This has been no doubt my most difficult long term substitute position. My first one comes pretty close but I think this one has just pushed to the front. I'm ashamed to say that I actually yelled at a class on Thursday. I was pushed to a point that I don't often experience and just couldn't take it anymore. And the worst part is that I really believe that I probably just hurt the situation even more by doing it. I'm sort of at a loss.
Actually, I just now had an idea. I was about to write about how I have so much planning to do that I'm not able to work on my relationship with the students. A lightning bolt went off in my head and I thought, why not? One of the pluses about long term sub jobs is that you don't really have to worry about the ramifications of what happens while you're teaching. If I don't actually cover any of the necessary standards, so what? I won't even be there at the end of the year. (That's not to say that I actually don't care. I do try to make sure the students are learning what they're supposed to be. It just doesn't have to be everything.)
The class I'm most worried about right now is the eighth grade. I pretty much fixed the issues in the other grades. But the eighth grade is a pretty big class and has a few really hard to control students. It's the class that I yelled at. I don't feel like I really need to get into the details; the main issues are that they are upset about the change, really like their regular teacher, aren't convinced that I'm an adequate replacement, and are already a really talkative class.
The unit I created (yes, I had to make the whole thing as lovely regular teacher didn't leave me anything) has them creating a character from the Great Depression and in the end, writing a narrative about his/her struggle. They're learning about that time period in Social Studies so this works well. We'll still work on that, but I'm going to incorporate some getting-to-know-you activities and journal writes. I'm thinking I'll start Monday with "Why I'm upset right now" as a prompt. I'd like to say "pissed off" but I'd probably get in trouble for that.
I don't know if this will work but it's worth a try. I'm tired of trying to beat a class into submission. That's not really my style. I really want to work with them and try to get some real learning to happen.
I just realized that another problem could be that a lot of the students feel intimidated by my unit. There are a lot of students who struggle a lot in the class. I might need to reiterate how much support they'll get and that we have a couple months to get through the unit. It might seem daunting but really it's quite achievable.
I hope I can make this work. I don't want to continue to be a complete basket-case for my poor husband.
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