A Teacher's Aide's Journal #4

                I sat in the bookroom with nothing to do as I had already placed barcode labels in all of the new books and I had already stacked the books in categories based on subjects.  There was nothing left to do so I sat at a table towards the back of the room, took an American Literature Anthology in hand and started to read an Edgar Allan Poe’s short story.  It was at that time when a student named Haven entered the classroom.  She was a student in my class a year ago when I was a long term sub at the start of the year.  The story behind that is that the English department chair who was Mr. LaSorda now promoted to assistant principal was replaced by Ms. Jones - unofficially.   The board of education for some reason decided to make all of the coaches in the district along with all department chairs re-apply for their jobs.  Over the summer, the principals were given the challenge of re-hiring; then after hiring or re-hiring they had to wait for the board to approve of those selections.  The process took a while – much longer than the ten weeks of summer vacation.  So when the school year started, Ms. Jones was not approved for the English department chair’s position.  She was offered the job and began to assume the responsibilities of the job.  Being that she was assigned five classes, that she could not teach while working as the unofficial department chair, I was asked to come in as a substitute teacher until someone was hired as a full time teacher.  The full time teacher would interview after Ms. Jones was made the official chair by board approval. 

This was the way last school year started.  I was the substitute teacher for Ms. Jones who often felt it necessary to sabotage my classes by dropping in and teaching a lesson.  There were a number of things bad about that situation.  First, Ms. Jones was in the classroom on the first day and I was not allowed to start the class with my routine of establishing order.  Our styles were very different.  Ms. Jones started the first day by open discussion with the students about what they did over the summer and what she did over the summer.  She introduced me as her substitute and felt the need to explain to the students that she was going to be the department chair and that a new teacher would have to be hired to replace her.  She explained to them that if they had any problems that they should come to see her.  In the past, what worked for me when I was a full time teacher is that on the first day I would give the student an assessment that allowed me to have a clear understanding of their skills relating to grammar and writing.  When I had finished that, I established order by specifically detailing the expectations and routines.  It has never been my concern what the children did over the summer or what they would like to do with their lives – all of that would come out in due time.  As a result of her conversation with them, the classroom became too social and students tried to take advantage.  They went to her with complaints about my discipline procedures, they complained about my demands that they used Cornell Notes.  They complained to her about too much homework, tests or quizzes every Friday, and telephone calls home.  All of this, according to the students was “too much” and I was “just a sub not even a real teacher.”  One of the biggest complaints came when the students were assigned to write an expository essay.  A good number of them wrote a narrative.  I graded them a zero because they did not do the assignment.  I explained that those with zeros needed to see me after school for re-teaching and a second chance to re-write the essay for full credit.  I was asked to use the department writing rubric on their essays and by the standards of the rubric, points were given for simple things like Format – the student uses double spacing and one inch margins with the proper font. 

The one good thing that came from those two months of teaching Ms. Jones’s classes was that the honor students had an appreciation for what I presented.  She had five classes in all and two of them were honor classes.  I did not know the magnitude of the appreciation that the honor classes had until that day while I was in the bookroom wasting time.  One of my former students was a NJROTC volunteer working in the bookroom.  She explained to me that she felt that she learned nothing in English class from the time I left.  She said that I was the only teacher that taught grammar and who was motivational.  She asked me if I was going to teach again.  I told her that I didn’t think so because now I was not a substitute I was a part time teacher’s aide.  She said that the teacher that was hired and replaced me didn’t know what she was doing.  She also told me that she took the ACT over the summer as I had encouraged them to do.  She said that everything I taught was on the test.

Near the end of the day, another student from one of those honor classes entered the bookroom.  Her name was Divinity.  She was a very receptive girl and she as well as the other students in the honors classes showed me a lot of appreciation for the lessons as they felt that they were getting preparation for tests.  Admittedly, I spent more time motivating them with ideas of dreaming big and not making limits on the possibilities of success.  “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.” I used a lot of quotes from Napoleon Hill.  At any rate, Divinity explained that she liked the way I spoke to the class and she aspired to be a motivational speaker on an international level.

                Our conversation started with her explaining to me that she did not take the ACT exam over the summer as I had encouraged her to do at the end of the previous school year.  She missed the June test and she asked for advice; I told her about the October test that she could take.  She said that she had the ACT prep book and that she often studied.  I thought of other resources and when I saw Chief from the NJROTC walking in the hall I remembered that there was an NJROTC test prep site that I used for my children.  I asked him over to tell her about the site but he would not tell her unless she joined the NJROTC – she was not interested.  He went ahead to sell the NJROTC program to her with a long spill and I could see the blankness in her eyes - she had zoned him out.  Her body language was obvious that she was not interested.  She examined her nails, shifted weight, pointed her foot to the door, folded arms and made an occasional statement “I’ll take that inconsideration.”  When he finished and shook hands with Divinity’s mother who was with her, I took Divinity and her mother to the career center where I turned on a computer and pulled up the collegeboard.org web site. I explained that this was a good resource as I conducted a mock college search while asking questions about her future plans.  She was most excited about her plan to graduate a semester early and spend time with her dad visiting colleges. 

Eventually we started to talk about her dream and her passion.  Her mother was naturally pushing towards a sensible career option that would guarantee her daughter a chance of working and earning a living while she pursued her dream of being a motivational speaker.  I was not very comfortable with this, because it often occurs that people give up on their dreams while holding down a job that they really don’t want and Divinity valued my honest opinion so I could not agree with the mother.  I had to be tactful.  I eventually told her that she should stop saying that she wants to be a motivational speaker and she should begin to say that she is a motivational speaker.  If she believes that she is then the next step is to do.  She did not have to wait to start motivating people she simply needed to start doing it.  She had ideas about a communications major in college but I told her that such a major was for journalist and broadcasting people.  She then thought about psychology classes and studying the brain and I realized she was thinking of formal ways of understanding how to motivate people.  I asked her why couldn’t she just make speeches and put them on YouTube?  I asked her if she had google plus, twitter and such social networks that she could subscribe to and promote her motivational speeches.  I suggested that she could upload her speeches and videos while promoting them to the people in her circles.  She liked that idea.  I went one step further by giving her my email address and suggesting that if she wrote a motivational speech, she could send it to me and I would write one back to her.  Such practice and feedback should help her to improve.  She liked that idea. 

One of the things that I thought I would do when I became a teacher was to inspire and motivate students.  I thought that I would have an impact on the world forging a new way of thinking in the youth and cultivate that thinking into a thinking pattern that would make change in the world or at least the community.  Somewhere in teaching methods, curriculum, student discipline, phone calls home, lesson plans, college readiness standards, and ten miles more of shit piled on education, that idea of motivating and inspiring students was lost.  It felt nice to do what teachers are supposed to do and ironically enough I was able to do this more after I was no longer a teacher.