Sub Sandwich

In reading through a few blog posts, I found an interesting topic raised by Luis and Eric, the issue of teacher substitutes, or rather, the abuse of teacher substitutes. Here’s a quote from Eric’s Blog:

“In my middle school, substitutes were also taken advantage of. Sometimes the substitute wouldn't know how the class worked and people would make fun of them because of that. Usually the making fun part wouldn't go too far...”

Oh boy, I know this to be true. Substitutes are being bullied and abused by students even more than students torture each other. It’s sad, because being a substitute teacher is slowly gaining a bad reputation that scares many people away from the profession. This is happening to the point that retired teachers are now having to step up to the plate to help out their younger counterparts. Substitutes don’t usually know how the class works, so they do their best to figure it out within the few hours they have during the classes. More often than not, the students will do their best to hinder the sub, telling them lies, that they’re allowed to do things they’re not, or, in some cases, students even switch names to confuse everyone involved. So I suppose what we, the students, should be doing, is shaping up our act. We’re here at school to learn, not to torture those there to try and help us. What kind of people are we to think it’s funny to put so much mental stress on a person? The excuse of “oh, they’ll only be our sub once” is a complete lie. How often have you had a sub that your classmates hurt mentally come back and have a grudge? I know I’ve had it happen a lot more than once. And these subs come back, expecting the worst instead of hoping for the best. Think about that, how does it make you feel? It makes me feel pretty awful, as stupid as that sounds. I feel sorry for us, as well as the subs and I can only hope that all of us, myself included can become a bit better in our behaviour, it doesn’t have to be a dramatic change, but a change would be nice, no?