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Saturday, January 08, 2000
What do kids think about their days with subs? The Post-Gazette asked students to keep records of their experiences with subs and e-mail the results. Here are some of their "e-diary" entries:
"My teacher had left us about three pages of work to do. Of course the substitute said work alone, and we all worked with our friends. We helped each other get the right answers. Then someone in my class asked the substitute if we could go outside and play basketball if we finished all of our work. The substitute said maybe...We all were copying each other's papers so we could finish and have a whole period outside playing basketball. We told the substitute that we finished all of our work (which wasn't exactly the truth) and she took us outside. We had a great time playing a game of 5 on 5.
"Then on Monday, we received a lecture from our teacher. My science teacher said we should have known that we are not allowed to go outside with a substitute. My teacher doesn't even take us outside. My science teacher is very nice and got over it the next day, which was good....would say that my class acted good. We didn't switch seats or anything like that. We just broke the rules a little bit. My teacher also told us on Monday that she is again not going to be here on Friday. She told us that we will have a bunch of work to do. So we will be kept busy. I learned my lesson."
-- Tracy Toberman, 8th grade, Piedmont Middle School, Monroe, N.C.
Oct. 13: "We watched a movie. Everyone behaved pretty well. He let us eat in class. If [the teacher] had been there we would have been practicing music for our fall concert."
Oct. 17: "We did a worksheet on stuff we learned last class, then we watched a movie. A lot of the kids were disruptive and he wrote their names down for the teacher."
Oct. 18: He gave us a test on vocabulary words. After the test he just let us use the time as a study period. He was more strict with the class than he was the other times I had him for a sub. The kids were pretty good. We were supposed to be starting on an experiment."
Oct. 20: "We watched a movie and she gave treats and rewards to the kids who behaved the best. She went very strictly by the teacher's class rules."
-- Daniel Rettke, 8th grade, Union Middle School, Union, Mo.
"In our college prep English class the sub didn't come but we just sat quietly and we weren't any trouble at all. When the sub came in -- which was actually the school's librarian -- we started acting all rude and we became wild. If the subs would act cool and not mean and professional, we would have a better and fun time....
"We had a sub for Algebra II class and she didn't know what she was teaching. She told us to copy down what was in the book and do the homework. That didn't help us because after we copied everything we still didn't understand it. We tried to ask questions and she either wouldn't answer us or she would yell at us. It wasn't our fault that our school didn't pick a math sub for math class."
-- Kelly Nagy, 11th grade, Deer Lakes High School, West Deer, Pa.
"Today we had a substitute teacher in Biology....I don't think there was a single point in time during the entire 90-minute class where talking ceased....Things happened today that probably would not have occurred had [the regular teacher] been there. A student unintentionally broke a glass cylinder, no one wanted to listen to the sub, and hardly anyone sat in their assigned seat after attendance was taken. Having a substitute teacher definitely changes a classroom."
-- Catherine Ross, 9th grade, Fairfax (Va.) High School