Sustitute Teachers...and the Hassle Involved

If anyone has ever thought that they had a bad day, I challenge them to take a step into the shoes of a middle school or high school substitute teacher. I can't say that I have personal experience with this, but from years of observation I really can't imagine too many more jobs that could possibly be as horrible as this one.

First of all, students are always going to take advantage of their substitute teacher. They think that they can mess around and not do their work, all at the same time as making the substitute's life a living hell. One thing that a substitute teacher probably experiences everyday is the switch-seats-name game. There is nothing that they can do when students decide to switch seats with their friends and pretend they are someone else, of course giggling the whole time. This has got to drive the teacher crazy, but for their sake they better just let it go.

Second, students are always going to try and bend the rules. If the teacher specifies to work alone, no one is going to do that until a big fuss is made and the substitute is practically to tears. Once people start to work alone, that lasts for about 5 minutes and the rest of the class the poor substitute is trying to get people to quiet down.

Then there is all of the miscellaneous things as well. Kids will go to the bathroom and not come back for 25 minutes, sometimes being escorted by a principal when they return, and this is even if they do come back. They will be texting and messing around the whole time and probably line up at the door 10 minutes before class is over. Most of the time students have no respect for substitute teachers so the fill-in teachers for the day barely try to discipline the obnoxious teenagers.

At one point I would get so annoyed when kids would just skip class once they discovered that Mr. Green or Mrs. Smith was gone. But now I have come to realize that those are probably the kids that will torture the substitute so I could care less if they showed up. It ends up being less of a hassle for everyone!