This whole week I spent doing honest work for honest pay (I know, you are thinking "wha? you do honest work?.. Nah..."). I spent every day, bright and early from the crack of dawn to the mid of afternoon in high school torturing kids... er... teaching kids. Yes, I was teaching, not subbing (well technically subbing) but teaching. And I loved it. I took over a friend's English class for a few days to go over the Canterbury Tales with them. In two days time, we had finished two weeks worth of tales in every class, and only on average three people were asleep at any given point in time. For the most part I looked over seniors, but while there I also taught an ESOL class, an English 10 class on Shakespeare, and a day's worth of normal and AP gov. Every class with seniors went well. It usually started with them trying to get the better of me, then me giving them a choice. The choice was simple, if they were quiet, listened, and answered my questions I would read to them. If they were not, they would bump read and I would assign homework... they chose wisely. Once we finished I let them do whatever, which one day even included trying to name all 151 original Pokemon. I only abused my power a little... dropping books on the desks of kids who were sleeping, sitting right next to and joining the conversation with those who feel the need to talk about their personal lives while I am reading, coming up behind and placing my hand on the shoulder of the people who are texting or playing hand-held video games... Yeah that's right I'm silent... as one kid put it, like a ninja...
I say teaching rather than subbing because teaching is what I did, we didn't just pop in a movie, I went over the lessons they were working on, and made great progress as well. The ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) class went well, it had scared me at first since I am not approved to teach that in that subject area, but the kids were great and we got through two chapters in the book they were reading. The 10th grade English class was by far the worst with people getting into fights, throwing stuff, screaming at each other... it was just bad. To end the week I covered a Gov class in the computer lab. This provided a whole new brand of challenge as I was constantly walking around trying to get people to do work and not play games, do work for other classes, or go to inappropriate sites (yes, they did go to inappropriate sites...). And they wholeheartedly felt the need to test me on this. I caught three kids in bold faced lies, and made them explain themselves until the lies broke and they gave up... you know the
"That does not look like the work you should be doing."
"Oh, I finished my work."
"Really, cool, well if you did then that's fine, can I see it so I can check off that you did it?"
"ugh... It's in my back pack, it will take some time to get out."
"I have the time, once I see it i can check it off and you can get back to your games."
"Ok, so I'm not done, but I finished three of the five"
"yeah, get back to work..."
Many exchanges went like this. And those who thought they could just minimize inappropriate sites were shocked to find I could read, and read aloud I did. Those who were quick to close the windows, were not ready for my silent approaches and the hand on their shoulder. But after I proved to them that I am not a fool, and not a jerk, they respected me and most of them stopped goofing off.
All in all I had two kids stay after class to tell me that I was a cool sub, I had a few even say hi to me in the halls during other periods, and a few even hung out with me during the home room time. It was good. Ha, I even had some of the English kids in my Gov class, one of which brought me a late pass written by my old English 12 teacher, I sent the kid back to explain to the teacher that I would not accept the pass, and explain who I was. Power is a fun thing to abuse. Twice I got paid to go home early, and twice to have a two hour paid lunch, and that is after offering to work during those times. So I wandered between the workrooms on my lunch break, spending time with mainly the English and History teachers. My name and number got passed around the History work room which is how I landed the Gov class job, and why I named this post what I did. That was exclaimed by my 9th grade world history teacher when he saw me in the building. That was what he used to call me, hahaha and now does again.
But all this fun and work does have its price, I have been going to bed early and sleeping well, barely enough time during the day to get a full game of anything in... But I have started another KotOR II game... The abundance of music videos make me laugh... laugh hard... so hard it hurts... I love those games!.. And the characters are great!.. And who could ever forget HK-47?
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