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.
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