Subbing: The good, the bad, the hope

To start the day, the sub stood at the door, welcoming each student into the classroom. Some returned her good morning or nodded. Many ignored her. This was a typical teen thing, she knew. 

Most were taller than her. But height wasn’t all she noticed. It was the micro flashes that entranced her. The memories of students past returned with certain sights -- the curve of a cheek, shape of a nose, distance between eyes, set of a jaw. As the students arrived, her head tabbed through decades of memories of this student, that smile, names, stories, singsong voices, wheedling, laughing, joking. While she didn’t always love the nuts and bolts of the job back then, remembering the kids almost always made her smile.  

Before she could introduce herself, the whole school announcement came on that anyone who wanted to say "Pledge of Allegiance" could now stand. It took her a few seconds to locate the flag at the front of the room. It was the size of a sheet of paper, much smaller than what once hung in the classrooms of her previous life. No students stood and no one joined her as she recited the Pledge. A group at the back chatted so loudly she could barely hear the words coming over the loudspeaker though she stood directly below it. 

Her head brought her to other times and places. There was the assembly in the school auditorium after 9/11. Eight hundred elementary kids and  75 teachers reciting the Pledge. Not a dry eye in the place. Everyone stood. Not a voice out of sync. Then they all sang “The Star Spangled Banner," "America the Beautiful,”  and “Proud to Be An American.” That was a  brutal time. 

Then May 2013, two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing, at the starting line of the Providence Marathon. Snipers on the rooftops and German shepherds walking among the runners, sniffing for explosives. There was not one runner who wasn’t wearing something blue and gold in honor of the Boston Marathon victims and survivors. 

Everyone removed their caps. This was the most moving thing to her that cool spring morning so many years ago. Not that the Pledge was loud and strong, and you could hear the anger and feel the resolve. It was the cap removal. It’s a rare marathoner who removes their cap during the Pledge, even if they’re standing tall with their hands over their hearts and saying the words. But that morning, with guns and soldiers all around, and the horror of the deaths and maiming at Boston so close in memory and time, runners went to the trouble of thinking outside of themselves and their race and showed they weren’t just going through the motions. That was gutting. 

All this came to her in one fell swoop, layer upon layer, as she took the podium at the front of the classroom and looked out upon the expectant faces awaiting her next words. 

“Before I introduce myself and give you your assignments, I want to talk a bit about – no- I need to tell you why I say the Pledge.” 

She took a deep breath, wondering how to compress all she wanted to say. She suspected most of them wouldn’t care about her words. She was a stranger to them, and they’d likely never see her again. Just the fact that they were sitting quietly and waiting so patiently was a tiny bit of a miracle.

She clasped her hands which were shaking out of rage, not fear. They wouldn’t understand 9/11. They were babies in 2014 and lived thousands of miles from Boston so probably didn’t even know about that bombing. How to explain to them how important these words were to her and to so many others? And then there was the fact that she no longer respected many of the voters and most of the politicians in her own country and was appalled at how ready and willing so many were to give up everything the Pledge stood for, to give up their Constitutional rights. 

How to put all that aside and be a teacher in a moment like this? 

She asked if in a few years some of them would be joining the military. Some of the students nodded. 

“Over the course of my career a lot of my students have fought in wars for our country. Maybe one day you will too. When I say the Pledge, I say it for them. I thank them and I remember them. I honor them.” This was just a small bit of a huge story. But any teacher who’s had any success knows you only have a brief window in which to grab and hold a kid’s attention. Briefer if you’re subbing. 

“One of my kids nearly died. And he’s the one I especially keep in mind.” This was true. She wanted to tell them more about that student’s struggles with relearning to walk, dealing with the guilt of surviving when his friends didn’t,  and how he would still serve his country if given the opportunity, but the restless shuffling, the yawns told her the window of opportunity was closing, so she stopped there. 

After taking attendance, she circulated among the students. As a sub, this wasn’t expected of her. Her main job was to record who was present and keep the kids safe. But she was a teacher at heart and thought if she could help, she would help. The world was a terrible place right now, maybe being a positive presence here in this classroom was one way she could make a difference. 

Some students were focused on their assignments, dutifully reading their coursework and typing up responses. Others nodded off. She stopped at each table to say hello and offer help. “I haven’t taken biology in forty years so I don’t remember much, but I’ll do what I can.” 

They were mostly polite. She thanked them for putting up with her, a phrase she often used years ago in her own classroom.  Some understood that this was a bit of joke and they smiled. She got that feeling again that she often got when she subbed, that maybe the world wasn’t such an awful place after all. Maybe this generation would help make things better. That was one of the things she loved about teaching. There was always hope. 

Three students sat together at a small table at the front of room, directly across from the teacher’s desk which had a comfy leather chair the teacher was looking forward to relaxing in. Three times during the first third of the 90-minute class the sub asked these kids to quiet down and to put on their headsets so their classmates’ learning wouldn’t be disturbed by the videos they were playing. 

“They’re always like this miss,” one of the students sitting near them said. 

The sub approached the table a fourth time and asked them to please be considerate of their classmates.

The kids ignored her and kept talking loudly while their music blared. 

She folded her arms and waited. “Please,” she said again, rooting herself to the spot next to their seats. 

This annoyed the students, the fact that she wasn’t leaving.

“Who do you think you are?” that was the loudest kid, the one playing the music. He had about a foot and a hundred pounds on her. The two others laughed along with him.  They were big too. 

Something familiar rose up in the sub, a flame of anger rooted in memories from years past when other students in other classrooms had responded so similarly. Rather than take his bait the sub turned, and, without another word in his direction, called the office. A few minutes later a young woman with a walkie talkie arrived. 

She did not come up to the sub and introduce herself.  Instead, she walked over to the students. Surprised at this snub, this lack of recognition of her presence in the room, the sub walked over as well. She pointed. “That’s the one who asked me who I thought I was.” 

The walkie talkie woman nodded. The boy spread out both his arms and yelled loud enough for the classroom next door to hear. 

“What? I didn’t do anything. She’s lying.”  

His friends nodded. 

“Yup.” 

“Yeah. She totally is.”

The walkie talkie woman put a finger to her lips. “Stop it,” she said. 

The sub watched, fascinated and disgusted. Fascinated because she’d seen this same scenario play out so many times, thousands of miles away at another school. Funny in a way, how certain types of poor behavior transcended state lines.  The disgust came from seeing that some kinds of admin ineptitude crossed state lines too. 

The walkie talkie woman said nothing else. She left as swiftly as she’d arrived. The three students continued their jabbering, louder now. This scenario -- the noisy students hijacking class, the ineffective response from admin, the students' rudeness to admin on top of the rudeness to the teacher, the return to noise once the admin departed, all of this was too familiar. 

“Unbelievable. She barely acknowledged my existence. She didn’t even introduce herself.  Wouldn’t have even known the truth of what happened if I hadn’t said something. She wasn’t even going to talk with me,” the sub thought, as she moved to the back of the room, as far from the noise as she could get without leaving the classroom. 

In her retirement, she had something now that she hadn’t back during her full-time days, the free will to choose to not teach under these circumstances. 

She perched herself on a student stool that was nowhere as comfortable as the teacher's lovely leather desk chair, next to a group that was working quietly. It was time to put some distance, mental and physical, between herself and this chaos. 

For the rest of the class, she refrained from circulating and helping students. As a sub, she wasn’t required to anyhow, and now she was done with any extra effort. Instead, she continued reading the novel she always brought with her to sub jobs, something she usually only turned to during lunch and planning periods.

During the remaining classes, she talked with the students a little but mainly kept her distance except for a long conversation with a junior eager to chat about child psychology, which she hoped to study in college. Together they talked about Erikson, Piaget, and a few other really cool psychologists and their theories. She discussed World War II with a student who was reading a book on the subject. His family emigrated to the US a couple of decades back, after losing many family members to that conflict. Reading about the war, particularly the fighting in Europe was one way he was able to connect with his family's history. 

She talked with some kids about the different languages they spoke and told them the joke that goes like this: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Someone who speaks two languages?  Bilingual. Someone who speaks only one language?  An American. 

She enjoyed chatting with some athletes about their aspirations in track and field, and got tips on strengthening her leg muscles. She learned about some fancy online shopping sites from a few of the more fashionable kiddos. 

All in all, except for the bumpy start, it wasn’t a bad day to be a sub. She got in some reading too, but only little. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why do we write? Part 1

 

When I worked full-time, my morning routine wasn’t a routine exactly. It was more an exercise in panic: oversleeping, procrastinating, then rushrushrush. 

This post, which I wrote as part of NANOWRIMO 2026, is pretty much how my mornings went back in the day: https://alwaysatthestartingline.blogspot.com/2025/11/flashnano25-day-28-mornings.html

 

In my retirement, I’ve developed a new morning routine. This one involves getting up when I feel like it, which lately has been about an hour past the crack of dawn. Like my pre-retirement schedule, mornings still involve copious coffee cups and lots of reading. Because I have more time on my hands now and tend to do this reading in a comfy recliner with my feet up and lap readily available, rather than in a straight-back kitchen chair which tortured my torso and forced me up and out, I tend to attract cats. 

It’s quite comfy to start: Coffee, three cats napping/ purring, and my laptop, which is always opened first thing to Heather Cox Richardson’s latest historical and contextual take on the events of the previous day. 

Sometimes we stay cozy, me, Patrick, Alexis Rose and her brother David. We’ll sit for hours while I skim social networks, read emails, distribute chin scritchy scratchies, head pats. Sometimes the four of us doze off. 

“It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific.” (Beatrix Potter). My cats are my lettuce. Off topic here, but my daughters and I have been using that word, soporific, since we first read Potter’s books together decades back. It’s so fun to say, read, write. Soporific is a word that makes me smile. Maybe I need to do a post on words that make me smile. 

Also, now I’m humming “I can’t go to work I’ve got a cat on my lap.”  (Morgan Morse).

Enough. Back to it. Sometimes good catnaps get ruined because what I read upsets me so much that I can’t sit still. 

I could write a lot today about many things. There’s so much wrong with the world and it pisses me off that I can’t do more. Writing helps me cope. Today, in HCR’s comment section, I got to read comments from others who feel the same way, both about wanting to do more and also about using writing to cope. 

Here are some excerpts from that comment section. I’m copying and pasting these for me and for anyone else out there who also feels like it’s all too much, and who, like me, also uses writing as an outlet for inquiry, angst, creativity.  

These aren’t award-winning authors with billions in the bank and massive social presences. And I think because of that, I find their words even more powerful. They’re regular folks like me, doing the best they can to take care of themselves and their loved ones during these awful times. Can’t take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself, right? They keep writing and I will too. I edited these a bit to protect privacy. 

 

 

It seems many of us are processing/coping/ interpreting our thoughts through words. Writing it out has often helped me get through the day.

 

Writing lyrics and connecting with nature have helped me to maintain my sanity.

 

Journaling is a vital link to my emotional stability. The very physical act of writing on paper an account of each day gives relief from the pressures. Expressing doubts and fears along with hopes and dreams does a soul good. 

 

I write poetry to process and get it out most days.

 

 

 I respond to so many comments on different reputable sites. This helps me see clearly what is going on, what I want for the future, and keeps me actively engaged and determined to support our democracy and our wonderful people, and the America that I love - not this present pall of corruption. 

 

 

Before I wrote this morning’s post, I went online and searched this phrase: “Why do we write?” There was so much that came up. I could spend days just reading through the first page of results. 

 

Here’s one of the initial pieces that caught my eye.  It’s from The Paris Review, by Elisa Gabbert. 

 

Why Write?  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/07/06/why-write/

I want to delve more deeply into this article and this subject. But now I need to move about a bit. The news continues to mess with my head. While writing this morning was helpful, I think a couple of hours at the gym today will help me sleep better tonight.  Balance matters. 

 

Forward continues to be my pace. 

 

 

Subject: Classroom fight. Hypothetical.

 Subject: Classroom fight. Hypothetical. (Rough draft.)

Setting: Modern classroom, elementary perhaps, crowded with tables, shelves, stacks of colorful wire crates filled with books, manuals, school supplies.  On each table:  piles of notebooks and iPads, canisters stuffed with fat markers, highlighters, crayons, colored pencils, sticky notepads. As fight starts, furniture will be overturned and carpeted floor will be strewn with books, computers, markers, highlighters, crayons, colored pencils, notepads, fallen crates. 

Four students per table. Mostly quiet. Some murmuring, but nothing that isn’t ordinary. 

 

Suddenly, one small human, hair in braids, rises from seat and crosses room toward another small human, ponytailed, who, seeing this human approaching, rises from seat and crosses room. They meet in the center. 

Noises: Distinguish between fighters and non-fighters. 

Fighters. No words. A thud starts it all, fist to face. Then more thuds: fists to stomachs, backs, faces.  Slaps. Lots of slaps -- open hands to faces, torsos, limbs.  

Grunts. Gasps. 

Hard breathing during hairpulling. 

Non-fighters encircle fighters. Mostly yells, high-pitched, also muddled sounds that are word/ scream combos.  Twenty-plus voices that blend together. Mood is chaotic. 

One voice is louder, deeper, but ignored by all. Teacher. Experienced. New to building. First day in this classroom. Yells words like, “stop,” and “everyone to the door” several times. On phone to office, says, “Two students fighting. Need assistance NOW.” Emphasis on now. Followed by more, “Everyone to the door,” and “Get into the hallway” as the punching, slapping, hair-pulling, grunting, gasping continues for several minutes. The crowd stays put, yelling and screaming. 

Then one fighter, exhausted, pulls away. The fight stops. The crowd noises continue. Words emerge: “Are you okay.” “Look at all that blood.”  “Check the floor."  "Is that blood on the table?”  “Oh my God, your hair.”

This fighter pushes students aside, walks to the hallway, the only one to listen to the teacher. (Is that ironic?) Braids, neat that morning, unraveled. Eyes vacant. Affect flat. Body stiff, zombie-like. Blood, scarlet, runs from nose to chin, drips onto white T-shirt. 

Office people arrive. One takes both students. The other, an administrator, stays to talk with class, which is louder now. 

Students jostle for spots on rug. 

Administrator teeters on tiny student chair. Signals for quiet. 

Teacher sits at office chair behind desk. Takes measured breaths with hand to chest, eyes closed.  

Student calls out “What will happen next?” 

“Yes,” teacher says, opening eyes. “Hi. I'm the teacher. First time in this building. Please explain. What will happen next?” 

Admin blinks rapidly. Nods.  Says "It's nice to meet you." Turns back to students, speaks robotically, like she is reading from a teleprompter. Recites platitudes. “You are all safe. There is nothing to worry about. The grown-ups will take care of this.” 

The students nod. 

The teacher, experienced veteran, raises an eyebrow, hand still on her racing heart. 

The admin nods toward the teacher, her voice syrupy now, says how lucky the students are to have this teacher visiting for the day, and how she hopes this teacher will return to this building another day because they sure could use the help. She tells the students to “do a good job, be mindful, remember our school rules.” Then all together, administrator and students recite the school pledge, which includes words like “safety, responsibility, kindness.”

A student calls out, “But what will happen next?” 

The teacher clears her throat so loudly that some students ask if she is okay.

The admin has been in the classroom for two minutes, less than one third of the fight time. 

The admin stands up and rubs her hands together, checks the watch at her wrist, obviously preparing to wrap things up. For a split second, the teacher and administrator lock eyes, then the admin focuses on a spot above all their heads.  

Her tone is wheedling. She does not answer the question. “Now boys and girls, is it a good idea to talk about this fight with anyone? Would it be fair to those two students to talk about this anymore?  We need to all put this behind us, don’t you think? It’s time to get back to work. We're going to have a great day."

While the admin talks, the teacher gathers her coat and bag and crosses to the exit. This obviously surprises the admin who has been talking to the ceiling this entire time and only realizes that the teacher is leaving as her speech comes to an end. 

The teacher waves to the class. “It was nice meeting all of you,” she says. “But now I have to go.” 

To the administrator she says, “Thanks for explaining next steps. Good to know.” 

She walks out the door, muttering, “Exactly nothing will happen next. Same old story.  Won’t be back here. Nope. Cold day in hell before that happens. Nope. Same old story. Won’t be back here.” 

 

 

How to Lose a Sub in Ten Steps

(Sorry about typefaces and mashed words. Trying to fix things but nothing seems to be working. Please run cursor over blue link type to see the mangled words a little more clearly. I know this is wordy. Didn't have time to shorten it.) 

This is a mashup of experiences, but is a realistic representation of a typical day working as a substitute teacher. I had to change some details for confidentiality reasons, but the essence remains intact. I've recently seen some awful things. I suspect that writing this piece is a big part of coping with what I can't -- for confidentiality reasons -- write about. 

It starts at the office. 

1.        When the sub, especially a   retired teacher   with lots of advanced degrees, first checks in at office, make sure to give them an assignment that differs exponentially from what they signed up for the night, week, month before.  Example: If the sub signed up to work a job with 3-5 intermediate level students at a time, assign that sub to a   primary classroom   with at least 20 students. This is called the             "bait and switch”   method and not only sets the tone for the day – which is all about chaos and disrespect, it absolutely guarantees that at the end of the day this sub will delete your school from their    online assignment menu   and never deign to grace your hallways again. Who needs subs? Especially subs who are experienced, highly-educated retired teachers? 

 

2.        The sub will ask for a laptop so they can access the absent teacher’s lesson plans. Craft your response so that the sub correctly infers that their very presence is a waste of your time. First, minimize their decades of education experience by saying something like, “Do you really think that’s necessary?” Then, when the sub politely responds that yes, it IS necessary, remember to act like you’re doing them the biggest favor ever as you hand over one of the dozen laptops at your school that are specifically designated for sub use. This interaction will make the sub ask themselves, “Why do I even bother?”

 

 

3.        Make sure to provide the sub with no emergency plans, no school map, no school schedule. When the sub adamantly asks for that info, roll your eyes, sigh the sigh of the great martyrs and say, “I’m sure the teacher left that information for you on their desk.” Or alternately – works best if you’re snippy and dismissive -- “Ask one of the teachers near the room."

Next is the role of the classroom teacher, and of course the office, yet again. 

4.        Teacher, leave no class roster. This is an important step in creating just the right recipe for a disastrous day. 

 Office, when the sub calls you – the nerve, doesn’t this person know we office people are busy?  -- tell them if they want it they need to come for it.  The office is only three corridors and two flights of stairs away, after all. Plus, the students don’t arrive for at least another five minutes. Who needs time to familiarize themselves with a new classroom/building anyway? 

Office, make sure the roster is out of date, which the sub will only realize when they start taking attendance and learn that half the kids on the list have moved out of district and the other half arrived at the school four months ago but were never added to the class roster because that’s not important.  This additional chaos will force the sub into the initial stages of a stress fugue state, which is always fun for them. 

 

5.        Teacher, speaking of fun. . . Violating    federal and state education laws    regarding    equity and accessibility   is hilarious, so make sure to leave no    IEP/ 504 information. If you’re lucky, your sub, if they are seasoned professionals, will lose their minds over this as they realize that the school is completely out of compliance and violating    students’ rights. Guaranteed that the sub will ask neighboring grade level teachers how to access this info. Make sure that teachers are trained to shrug and stare at the sub vacantly. Responding in this manner -- “Classroom teachers don’t need to know those things.”—will practically guarantee that the sub will have a massive panic attack. Those are fun.  Note: Be prepared. The sub will later report you and your school for these violations. 

 

6.        Office, when absent teacher finally emails lesson plans, (which they of course shouldn’t have to do and wouldn’t have to do if: they’d left an emergency sub folder,  or if other teachers stepped up to help, or how about admin actually gets their hands dirty for a change and make some copies?), forward them to teacher just as students arrive. This ensures that sub has no chance to review plans. Remember: It’s all about the chaos. Reminder: DO NOT provide info on classroom/ school routines, student pull-out schedules, allergies, dismissal plans, aides, etc. So boring. Subs love flying by the seats of their pants, especially retired educators who understand deeply just how profoundly not having these nitty gritty things negatively impacts everything about the school day. 

 

7.        Teacher, if you really want to mess with a retired teacher who is subbing, the trend now is to leave a slideshow.  Follow that trend!  Make the slides really pretty. Use lots of decorative doodads, cartoon characters, catchphrases, hard-to-read colors. Style over substance! Always! Make sure it takes longer to make the slide than it takes for the student to complete the actual work on the slide. Who needs rigor anyhow, right? Bonus points if you leave no instructions on working the technology to show these slides. No school buildings use the same tech after all, and subs thrive on the added stress of trying to figure out how to use new technology at the same time they are trying to teach and manage in a classroom with students they’ve never met before. 

 

8.        And remember, teacher,  that sometimes technology doesn’t work. This is why it’s important to leave NO alternatives, like assignments using books, papers, pencils. Subs get paid SO much! Make them sweat for those big bucks! 

 

9.        Do NOT leave quiet, independent student work (yes, it's absolutely a best practice to do exactly that, but who cares) or teacher manuals with structured lessons that an experienced teacher will have no problem using. You know what kind of work is fun to leave for subs? No work! Make the first fifteen minutes of the day free time and write explicitly that students are allowed to get out of their seat, wander the classroom. Next, do    parlor games!    Yes! Musical chairs! Seven up! Sure, research shows that the first few hours of the school day are absolutely the best times for young minds to accept and process information, but what do researchers know? Free time! Yes! Party games! Yes! Academics the first ninety minutes of the day?  NO!!! 

 

10.  For the rest of the day, sprinkle in a whole bunch of awfulness. High stakes math tests with problems the kids have not yet been introduced to are awesome ways to frustrate little minds. They’ve just spent the morning playing games so if they get stressed now, oh well. Maybe have the sub spend fifteen minutes introducing and expecting the kids to master a sweeping topic that the sub knows from experience takes at least a month to understand. The sub's frustration is palpable. So juicy!

 

At this point, the sub’s blood pressure will be off the charts. They’re exhausted. Angry. They’ll likely be crying inside as they try to squelch their sadness over the state of education today, and try to block memories of heady times when they loved teaching this and other topics using: rich texts, like    Newbury Medal books; lots of    cooperative group learning,    multiple intelligences/ differentiation. You know, proven methods and materials that  excite and enhance student understanding, inform kids’ decision-making, help them grow into decent humans who would make the world a better place. 

When the day is done, the sub will write a scathing tome -- filled with indignation and self-righteous anger --   on the    substitute review platform, and will contact appropriate authorities to report certain violations. Don't worry. Nobody will read these things. Nothing will change. 

The sub will look up state statistics on your school and will look for trends particularly in the    staff retention category. Upon finding exactly what they expected to find, rates that are in the toilet, the sub will feel some sadness, remembering times in their own career when they worked at places that loved chaos and teacher disrespect, and that also -- of course -- struggled with staff retention. Big whoop. It's not like kids need stability or anything. 

The sadness will be short-lived as it dawns on the sub that, for them at least, those days are done. Retirement has its perks. They’re no longer trapped in a toxic place and time. The next day the sub will ignore the half dozen calls from desperate admins requesting their services. The sub will sleep late, then might stay in pajamas all day or get dressed and hit the gym. The sub might lounge around, watch movies, read books, go for brisk walks, bask in the bright, winter sunlight. 

The sub will take time to rethink how to live life. Maybe they’ll sub again. Maybe they won’t. Sure, schools lose out when they don't have subs and already exhausted teachers have to temporarily take additional students into their classrooms. But in the end, the retired teacher sub has to do what's right for them. It’s their choice now. They know their worth and they know that, finally, they no longer have to settle for chaos, disrepect. The sub will be filled with gratitude. They know they can move on. And they do. 

"If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." Anne Lamott