Every Class is A Different Stand-Up Routine

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?

Local Companies Should Adopt Schools

One of the bright spots in my town is that all of the local public schools are either in new buildings or being rebuilt.

One of the middle schools I subbed in will be in their new school later this year, which is good thing.

The school itself looks and feels like Buchanan High from” Welcome Back Kotter”.

The paint is chipped, the floors are worn and the windows have bars on them.

Overall, the building has a cold, prison-like feel to it, which sub-consciously spills into some of students’ whom are at times quite unruly.

This shouldn’t have been the case.

The school is named after a local major corporation (which we will call “X”) which is still industry leader in the world.

In fact, the school and corporation X’s headquarters are only a few traffic lights from each other.

However, wouldn’t it have been interesting if corporation X decided to work adopt the school give it an “Extreme Makeover: Education Edition” look.

The school could’ve become state of the art inside and out, working with companies like Apple to furnish it with top flight computers and create education programs that would be beneficial for the students, their parents and the local economy.

In lot of ways, the school could have been a baseball farm system, where through excellent teaching and mentoring, a young middle school student today, might become an executive with corporation X tomorrow.

Experts from the around world could teach classes, while students would a chance to intern with company Corporation X in high school.

Not only could this stop the influx of young talent leaving the area long term, but it could give students, who might feel hopeless, a blueprint of success that they might not have gotten while learning in an old depilated building.  (Taking it a step further, parents of kids could take night classes, which could also help them focus on being successful in life and business).

I know this a pipe dream and most companies care more about the bottom line than the schools around them, but I become frustrated when I hear companies say that can’t find qualified applicants.

Maybe, if they thought outside the box and work with area schools, maybe they would realize there are far more qualified candidates in their backyard than they think.

*(have you read or come across any big time company invested time and money into area schools?)