A Tale of a Teacher

Hand over hand; I was moving toward the top rung of the substitute teacher monkey bars!

Answering my phone, I heard, 'Hello, are you available to substitute tomorrow?'

My will suddenly disappeared and, with it, my tongue.

'Tomorrow, ah..., '

'Tomorrow would be Wednesday.' The clipped words informed me. 'Are you available?'

'Ah, well...'

Again, the recorded message: 'High School building, room 10, 7:30 A.M...Auto shop.'

The phone went dead.

'Auto Shop!' I was astounded that this would be my first assignment! 'What did I know about cars? I had never even changed a tire!'

Clothes... what do you wear to teach auto shop class?

What time do I leave? Where do I park?

Sleep eluded me.

I tried to visualize the inside of my car's motor. Like counting sheep, I would name the parts….dipstick, radiator....Counting sheep had to be easier.

Suddenly, it was 5 A.M. and time to prepare. Making myself take easy, even breaths, I became a substitute teacher.

The lesson plans were to explain the definition of a manifold, find it on a picture, talk about its function and then watch all the students with their heads, bodies and, sometimes, feet under the hood and chassis of a car. I smiled when they bobbed up and I said 'hello' and goodbye'. I watched as enthusiastic students put their bodies in, around, and under versions of Henry Ford's masterpiece.

The day was almost over. This would be easy!

Home I went, proud of myself for a job well done. The phone rang the minute I walked in the door. A familiar monotone voice spoke.

'Hello, are you available to substitute?

'Oh yes.' I blustered. Patting myself on the back, I told myself that I was wonderful. Everyone would want me.

'Kindergarten- Room 1- Elementary school.'

Smugly striding up to the elementary school building the next day, it struck me that I had never been in a room full of five year old children by myself. Wearily, I opened the classroom door and saw an array of tiny tables, a miniature kitchen center, and a selection of balls, bins and tricycles. Searching for these lesson plans was like playing the game where you close your eyes and you guess the identity of an object by touching it.

A bell rang. Before I took my next breath, little faces and bodies flew into the tiny space that held their backpacks and coats. They pushed and collided like linebackers in a football scrimmage. Voices rang out and those bodies ran at me.

'Get control', I screamed to my breakfast that was begging to be unleashed out of fear.

Instinctively, the count down from three to two to one spewed from my throat. The bodies ran to make an invisible circle in the middle of the room. Those big wide eyes stared at me. Little did I know that the teacher had done such a great job training these students from the first day that they knew what was expected of them.

A comforting red rocking chair beckoned me from the edge of the circle. Instructing them to tell me their names I learned so much more in the process. Much more than I had ever thought I would know.

'Daddy took me to the movies this weekend'

'Mommy and her boyfriend got into a fight.'

'What are we going to do next?'

I stood while those eyes followed my every move. One of the bins held books and I eagerly grasped a handful. We read together. We went on to color our own books, ate lunch, counted to twenty, played and the day was over. Coats, boots, hats and mittens went back on. Zippers were zipped. Goodbyes and hugs were exchanged. The procession marched to their appointed places to be transported home and the substitute teacher in me returned to the quiet, almost desolate, classroom.

Relying on the authors of children's books to teach my lesson, I led them to guided practice. This was pure instinct. I was really lucky. Believe me, it is not how the experts tell you it will happen and it never really happened like this again. My first experiences lured me into thinking that teaching should be taken lightly. Not so! It takes more resilience and flexibility to be a teacher and much more constant reevaluation and adjustment. Alfie Kohn, in 1993, wrote, 'Good management, like good teaching, is a matter of solving problems and helping people do their best.' To teach, one must not have to react to the circumstances, one has to be a visionary. As I ready myself for each year, I grope for another rung on the monkey bars!