It has been a week since I finished a 6 week long term sub
job for the 7th/8th grade math teacher at our local
middle school where I sub on a regular basis.
Ever since leaving the classroom almost 15 years ago when we moved to
New York, I have dreamed about getting to teaching math in a classroom
again. I love teaching school. Consequently I would be lying if I didn’t
admit that I was kind of excited when I got asked to be the long term sub for
the math teacher who had to be out for surgery.
I was also concerned though, because on top of what would now be a full
time job (plus more because anyone who teaches knows that you don’t get it all
done between 7:30 am and 3:30 pm) I still had all of the other responsibilities
of my life like wife, Mom, 2 graduate school classes that require me to commute
in to NYC two nights a week and math students that I tutor for 4 hours a
week. I did some thinking and
problem-solving trying to figure out how I was going to make it all work. As always, Rone was completely supportive,
knowing that he was going to be picking up the slack again, just like last
semester.
I said
“yes”, with the following plan in place.
First, work really hard the first 2.5 weeks so that I could be ahead in
lesson planning, etc. so that when my graduate school classes started on the 18th,
subbing wouldn’t be as big of a commitment.
Second, cancel tutoring for two of my students (that takes an hour per
week off of my schedule) because I was now going to be their math teacher for 6
weeks and that would be a conflict of interest.
Third, the rest of my tutoring students are high school students who had
a week of final exams and the beginning of the new semester coinciding with
week 4 and 5 of the long term sub job so I cancelled both of those weeks of
tutoring. They met with me in advance to
prepare for their exams and then survived the first week of the new semester
without tutoring help.
Although
the plan was a good one, I still quickly realized that I was in way over my
head. I had three classes to write
lesson plans for each day (plus all of the other things that eat up teachers’
time.) I love common core mathematics
and the standards but I do not like the curriculum that New York has created to
support the standards so prepping for one of the three classes, the 7th
grade math class was quite challenging.
I often spent more than 1.5 hours preparing to teach a 45-minute
lesson. More than once I wondered if I
was going to make it through the 6 weeks, but then the blessings came. And so I will count them.
- Week 3 of subbing: This semester one of my graduate school
classes meets on Tuesday night and the other meets on Wednesday
night. Because the semester started
on a Wednesday I only had one class to attend this week and consequently
only one class to complete homework for.
- Week 4 of subbing: This week started with a teacher work
day on Monday since it was the end of the quarter. After getting grades taken care of I
still had a couple of hours during the day to write lesson plans and
because there hadn’t been school on Monday I had one less days
worth of lesson plans that I had to prepare the week before.
- Still week 4 of
subbing: A snowstorm came and cancelled
school for Tuesday. Now I had a
whole day to write lesson plans (and a couple of tests and reviews that
were coming up) and I again had one less days worth of lesson plans to
prepare
- Still week 4 of
subbing: I had to go to class two
nights this week but when I went to the first night of my Tuesday night
class, the professor told us we wouldn’t have any homework this first
class. So I again, only had one
class to complete homework for.
- Week 5 of subbing: A snow
day caused us to early release one day.
It was like being given 3.5 bonus hours in one day.
- Week 6 of subbing: Another snow storm caused a 2 hour delay so I got to sleep in and catch up on some sleep. Teacher training days on Thursday and Friday shortened the week for me since I did not need to attend them.
In many ways these things seem kind of insignificant but they came right when I needed them. At those times when I didn't think I was going to be able to make it, a blessing game.
Two other big blessings of this
experience were the result of what I learned from this experience. First, teaching has changed a lot in 15
years. The math class of today looks very
different. For one thing, there are
children with special needs who need differentiated instruction and require
attention during class as well as additional time outside of class to follow up
with their aids and special Ed teachers in order to coordinate the best
educational experience possible for them.
So, in my romanticized ideas of returning to full time teaching I really
didn’t know what that would entail. Now
I have a more realistic idea of what the job looks like today. The other blessing came in helping me figure
out what I want to teach. I have only
taught middle school and I loved teaching middle school but I have thought a
lot about possibly trying to get a high school job when I start teaching again. After observing and talking to a couple of
high school teachers last semester and then being back spending my days with
middle school students, I want to teach middle school again. I will be sad to get a bunch of my math
skills back and then once again not really use them because I am back teaching
middle school, but I love that developmental age and enjoy the opportunity to still
change the course of a student’s mathematical education by making a difference
for them in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade.
