“My kids came into class saying, “Have you been to Dr. Hannah’s class today? Alan from ‘The Hangover’ is the sub!”
“I thought you were here today. My students told me Zach Galifianakis was substitute teaching today.”
These were just a few of the barrage of quotes to wash over me Tuesday when I subbed for a class at Opelika High School.
For some reason, children ages 8 to 18 think I bear some sort of resemblence to actor Zach Galifianakis, best known for his role as Allen in ‘The Hangover’ film series.
While subbing at Opelika Middle School this spring, I had a few students actually come up and ask for an autograph.
Not wanting to crush their spirits, I signed their torn off sheets of sprial notebook paper, thanking them for being fans of “my” work.
“Why are you subbing here in Opelika?” one of the children asked.
Fair question, I thought.
“I’m rehearsing a new role for a movie. I’m gonna play a middle school English teacher, and I wanted to see what real English teachers do. This teacher was just a friend of mine and let me take her class for a day.”
The kids seemed to buy the explanation and trotted off back to their class.
I, on the other hand, began to seriously worry about the state of education in this country.
Perhaps it’s my own fault.
Being white, slightly portly and making the choice to grow a beard means that I will always suffer the indignity of being compared to other stout, white, bearded men: Galifianakis, Jack Black, President Benjamin Harrison and later-years Orson Welles (the only celebrity I’ll actually agree to looking anything like).
It’s a type of discrimination often faced by people like me.
Yes, I may look like some famous comedian, but please don’t expect me to spend my day entertaining you and making you laugh.
As a substitute teacher, it’s usually my job to make sure that worksheets are passed out, worked on and turned back in by the class’s end, hopefully with the smallest degree of backtalk and sass possible from my young charges.
I can put up with the crap middle and high school kids are able to inflict on substitutes.
I’ve not yet met the child I can’t deflate with a snarky comment and a little public ridicule.
What bothers me is that children think it’s somehow okay to treat an adult, even one in their lives in a fleeting, temporary way, with such disresepct and disregard.
We may have joked with Mr. Benham, the subsititute always chosen for band classes, by changing instruments, but he got in on the gag by trying to make people play their newly-acquired instruments.
Now, kids are almost expected to be troublemakers.
Subs are taught to go in with their shield first, being overly mean and authoritarian in a hope to scare their young pupils into submission. This method seldom, if ever, works.
What can be done to get kids to respect their temporary teachers?
Save bringing back paddling, I honestly don’t know. There’s something to be said for the threat of a giant wooden paddle.
No, this week, I don’t have the answer, or won’t even pretend to, using lofty adjectives and incomprehensible adverbs to muddle my message and pray you won’t notice.
All I have to say is this:
Kids, even if Zach Galifiankis was some sort of crazy method actor who needed to live for a while as an English teacher to “get into” a role, he wouldn’t come to Opelika, Alabama, to teach at your middle school.
I hate to be the one to have to tell you guys that, but, apparently, no one else will.
Grow up, get your head on right and pull your damn pants up.
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