Skip to main content

My First Absence

This week, I took my first day off since I started teaching in September. The perfect attendance streak is done. It's weird but that doesn't bother me so much anymore. Perhaps this is a sign of growth? Weird, but not unexpected.

Generally, if a teacher is absent at my school, a substitute teacher gets called in to cover for the day. Sometimes substitute teachers are unavailable which means the full-time teachers have to give up their planning period and that period. It doesn't really matter who is covering for the day, because our kids generally get nothing done on days their primary teacher is absent. In fact, in my experience, students come knocking on my door during random periods:
"Yo Mista, Ms. So-and-So ain't here and that sub is mad whack. Can I come in and chill?"
This happens quite often. Sometimes, they don't even knock - they just cut the class and use it as an excuse to go home. I can't figure out if our kids are just extremely loyal to their teachers or they're just looking to get out of the classroom because the "sub" has no control. There is an atmosphere of "You can't tell me what to do, you ain't my teacher" every single time you walk into a classroom with a substitute.

So when I took the day off, I expected my students would accomplish very little that day. I e-mailed the school secretary some review worksheets which would only benefit the kids if they tried doing them. When I came back the next day, I saw a huge stack of semi-completed-to-fully-completed worksheets, separated by period. What I heard was even better:
"Mista, I did mad work for you when you was gone. Do I get extra credit?"
Sure, why the fuck not? Okay, so they did some work, awesome. That's not the best part. The best part was this one:
"Yoooo we missed you yesterday. It was mad boring. I wanted to learn more about this probability shit we be doin' - I be gettin' that."
I want to end this week on a good note.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Mr. and Miss When you are really a teacher, you don't have a last name. said…
That makes complete sense to me. They love you, and when you're gone, they are going to miss you. That means, you are a success.

WOOOOOOWEEEEEE!!!!
May 24, 2010 at 12:32 AM
NB said…
Dude, what a great post. Am really happy to hear that your students are getting into the subject. Congrats!

So how do you give the extra credit? Is it just goodwill points, or actual marks?
May 26, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On My Visit to My Old High School

I had the incredible opportunity to visit my old high school while I was in Chicago last week.  This was something I was really looking forward to; I was worried I wouldn’t have enough time to cram in a visit. I wanted to not only visit my old teachers, but also to walk around the hallways aimlessly and remember what it was like to be me eight years ago. It still blows my mind that I’ve been out of high school for that long. Okay, fine. The voice of accuracy in my head desperately wants me to clarify how long it’s really been. Technically, I had gone back to visit a few of my teachers shortly after I graduated high school, but I choose not to count that as a “proper” visit as I was still in college and coming back home quite often. It’s not like I was living out of the state as I am now. So it doesn’t count, okay? So Wednesday morning, I walked into the visitor’s entrance at gate 3 and received my visitor’s pass for the day. It was odd because as a student, I neve...
Post a Comment
Read more

We Need to Talk About Tenure

The idea and privilege of "tenure" in public education has garnered a lot of attention as of late. Most people who have never worked in education a single day in their lives seem to feel that tenure is unfair and teachers should work under the same expectations that other "regular" and hard-working Americans work under. At least, that's the narrative being presented in the media. Three years ago, I would have agreed, but I didn't know any better. At the college and university level,  tenure  is difficult to obtain and can take 4-8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I think I know, the candidate usually needs to have published some sort of research and have demonstrated a strong teaching record, among other things. Before becoming a high school teacher, I understood why tenure was necessary at the college and university level as it protected academics when they published work that went against the mainstream, and thereby prevented profes...
16 comments
Read more

How to Not Run a School

Thomas Edison once said, " I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."   I'm going to be honest: it's only midway through November and I think my school is on the verge of falling apart. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it seems as if we're trying to go out of our way to make things more complicated, pointless, and ultimately, not fun . School should be a fun place for teachers and students. As it is being run right now, it is not. Over the past week, I've spent a considerable amount of time during my off-periods wondering what the hell happened. Three years ago, this place started with such a great culture and attitude. That feels like a long time ago. There's a long list of things that have been eating away at me and everyday, something new gets added on. Decisions are being made without foresight. Things that I thought would obviously be implemented have not been implemented. I thought we would have figured out at ...
7 comments
Read more