The little girl is cute as can be. She has a button of a nose that she wrinkles up when you say it’s time for math, and her coarse black hair is braided into unwieldy pigtails that spring out from the sides of her head. Right now, her mouth is open in a little o and she is looking at you as if you are very dangerous indeed. Perhaps a psychopath.
And you are acting like one. You are bending over and yelling into her little face at the top of your lungs, “I don’t care whose job it is, you are doing it and you are doing it now! I am sick of this!”
Suddenly all the children in the class are busily stacking their chairs as if they do this every afternoon, which they do not. It’s why your back has gone out of whack and you’ve been gobbling Advil for two days and are unable to chase wayward children down the hall when you tell them they can’t go to the water fountain but they go anyway. Because you end every day by stacking twenty chairs and then stooping and stooping and stooping, gathering scissors and crayons and water bottles and abandoned spelling worksheets and all the detritus of the day which other teachers somehow manage to have their children pick up, but you can not.
This is why I am yelling at the cute little girl. I am in pain. The teacher for whom I was supposed to sub two days has shingles and this is day five with her unruly class. (It has been confirmed by several teachers that this is one of the toughest classes in the school, and I am highly relieved to hear this.) It is fifteen minutes before dismissal, the end of the day so close I can smell it, and this little girl has blurted out the last of one too many “nos,” one too many “it’s not my jobs,” and one too many “but our teacher lets us do a, b, or c.”
True, the girl has been acting up and getting worse all week, aligning herself with the constantly trying second grade boys. But she has not been responsible for most of the week’s trouble in this, my first eye-opening week of substitute teaching.
Tomorrow I will apologize to her in front of the class. To show them how grownups who are not psychopaths behave.
I FORGOT
Writing with Spirit 
Mar 23, 2017 @ 12:13:04
Your back is probably hurting because of three days of subbing, just tension.
You, of course, are not a psychopath, just a newbie and you will learn that your bright smiley face says it all to a group of suppressed seven year olds whose “real” teacher has turned them loose to be the beasties they can be. They are NOTWordsworths’s Noble Savages.
I think everyone should be dropped from the sky into a random class and spend day there in charge and responsible.
Don’t give up. You are the type who becomes much loved by your students because you do apologize and you do respect and empathize with and expect good behavior from them because you love them.
Mar 23, 2017 @ 16:50:01
Awww – thanks, neighbor! Coming from you that means so much – given the amount of you life you devoted to the beasties!
Mar 22, 2017 @ 22:15:16
I just know that I would’ve been your worst nightmare and that little button nose girl would’ve never entered your radar screen.
Mar 22, 2017 @ 22:31:10
Poor little button nose. I feel so bad! I have four nightmares in my class, all boys. No Bills though!
Mar 22, 2017 @ 17:30:53
Oh Mel. What a turn your life has taken. Simple sermons must hold nostalgia now.
How little big will she be out and are there other subs??
Sorry about your back!!!
Jane. 202 236 8282 Sent from my iPhone
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Mar 22, 2017 @ 22:08:36
Tomorrow is my last day – she should be back on Friday. Phew! Trial by fire, for sure. Funny thing is, I had to preach on Sunday, too! AND my article in Eckleburg Review comes out tomorrow, so I had to approve the galleys for that. What a week!