My work history has been a colorful one, and one filled with stressful jobs. I suppose that when you're in a line of work that is not what you want or dream or aspire it to be, it would be stressful. Right out of high school, I worked with the elderly in nursing homes. I've driven 18-wheelers, stocked shelves at Target, in high school and when I needed to pick up cash quick I've worked fast food joints and grocery stores. Driving trucks really felt like what I wanted to do forever and ever and the best job in the entire world but it didn't work out when I was diagnosed with diabetes. It wouldn't have worked forever anyway, because I met Matt, fell in love, and a life on the road is not one that's the best for a relationship. Especially considering that the open road is not where Matt was heading or wanted to head.
So after driving was shut down, I was working in a day care, and then as a babysitter and found that I really and truly enjoyed working with children. From there, my options began to bloom. I could go into the day care field, as a teacher, get certifications with working with those age groups, or as an administrator and run my own facility. I could run a home day care, or teach. While preschool children were a delight and I loved working with toddlers, I really felt that teaching was the way to go. So I finally went back to school for a college degree, with my eye on teaching. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that science classes in middle school had always been my favorite, brought me a ton of delight, and I wanted to bring the same wonder and excitement to other kids. Besides, I genuinely liked middle schoolers. Preteens are so special, because they have big hearts and imaginations, and yet they are entering puberty, poised on that transition into adulthood that is their teenage years. They're funny in how they are both still so goofy and yet so serious, so dramatic, so full of life. I set my sights on that.
When I found out that getting a science degree would benefit me most in teaching older children because I could specialize and qualify better as an instructor, I realized that I would not be getting the student teaching experience that I would if I remained an education major. Worried that my classroom experience would be minimal and my first years as a teacher would suffer because of it, I decided to substitute, and here we are, having substituted three classes in the past few weeks.
I already blogged about my first day subbing but early in the next week I took a job in a middle school science class. How perfect, I thought! It was terrible. The kids were at best disrespectful. At worst, they were tiny terrors. Well, I say tiny. Many of the children were as tall or taller than I was. Now I know why my mom was always so offput when she had to lecture me while looking up at me. I left the school that day and walked home instead of taking Matt's offer of a ride. I said it was because the day was beautiful (it was) and the school was near to our house (it was) but I used the time to have a good ugly cry alone.
And then I was scared to take another job because maybe subbing wasn't for me, or maybe it was subbing inner city public schools, or maybe did this mean that I was never going to be an effective teacher and I was kidding myself? My self esteem took a big hit that day, and even more of one when the responses I got from friends about the hard day was "You just have to be firm and show the kids who is boss." In that classroom, I was firm. I called security, I sent kids to the office. I split up problem groups, I said "no" when I knew the requests were unreasonable, and I was unwaveringly firm in the things I expected. I even raised my voice a few times, not that it ever did any good.
I spent a week staring at sub job lists and not doing anything, and then I went in and talked in therapy about my awful day and my fears and anxiety over taking another job. And my therapist is great and talked a lot about how having a bad experience early on in something might keep me from ever having a good experience. Her advice seemed to be pointing to thinking that I should try again, and if it's awful, it's awful and that's okay to decide that it's not for me. So I took another job today. It was an elementary art class.
To say it was awful is somehow a strange understatement. I had four groups of kids for 45 minutes each. The first group was 2nd graders, and they weren't awful. There were a couple of problems but for the most part they acted just how I would expect seven year olds in the morning to act. They were terrible at cleaning up after themselves, and there were some problems sharing, but goodness, if I didn't expect that, I'd be crazy. They left and in came my pre-k class which started out well, and slowly progressed into madness. I told myself that they were just spirited, and prepared for the 3rd graders I was supposed to have. They ended up not coming, and I saw a note saying they had a field trip this week. I cherished the break, my blood sugar was dropping, and had lunch.
After lunch, I was set for first graders. And there is where my day, with only two groups left, utterly degraded in front of me. The boys in the class were violent, one girl continued to wander the room trying to get into the supplies that she and I both knew she was not allowed to touch. She tried to sneak paint onto paintbrushes and paint on the floor when she thought I wasn't looking. She tried to abscond with the sharp scissors meant for the older classes, and while I was trying to keep her out of those things and sitting down to the activities that was prepared for them, two groups of boys kept getting into altercations that were getting steadily worse. One boy kept pushing and shoving other students and then trying to sneak out of the classroom. Another boy was getting angry and grabbing classmates and throwing them to the ground, hard. I sat them in the time out area so I could call the office. I explained the situation and asked if I needed to send the boys up to the office. They told me they would send someone. That someone never came.
When the second boy got up and started throwing trash cans and chairs at me, I tried calling the office again, as well as their teacher. No answer from either. When he came at me and tried to deck me in the stomach, I caught his hand and went down on one knee while holding his fists at his side. He looked so angry so I tried to talk with him. He was completely unresponsive. I tried to call his parents because I was still getting no answer from the office, the teacher, and because the art room is in the basement, I couldn't call for help from a nearby teacher. The only teachers in the basement with me were the music teacher. From the echoes of the cacophony next door I knew that I would not be heard. The P.E. teacher didn't have a class right then and the gym was empty. I was utterly alone. Not one single child in that room was behaving well enough for me to feel I could send them to the office for help without them ditching. At one point the first young man I had problems with did indeed manage to slip out of the class and disappear for 20 minutes.
I was in tears by the time their teacher came. The anxiety had risen to a level that I was exhausted, completely out of patience, miserable, and cramping. I was stressed out and having Braxton Hicks, which just seemed to make everything so very awful. As the 1st graders left, the kindergarteners, my last group, were coming in. Their teacher assured me that they were a very good class.
However, as the hour progressed, they too got into fights. Splitting them up did no good, although they weren't nearly as violent and out of control as the group before them. I managed to get them to line up at the door, albeit a bit early, to wait for their teacher. When she arrived, I explained their behavior. She said they had been much worse than normal all day, and she thought it was because it was so close to Christmas break. The boy in that class that had been the one causing the most fights, unresponsive to me, and generally causing havok was a new student. "I've called his parents several times," the teacher confided in me, with a very unamused look on her face. "He's only been here for three. hours."
The teacher took her kids out and I cleaned up the art room. I got upstairs at 2:47 and found the office locked, I managed to get the attention of someone in there and they said that I wouldn't be allowed to sign out and leave until 2:55 when my shift should be over. Not really knowing what to do, I went into the auditorium to wait with teachers who were watching students who were being picked up by parents and family members to go home. At one point, someone said, "Are you the art sub?" and I said yes. They said, "You're supposed to be on the bus ramp to help control kids." How was I supposed to know? No one told me anything this morning, or this afternoon. There were no instructions about that from the teacher, only about her lesson plans.
I came home and took a nap. The sub line has called with job offers 6 times. I haven't answered, and I have no intentions of answering. Oh. Make that 7 times. Still not answering. I'm not sure I will take another job before winter break, and to tell the truth, I'm not sure I'll take another job after that either.
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