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What's up with this board? It wasn't working all weekend long...
by Sue Anderson
Aug 11, 2015
What is the pay for subs?How many days can you work?
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by Ze Povinho
Sep 20, 2015
Good afternoon.
After so many years of having subbed in all grades and at all levels, I might as well post some tips regarding how to survive subbing for so long. Hint: If you can survive a brutal dictatorship, you have it pretty much made.
1. The second you enter a site, never forget who you are as well as your place
Whe...See MoreGood afternoon.
After so many years of having subbed in all grades and at all levels, I might as well post some tips regarding how to survive subbing for so long. Hint: If you can survive a brutal dictatorship, you have it pretty much made.
1. The second you enter a site, never forget who you are as well as your place
When you enter a site, never forget that you are a substitute teacher. You are there for the duration of the assignment and that's it. The school is in no way obligated to you in any way shape and form, and you are not part of the staff, and never will be. In fact, there are some full time teachers who will probably regard your mere presence as a major inconvenience or worse to the social order of the school-and that's the ones you are not even covering for. Be respectful and in your best behavior. Accept that you will probably never be referred to Mr/Ms. Insertyournamehere, but as "the sub" from the custodian to the Generalissimo aka principal.
2. Accept that you have surrendered all of your constitutional rights including the Bill of Rights the second that you enter the vicinity of the school site. Welcome to the police state.
Even in the vicinity of the school site (meaning the adjacent blocks to the site) your behavior will be noted by the students and parents taking their kids to school, the crossing guards, the security officers, the teachers and generals aka administrators who are doing yard and bus duty, and even the teachers who are parking their cars in the parking lot-as you approach the site.
This surveillance intensifies manifold when you are actually inside the site. You will be evaluated by everyone there, from the office staff to the students themselves to the informants aka teaching assistant/parent volunteer/student teacher/resource specialist/you get the point. Every single thing you do and say or don't say-as well as your body language and facial expressions or lack of thereof will be readily reported to the Generalissimo or his or her adjuntants.
3. What did you say, p e r v e rt?
A school site is not the place to express your personal opinions about anything when you have the status of substitute teacher-in other words, a person with no rights whatsoever. Remember: you are in a police state, you freedom loving, fairness minded, justice oriented naive being! An example of this is the appearance of anyone there. You might see female staff wearing things like mini skirts and other clothing that can be revealing. You might see ladies who are indeed pretty. You will see students at the higher levels who wear clothes that are really not appropriate to a school setting. Your reaction to this should be simple: none at all. Never comment on anyone's appearance no matter what. Really. No matter what. No matter what. No matter what. Never offer any compliments of any kind. None. Remember...everything you say and do can and will be used against you.
4. What are you looking at, pe r v e rt?
Which leads to the following: no matter how pretty a woman teacher or staffer looks..no matter any physical traits either a man or a woman might have (i.e. morbid obesity, other anormalities, or phyisical beauty), NEVER look directly at them for any reason. Perfect the art of averted vision-when you are not focusing at the person at all but at what is around their sides. This is widely used in astronomy for observing faint objects-go ahead and look it up. And this goes millionfold when dealing with students. Never look at female students directly, but if you absolutely have to, keep the glances to absolutely minimum.
4. What do you think you are doing, p e d o?
You might see female teachers hugging students. Please, if you really want to remain employed, it is best for you to not start this practice. and if you already do, please get rid of it immediately. The very last thing you want is to be accused of inappropriate touching of students. In the world of school sites, there is no such thing as accidental touching. And there is no such thing as differentiation between hugging and other types of contact. You hugged the student? Well, you touched the student. So, never hug them or touch them for any reason.
5. Keep to the script
Stick to the lesson plan like glue, and never teach anything that is not tied to the plan even if you think it might add more detail or illustrate the points in further detail. You don't know the students, and you don't know if your war experience you are narrating in order to further illustrate a history lesson on war might make a student feel uncomfortable. And if you make a kid uncomfortable, this is probably the last thing you will do at the school site. You don't know if that illustration you are doing to illustrate the concept of hydrodynamics (a teardrop shape and water flowing around it) can be misinterpreted as drawing a female reproductive organ.
6. This is not the place to share your emotions, opinions, or concerns. So, shut up, sub, if you want to remain employed. The site is not the land of the free, get it?
No matter how friendly or open the teachers or admins might look, remember that they are not your friends. They have no vested interest in your well being and will likely use anything you say against you no matter how friendly they seem or how they show that big smile toward you. You told the Generalissimo you wish to attend training to further your management skills? Oops, you just admitted that you are and incompetent sub who cannot manage classes. You told the teacher that you had some issues in other places with difficult students? Probably you just asked that teacher to ban you from her or his own fiefdom aka classroom because you just admitted that you have problems controlling kids (even if in the said cases, those kids were nothing short of protofelons who would readily turn on their own mothers if that advanced their goals).
No matter how ridiculous anything seems to be in the police state aka site, never comment on anything anywhere-especially at the teacher lounges. You can be lulled into a false sense of security when you, the sub who is an eternal outsider, hear staffers b tching about their students, the economy, Common Core, their leadership, the current political state of affairs, and so on...and you feel the need to join in. Please...don't. Just don't. Remember, you are an outsider and your opinions are not really welcome as it is...imagine if you offer a viewpoint that might as well be your death warrant at the site. Your ideas could well be the lead teacher's nemesis and you will be on these teacher's bad side. Translation? Probably being banned from the site. Just carry on with the day, stick to the plans like glue, and keep your opinions to yourself.
More later.
by Ze Povinho
Sep 17, 2015
Good evening.
Subbing has started three weeks ago for me, and as I have subbed in my new district, I have discovered that having subbed for 15 years in the other one that resembled a totalitarian dictatorship can really harm you in the "nice" one. Here is the explanation.
When one is exposed to what I have been exposed i...See MoreGood evening.
Subbing has started three weeks ago for me, and as I have subbed in my new district, I have discovered that having subbed for 15 years in the other one that resembled a totalitarian dictatorship can really harm you in the "nice" one. Here is the explanation.
When one is exposed to what I have been exposed in the old district for 15 years, one gets so used to everything that one has built immense tolerance toward the abuse heaped by both faculty and students, and toward the dystopian nature of the school regime. Insults, high levels of noise, and what one could call extreme bullying no longer seem to matter.
When I sub for my new district, I am still on constant guard, always fearing the emails and subfinder system. But the real danger now comes from the behavior of the students and the tolerance developed after 15 years.
In the new district, there are classes that do show some misbehavior but nowhere as severe as the ones shown toward me in the other district. Yes, in the new district I have never been insulted but there are times that the students can get relatively loud.
But for me, that kind of behavior really, really is nothing compared to the veritable hell on earth that the other district was.
It turns out that in the new district, showing moderate levels of noise and not showing military recruit style behavior is considered bad behavior at that district. So, one can be much more easily banned and written up at the new district, and I have found out that the district is just as bad when it comes to secret exclusions. But for me, I have developed so much tolerance to the real bad behavior, being screamed at and assaulted and all that, that for me on a daily basis, that the so called "bad behavior" in the new district is a nonissue to me. If these teachers I cover for in the new district were exposed to even one quarter of the treatment I got, they would really understand that what they see as bad behavior is really a nonissue.
And I have found out that it is better to never report any issues to the office, especially at the elementary school level. The danger of being banned is exceedingly high in this case. Yes, the issue will be dealt with by the admin, but you will very likely be punished for it. And the best way to avoid any trouble is to just do one's job and never be at the teacher lounges for any reason...to be as invisible as possible and to "stay under the radar" of ANY administrator (counselors, deans, assistant principals, vice principals, or the principal or even the senior teachers). And in the classroom, the less one says, the better. Really. You learn to do everything as if you lived in a brutal dictatorship, even in a so called "good" and affluent district.
Want to explain your side? Might as well talk to a rock because it is virtually impossible to reason with admins regarding this matter.
It's been a week since I started my LTS. I forgot how grueling daily teaching was, and the block classes feel so long that I give the students a 10-minute mental break. Even though I am here every day, I am still treated like a daily sub. I sign in every day on the sub sheet. I don't mind that. I get weird looks from other teachers when I go throug...See MoreIt's been a week since I started my LTS. I forgot how grueling daily teaching was, and the block classes feel so long that I give the students a 10-minute mental break. Even though I am here every day, I am still treated like a daily sub. I sign in every day on the sub sheet. I don't mind that. I get weird looks from other teachers when I go through the halls, but the ones in my department are very supportive and the dept head told me I'm doing a great job. They will not give me a laptop (district policy) even though I told them it's for the benefit of my students (they're ESOL; they need lots of visuals, and to be hearing the language!) It's weird that no admins have welcomed me or set foot in my classroom. I'm sure they will be in at some point. Right now, I'm just trying to do my best, to stay organized, to hold students accountable, to do good lessons so I can get some sort of recommendation and something more permanent.
After careful consideration this summer, I decided not to go back to that school. I just don't feel welcome there anymore. The good feeling of working there is gone. Besides, I have plenty of other schools to work at where I am treated like a professional. There is nothing I hate more than backstabbing and two faced people.
by Why few posts?
Aug 27, 2015
Why are there few posts, where the other boards have many?
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days a week. Pay is over 120 dollars per day, though.
You work less than 3 days a week: expect to not receive
your letter of reassurance in May or April (you are not
going to return to the district in the fall).
On 8/15/15, Anita Raze wrote:
> I forgot to m...See More