to do with teaching. I almost felt like a babysitter or a warden or something.

It was a very rude lesson for me on the realities of urban education in the inner city. I have never felt so frustrated and helpless in a classroom before and I hope I never do again. The kids deserve better than this and while I know that the problem extends well beyond the school itself – parents, home environment, race and socioeconomic status all play a role as well – I am very discouraged by what I see and experience today.