Adventures in Substitute Teaching
I started substitute teaching again recently. I did it in my twenties, when I lived in Orlando and was also working at Disney as a puppeteer, Universal as a stuntman, and driving a taxi cab just to keep things interesting. Back then, I just figured that teaching, even on a substitutionary level would keep me grounded in my glamorous life in the entertainment and transportation industries. This time around, since there just aren’t enough teachers anymore at a time when the children in the world I live in have gone awhile without them, I feel inclined to step in and do what I can. Plus, they give me money for doing it so that’s always a bonus.
Last year, I was primarily working at Brookside, McIntosh, and Sarasota Middle Schools. Because my natural time clock had me automatically waking up by 7am, their 9am start time fit in with my natural rhythm, and I love living life without alarms. Plus, I’d worked at middle schools in my twenties, and I was still a little uneasy about working with elementary aged kids and high schoolers, of course for different reasons.
But on my first day back this year, I was substituting for Art class at one of the aforementioned middle schools, and by the end of the day, I made a realization that helped me expand my horizons. Middle schoolers are quite possibly the worst people on the planet.
