When I was in college I was a DJ performing on the radio and in the clubs.
One of the principals of being a successful DJ knows how to read the room. You might play a set of the songs that a crowd loved one weekend, but those same songs could people off the dance floor the next weekend.
Stand-up comedians are the same way.
Where a set of jokes might kill during the 8PM show, those same jokes may fall flat at the 10PM show.
Being a teacher has a lot of these same principals.
Unless you are assigned for consecutive days, where students become familiar with you, walking in as a substitute teacher is like the first day of school every day.
On the first day of school, a teacher meets their students for the first time, but by the end of the month that same teacher realizes what buttons to push to help their students succeed.
My personality is quite fun loving and relaxed, but I realized quickly that my personality may work on some grades and classes, but fail miserably in others.
I taught a high school English class where some kids were disruptive as we read stories out loud. Luckily for me, my humor helped me calm those students down and in fact one of those disruptive students actually read in class for the first time!
However, a few periods later, my humor did not save me.
The assignment was the same, but tactic I used to get the students to read did not work. Where In the last class I had a few kids talking, in this class kids were actually going to sleep!
I was at my wits end, when the teaching assistant told me that this particular class likes to stand up and read the story as a play than to sit in their seat and the read the book out loud.
I quickly pivoted and asked for volunteers to perform the story as a play. Surprisingly enough I had more kids than parts.
Although the class only performed only a couple of pages of the book that information from the teaching assistant saved what would have been a wasteful day in class.
While most teachers leave notes to let you know what works in particular classes, sometimes subs are left to figure out what motivates a class by themselves without the help of a fairy godmother aka teaching assistant.
Like DJ’s and stand-up comedians, the ability of a teacher to read a class room takes years to perfect, but for subs, years are reduced to precious minutes to quickly figure or may not work in a classroom.
For substitute teachers, what method do you use to connect with your students? (I like to hear the good, the bad and the ugly).
For long time teachers, how long to did it take to figure out what works best in your classroom and what happens if you can’t connect to your students?
1 comments:
I took my first as a substitute teacher this past week and luck for me it was for a full week. I discovered that even with the same class what worked yesterday may not work today. Before I was hired, I asked about training ie, using new technology in the classroom,what websites were allowed, did they have descriptions and lesson plans you could view beforehand. Answers no,the students know and sometimes. My assignment contained the school's name,teacher subbing for and no description / lesson plans. The teacher did not know she could leave this information but she left a note on her desk. This was a Special Education Class having students of different grade levels and a very sweet female student with special needs { I was so glad I was a female }. I do not think any of the students in this class learn anything the same way and it was difficult to figure which was their best way. I found the students were much like the patients in that you have too figure out who is not understanding what you are telling them or getting from a video because they are afraid or simply don't know what to ask. Being a stand up comedian may help break the tension and help you roll with the punching but having information about what works with which students or classes is priceless.
I am sure when the teacher returns on Monday there will be a few problems because something were not done the way they did it. The female student just dropping on the floor and wanting to be pulled up, I may have taken them to websites that teacher does not use.
But I say to all you fulltime teacher , a good sub wants to be helpful. So when you know you are going to be out and place the vacancy on the Aesop Board please leave a note special needs of a student ie. needs female sub due to a student fear of men / peanut allergies in this classroom. Lesson plans and number of copies needed to print before class. I personally do not want to use class time to go run copies and I like to brush up on subject matter for class lessons before presenting it to the students and let me know what websites you let the students go to if any. Sometimes it is very hard to tell if the students are telling the true or just wanting to get out of work.
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