ESL gig

Now that October's nearly half over, I finally picked up my first certified subbing job, and lo and behold, it's a high school ESL gig no less (my dream job). I was elated to see that pop up on Subfinder, so I snatched it up quick like a hundred dollar bill laying in the street.

ESL is my favorite thing ever, and sadly there usually aren't too many chances to do it as a sub-I think I've only had a couple of these jobs in the past three years. Most ESL teachers never take a day off, if they can help it at all, and who can blame them? Not many people out there are brave/willing to show up in classroom full of kids who don't necessarily speak their language. When your prospects include a classic scenario straight out of one of those heroic teacher flicks (picture the classroom in an overcrowded LA high school, the huge room crammed full of tough looking Latino boys), the list gets really short. Fortunately this is something I'm pretty good at dealing with, and don't find this sort of crowd particularly intimidating--I've had lots and lots of practice with this by working at Marshall.

The unfortunate thing about a lot of certified jobs (that I had totally forgotten all about) is that you have things built into your schedule called "Advisory" or "Study Hall" or "Home Room" or whatever. In other words, an entire class period where you don't really do any teaching--just babysitting. While it's nice from the standpoint of not having to "plan" anything, it's not my favorite aspect of teaching, and not my favorite way to spend my time, for sure.

I'm much happier up there teaching a lesson (even "advisory" when you have a curriculum can be sort of fun, even if it's a bit cheesy. Classes are fun when you have the kids actively participating in something. A room full of people who are learning while having a good time, is very enjoyable. Kids who are getting work done--these are the things I enjoy about teaching...not babysitting.

Instead, you get a group of kids who are supposed to be doing work, but only a few have the sense to use the time wisely. The rest usually just want to goof off, talk to their friends, and see what they can get away with. As a regular classroom teacher, it's just merely annoying, but as a sub, it can be a nightmare. Only the most mature and motivated of students can handle this kind of unstructured time in a room with a sub. The rest, sadly, cannot. In a school with a block schedule, this can play out as 80+ minutes of playing prison guard, and scanning every corner of the room for signs of simmering trouble and mischief. This is actually way more boring than it sounds. It's actually incredibly dull to remind kids to put away contraband items, and kind of painful to watch them fight the urge to do something to relieve the tedium...because unfortunately they are choosing not to do something more constructive, and you can't let them do much of anything else. As a sub, that would be suicidal.

I spent most of homeroom watching a group of squirrely 9th graders who just reeked of trouble. I'm sure they felt unjustly persecuted by my ever vigilant gaze fixed firmly like a compass in their direction (like the Eye of Mordor), as I was right on top of them relentlessly from the moment they strolled in the room. Every infraction I pounced upon ruthlessly, but I figured there had to be a better way of spending my time than playing this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game, so eventually I got the bright idea of giving them chores. You know what they say about idle hands (and these were some VERY idle hands)...so I sent the ringleader to the office on an errand, and put them to work assembling handouts for another class. That took care of a lot of their excess energy, and they settled down again, so I spent the rest of the class talking to students and relaxing a bit.

The next class was real, an intermediate ESL group, so I got to do some real teaching (yay!) which was much more pleasant and fun than babysitting. I also ran into one of my PSU classmates (who works at this school), so that was another fun bonus. Sadly, after that class it was back to babysitting kids in a computer lab.

Most of the kids were fine in there, but one boy was decidedly NOT. He let me know what kind of party it was going to be from the very beginning, by impressing me with his charming personality and his exhaustive knowledge of inappropriate terms in Spanish (no doubt assuming that as a white woman, I have never heard these things before in my life...hah!). Clearly a faithful disciple of Machismo (one aspect of Mexican culture that I am NOT especially fond of), he spent much of the class goofing off, trying to bait me into responding to his rude comments, and basically acting like a jerk and not taking anything seriously. I basically ignored him for the entire class except during the few instances where I felt that basic safety issues were involved. With my 2 hours of sleep and some severe fatigue setting in, I decided that intervention was not something I felt like dealing with today, and that it wasn't my job to change his attitude. Ironically he calmed down quite a lot by the end of class and stopped trying so very hard to push my buttons. Maybe he wasn't getting what he wanted out of it...

Lunch went by far too quickly, and the end of the day was an extremely large class (by ESL standards) with way too little to do. One thing I hate is when teachers leave obvious "no accountability assignments"--assignments that the kids realize are very optional. Only the most motivated kids will do these assignments, never the ones who need the extra practice the most. I'd really rather just have a lesson to teach...this individual practice work doesn't usually keep the whole class sufficiently occupied, but teaching often does. After trying to get everyone to start working, I still had about 8 or so boys who weren't going for it, so I still had a few to "babysit". In spite of not being interested in working, they weren't too bad. I just had to issue a few reminders to a couple of individuals about basic school rules, and the rest of class was pretty uneventful. At the end of class they took to hanging out by the door, so I lost a couple, but then I used my old 6th grade move--"Who wants to leave 1 minute early?" If you want to leave 1 minute early, everyone has to sit back down in their seats. (Usually by the time everyone cooperates, they've used up the extra time anyway).

All in all, the day went fine considering how absolutely tired I was. I was pretty sick, and probably should have stayed home, but I was afraid to drop the job that morning because it's pretty unlikely anyone would pick it up on such short notice, so I forced myself to push on through. And things went fine, basically. Nothing crazy happened--I've had days during student teaching that were far more taxing than this. Most of the kids (even the bad ones) had their moments of fun. I was pretty delirious by the end of the day, and was totally focused on staying upright and not letting on to anyone know how absolutely exhausted I really was, and it seemed to work. I'm hoping Monday will be a lot easier. Looking at the lesson plan, it looks a bit vague so I may be doing some more actual teaching as a preventative measure. When kids are busy and engaged, they're way more fun to be around than when they're bored and restless. And although I can't ever tell them this, watching them being "bored" bores me just as much as it bores them.