O.K. Few of us can knit a robot. Regrettably few of us know what to do with knitting needles. Even those of us who can knit robots will probably never be able to make a Robbie of our own. Oops. Straying off topic…

Back on topic: So you have an interview. Yay! This post will be short.

Your first priority should be to scour that district website. Did District #42 start a knitting club recently? That’s a bridge for you if you can knit. What else are they doing in #42 that you would have loved to do when you were 13 years old? Has Snape School instituted a new afterschool reading program? Mention that program and tell the interviewer you would love to volunteer to help with afternoon reading activities. Add details. Tell the interviewer about the article you just finished on Pre-K language learning and introductory phonics.

If you know anyone who works in #42, you should ask that person about their favorite parts of the district, as well as their least-favorite parts. Ideally you might even be able to find out about an interviewer or two. The Principal owns horses? Do you have a possible bridge there? Other questions: What are the kids like? Has the district been changing in the recent past? Why is this new position open? Some of these questions are not good interview questions — asking about school populations or people who left can be problematic — but if you can find out this information informally, you will be better able to sound knowledgeable in your interview.

Research. Research. Research. Without being nosy or demanding, find out as much as you can before the interview begins. You want to find those connections, those bridges between yourself and interviewers. The more connections you can make, the better the fit you will appear to be.

Good luck!

You completed your student teaching. Did classroom management come easily? Did teaching feel natural? Was it fun? Did you get through your critical objectives? As you seek your teaching position, reader, I recommend you reflect on these questions.

There’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma where teaching’s concerned. Why can one person step into a classroom and own that room, while another wrestles with seating chart after seating chart? Two older men making career changes ended up in my teaching cohort, both big, physically imposing guys with thick, gray hair. Both went on to find positions. I’ll call them “Hal” and John.” John ended up struggling, forced to move on from his first position to another district as he tried to figure out how to be the teacher he had planned to be.  I discussed this fact with Hal.

“John’s not doing well?” I said, or something like that.

“I hear he’s having trouble controlling his classes,” Hal said, lowering his voice as if saying something shameful.

Hal had taken full hold of the reins in one of the toughest districts in Illinois. He was succeeding in a school that chewed many, other new teachers to shreds. A natural himself, he assumed the average teacher would be able to manage classroom behaviors.

As the Gershwin song says, it ‘ain’t necessarily so. I believe almost everyone can learn to manage classroom behavior, but some people require professional development to get to a place of ease and comfort, while others simply exude control from the day they first walk into their room. I remain fascinated by this fact. Consistency helps, establishing and reinforcing norms helps, practicing transitions helps, providing brain breaks helps, etc. etc. etc. through many PD recommendations. But in the end, I swear that sometimes Mary just has the magic before she ever sees Hogwarts, while Inez has to crack those potions books night after night to get the same effects.

Why am I writing this meandering post? Because as you seek your new teaching position, whether you are Mary or Inez matters. Why were these two erudite, physically-similar men who had taken the same classes to get their master’s degrees in education having such different experiences in the field? Because classroom management magic, while it can be taught, is not parceled out in equal quantities.

Frankly, I was too nice and understanding when I started, and that fact bit me more than once. I lost too much time to fostering a democracy at first. I gave too many bathroom breaks to too many students, students who I would later discover were taking breaks with every single teacher they had throughout the day. I reexplained too many concepts. I’d squandered a regrettable number of student minutes by the time I pulled myself together with the help of various mentors.

While you are trying to decide if you are Mary, Inez or some Mary-Inez hybrid, let me ask a few more questions:

1) Did you work with a motivated or less-motivated population? If you worked in a district where over 90% of students go on to college, be careful. You may think you have great management skills, but the skills required to keep students on-task in a district where an eventual university education has become the norm are not the same skills required to manage in a drop-out factory. If you worked in one of America’s top schools, you may not be able to judge the degree of your natural knack for classroom management. Kids in these schools often manage themselves as they keep their eyes on that Ivy League option, long before they take the spring tour of Williams, Brown and Yale.

2) If you worked in an inner-city, urban school and most students were doing your assignments, while listening to you explain new concepts, despite the fact you were a new teacher, you probably have all the magic you need to take any position anywhere.

3) Did you have to keep changing those seats, making new charts, and working on the behavior piece during your last teaching experience? You might want to try to find an easier position to start. Some positions are best left alone. Thirty-five kids in a drop-out factory can sink even the best-intentioned educator, especially in that first year or two — although if you make it through those first two years, you should be able to handle just about anything.

In my previous post, I recommended kissing the frog. I’ll stand by that advice with one caveat: If classroom management felt like a struggle during student teaching or your first year, you might be better off ducking larger classrooms and classrooms in districts with exceptionally low test scores or a history of disorder.

I’d suggest going for low class size rather than an easier commute or higher salary. I’d also suggest skipping districts with exceptionally low test scores. Low test scores imply lower levels of motivation, among other problematic factors, and less-motivated students tend to offer tougher behavioral challenges.

You will get better at classroom management year by year, but if that management piece felt like hard work during student teaching or in your last teaching position, simplify for now. In practical terms, drive an extra 15 miles to get 20 kids in your classroom instead of 30. Look for a district with a strong mentoring program, too — and don’t take the principals word when he or she enthuses about the mentoring program. Talk to first and second year teachers about the program. How often did they meet with mentors? Did the mentors sit in their classes? How often do new teachers get to observe other teachers? What sort of professional development does the district provide?

Eduhonesty: To summarize, if you are “John” or Inez, pick your toads carefully. If you are “Hal” or Mary, kiss any toad you want.

More later and good luck in your search!

P.S. Another teacher commented on my previous post, suggesting that applicants consider part-time positions. Yes! If you can afford to take that part-time position, you will have less overall work, giving you more time to perfect your classroom management skills, lesson planning, and data management. You will be able to give more time to individual students, too, a win for everyone.

Still looking? If so, then I am still helping.

What’s the big challenge faced by first-time hires? Whether as a cashier at Krogers, an engineer at Boeing or a kindergarten teacher, the first hurdle new applicants must leap stems from their lack of practical experience. You must convince others that you know enough to do what your employer expects.

That creates the first barrier to tackle when trying to land a starting position. Especially in wealthier and stronger districts, you will probably be competing against applicants with classroom experience. Many teachers try to move from the $35,000 per year job to the $45,000 per year job by changing districts, and districts like to hire that man or woman with a year or more of full-time teaching experience. Classroom management is largely (or even almost entirely, depending on where one attends school) learned on the job. Those first few years of experience consequently carry great weight in an interview. If student teaching is the extent of your experience, a position may slip away because you look great, but “Indira” looks great, too, and she has proven she can manage a classroom. She probably also has a portfolio showing the many clever assignments her students completed last year.

Don’t give up. Even if you lack experience and connections within a district, please remember that every teacher out there got hired for a first position at some point. If you student taught in a district, that should help, allowing you to talk about a school’s student and staff culture. Use your student teaching. You might want to praise a teacher whose management skills you admire, citing specific examples of how he or she kept students on task and moving along. Share great strategies for managing transitions you observed and any other classroom strategy you intend to steal from more experienced colleagues. It’s usually a good idea to include a mistake or two you made while student teaching that you managed to correct with help and advice from colleagues.

You did not do your student teaching in your first or second pick for where you want to teach? That brings me to today’s critical observation: Don’t be too picky!(OK, a little pickiness doesn’t hurt :-))

You are looking for a FIRST teaching position. Yes, you would like to work 12 miles from home in a district that pays $10,000 more than most of the districts around it, a district loaded with money, technology and support. But the competition for those positions will be fierce. If you refuse to look at the position that’s 30 miles away in the underpaid district with teachers moving carts between remodeled closets, you may be refusing to look at the position that offers you your best chance to begin teaching.

I understand the desire to hold out for the best possibility. But I am writing these posts for would-be teachers who missed the first hiring wave in the spring. Do you want to chance missing the year? You can move on once you have experience — a move that will be much easier if you take a position for the upcoming year. My first bilingual middle-school position was 34 miles from home, and my drive took 55 minutes in the morning darkness and sometimes over two hours in the afternoon congestion, stoplight by stoplight, by stoplight. I snaked my way along county roads in an area with no expressways. The following year I cut that commute in half, zipping to work at 70 MPH for much of the drive. You are signing on for 190-some days of teaching, not life.

For the most part, I recommend applying for the outlying and less prestigious positions. You can let a year or two slip by if nothing you want becomes available but that teaching certificate gets dustier while graduates keep streaming out of colleges and universities each June. Once you start teaching, you can apply for other positions later, joining that favored pool of applicants, slightly-experienced-teachers-looking-to-better-themselves-who-can-probably-manage-a-classroom. You might also find your 30 mile commute takes you to a place you love.

For many newly minted teachers, spring’s charms are overshadowed by a grueling job search, a seemingly endless effort filled with transcripts, other documentation, essays, and recommendations. I still remember one “recommendation” who cost me a job and the principal who kindly warned me about her. I had liked my interview with that Principal who sounded stunned and hesitant as he flagged me to the treachery. He was calling references, too — I had that job and lost it in a phone call.

I never knew what to think about that particular act of backstabbing. My reference had volunteered. We had a solid, working relationship. Yes, she had once seemed angry at how well my children were doing in school compared to her own child, which struck me as an odd response, but I’d never tried to raise an autistic child either. I promise readers I don’t boast about my kids, and after that I’d avoided the topic of how my girls were doing. Odd. That’s all I can say. Extremely odd.

But I found positions every time I looked and once when I was not looking. I have a few advantages. I enjoy interviews. I speak Spanish fluently. I’m certified or endorsed in the whole middle school curriculum, as well as French, Spanish, high school mathematics and business. I can somehow justify wanting to leave yet another position because I’d rather teach … high school Spanish, middle school bilingual language arts, high school bilingual mathematics, whatever. I have a Master’s degree with a concentration in marketing, and I always found it fun to explain why District X had the perfect (Your-Position-Here) opportunity for me. Now that I’m retired, I can no longer pursue teaching employment in Illinois without taking a massive pension hit, but I suspect the odds are good I could sell myself to a district in southern Wisconsin if I chose to take on full-time employment again.

I don’t want to sound too full of myself. Like I say, I floated a recommendation out there one year from someone who was actively sabotaging me. I’ve also had interviews that did not work, principals or other administrators with whom I simply could not connect. One or two I even disliked enough so that I was relieved when their position faded into the mist.

For those looking for a teaching position, I want to offer hope and a little advice.

Let’s start with the fact it’s almost June and nothing has come through yet. Don’t panic!Spring hiring has ended but a fierce wave of July and August hiring is about to come up.

Many teachers will not leave their positions or reveal that they are leaving until mid-summer. Sometimes those teachers are trying to decide between District A and District B. They may not entirely trust District B and may wait until all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed on the paperwork for their new position. Potential retirees may be wondering if they want to work another year. Teachers may be concerned that resignation will affect their benefits. Even if none of these factors are in play, letting go of a sure position can feel stressful enough that teachers will delay submitting their resignation letter until the last possible moment.

More positions will be entering the pipeline soon. If you want to teach, you should try to be furiously online in the near future. A few more pieces of advice for today:

1. Believe in yourself. Those last interviews did not produce a position? Maybe you were second or third best, but one candidate had a few years (more) experience. Keep going. Every teacher out there had to land that first job and not everyone lucked into their first position quickly.
2. Spend up for the clothes you need if you have not done so already. Clothes may matter. Some principals are oblivious, but others have handkerchiefs that match their ties, the handkerchiefs folded neatly and poking out of suit pockets. You won’t lose the job for being slightly overdressed — nervous first timers can expect to get a break here — but you can lose the job by being underdressed if you encounter matching-tie-and-handkerchief or Gucci-pumps Principal.
3. Do you struggle in interviews? Find a list of the common interview questions and practice with a friend. Practice any question that threw you in a previous interview. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know something, a much better strategy than failing to fake your way through an answer.
4. Be sure to emphasize your commitment to lifelong learning and professional development. (Try to avoid clichés like “lifelong learning” 🙂 as you do this.) This part of the interview might be the right jump-off point to find out about mentoring programs offered by a district. You should also check into district reimbursement for further education. Some districts do not offer reimbursement, but others will pay for most or all of that special education or bilingual endorsement you wish to add. In the event you get multiple offers, tuition reimbursement can add hundreds or even thousands to a district’s annual salary, depending on how ambitious you are.*
5. Sign up for a summer class if you can still do so. Phrases like, “We discussed that problem in my Spanish for Educators class last week” help solidify that impression you are going to work diligently to perfect your teaching skills once hired. If nothing else, listen to a few webinars and take notes so that you can refer to your independent online learning efforts.
6. Get transcripts. Having sealed transcripts handy will simplify life. Order a few extras too. In August, transcript requirements can even delay hiring. Some districts will insist you prove your credentials before they make you official. You might even carry transcripts with you, especially if you are a strong student. I have gotten two offers right after interviews.
7. If you know you made a good connection with an interviewer, but did not get the position — call that person. Ask if they could spare you a few minutes to help with your search. Ask how you might improve your interview skills/answers. What could you do better? What credentials might help? Did they check with references? (You can guess how this question got here!) Was there information about you that the district wanted that references could not provide? I’d end by leaving my number in case another opening came up in the near future. Someone else may have gotten the offer — but that someone else could be getting another offer while you are on the phone. The position might reopen tomorrow. 
8. Always send timely thank-you emails with contact information. If your interviewer had a silk handkerchief sticking out of a pocket or Gucci pumps, consider sending a physical thank-you note.

*A small note on classes and tuition reimbursement: Be careful not to take too many classes until you know how much work your new position will be. Teaching can honestly be a 100-plus-hour week for starting high school Spanish teachers, for example. The grading alone has the potential to suck up “free” hours like a category 5 cyclone. Learning to manage time was my biggest challenge when I started. Technology has improved the picture, with programs that track progress, but access to that technology varies greatly between districts.

Eduhonesty: That’s enough for now, I guess. I’ll brainstorm and pick this up again in a few days. I know that many of you don’t need most or all of this advice, but maybe I can help a few newbies as they navigate their interviews.

Good luck and keep believing in yourself!

Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Noah leaps out of his seat. He throws his IEP-approved fidget spinner at Karl and fortunately misses. The classroom aide is absent — and will be for the rest of the year. This aide has been out for foot surgery and if anyone looked for a replacement, Noah’s one special education teacher never heard about that search. Noah’s in a financially-distressed district and his teacher is pleading with me to continue subbing in her classroom. But that plan won’t work anyway. The school’s principal (a great guy, actually) has a bad habit of redeploying subs. If a second or third grade teacher is absent, I will end up running those classrooms while Noah’s teacher manages without help for Day number 32, 45, or whatever. For that matter, the district itself will redeploy subs in an emergency. I am subbing today in a poor district that scores in the bottom few percent of its state, a district prone to that government category, “widespread disorder in classrooms.” In the past, I have been moved midmorning to schools across town. As a retired, certified teacher, I am wasted as a special education aide when a school needs multiple classroom teachers, and every so often, someone notices that fact in the midst of frantic phone calls from school offices to human resources.

That job Noah’s teacher wants me to take as her aide? I don’t know where they are posting that opening, but it’s hardly ever listed in the app I use to choose sub positions. I frankly don’t think the administration is even trying to put out the missing-aide fire. Missing teachers trump missing aides and a district that frequently cannot fill teaching positions, especially in the middle school, has to let those aide slots go.

I grab the spinner and shove it in a pocket. I sit down in a desk beside Noah to talk. He wants his spinner back. He insists. It’s his right! He needs it! One advantage of being retired and subbing in a desperate district: I don’t have to worry about giving this spinner back. Noah can complain to the Principal — as he threatens to do — if he chooses. The Principal is a sensible guy. And I for damn sure don’t need this district as much as this district needs me.

Noah has lost his fidget spinner privilege, I explain, because he threw the spinner. He protests that he did not intend to hit anyone. I observe that he came pretty close to Karl. An accident, he claims. I tell him that he must learn to make better choices. I ask him to tell me what he ought to have done instead of throwing the spinner.

It’s 8:52 A.M. I expect to have a long day.

Eduhonesty: I have heard people say that changing how America funds schools will not rescue “failing” schools, that more money will not fix the problems of inner city and other struggling students. I agree that money is no cure-all for the many challenges in American education. But I also know that if I were working about 12 miles to the Southwest, instead of one teacher trying to teach six kids with documented behavioral and other learning challenges, six kids maybe five years apart in academic understanding, I would instead be one of six aides helping six kids under a lucky classroom teacher who would never have to worry about widespread disorder in her classroom. With that many eyes watching students, Noah’s fidget spinner would most likely not have gotten off the desk, much less into the air. For one thing, “his” aide would have been working with Noah as soon as the day started. Noah would not have been left on his own.

Those one-on-one aides for kids with documented behavioral disorders cost money, often $40,000 apiece or more by the time benefits are added to the picture. Wealthy districts can budget those funds based on a fear of flying fidget spinners and other dangerous behaviors. Impoverished districts are left to triage. What would have to be sacrificed to add that aide? Are the new laptops more important? Can we get by with one aide for three kids? Six kids? Eight kids? Can we put Noah in a regular classroom and skip the aide? Maybe regular appointments with the counselor and social worker will be enough…

The effects of this cost-cutting are not merely felt by Noah and his teachers. Fortunately, Karl was facing the other direction and did not see the fidget spinner’s release. If he had, Karl would be edgy at least, probably in fight or flight mode in a district where “flight” is mostly not considered an option. But Karl seems oblivious as he starts work. A random fidget spinner hit the wall far enough from him so that he could care less. The world has calmed down. Noah is smiling at me, a goofy, happy grin. He knows he became my focus and that’s most likely what he wanted. He shows me the picture of a superhero he is drawing. I praise the cape and redirect him towards the day’s first objective.

The hell money does not matter. What would be happening here today if there were no aide? That one teacher does need help in this room, but she will not have a regular aide until next year — if then. Noah needs help, too. Today he got lucky and an aide turned up, an aide who could appreciate him even while setting much-needed limits. From his teacher’s desperate pleading with me, I know that tomorrow he is unlikely to be so lucky.

P.S. I never got to Stranger Things in this post. Posts sometimes simply unfurl. But Noah loves Stranger Things. Want to be able to talk to a struggling middle school kid? Watch this new Netflix series when you get the chance. It’s sci fic/horror so not everyone will want to take the Stranger Things ride, but being able to discuss Mike, Eleven and Sheriff Hopper can establish your bona fides as an adult worthy of a middle-school student’s time.

You want to get a laugh when a student is testing you? Try saying,

“No Demogorgon behavior in my classroom, young man! This is not the Upside Down!”

You might then pause and add, “Not most of the time, anyway.”

I sent my eldest to grab some hair ties for me at Target. She came back with about 40 of them, all black. I’d have chosen differently, but so what? I simply said thank you. I now have an abundance of plain, black hair ties. They work fine. When the stakes are low enough, unexpected or even wacky choices don’t matter. As the stakes go up, though, choices should receive consideration and scrutiny after the fact. I’d suggest that where educational policy is concerned, choices should even carry with them evaluation periods and pilot programs.

Learning standards. The words sound so simple, so innocuous — the Common Core Learning Standards. Our shift to the Common Core standards has been sucking up enormous amounts of time and money — and will continue to do so. Shifting away from those sometimes unfortunate standards will require even more time and money.  New standards require many meetings and professional developments to teach to educators, as well as new lesson plans, new lesson sequences, and often new books and software.

“Bad news for supporters of national education curriculum: States with education standards most closely aligned to Common Core fared worse on math tests than states with their own standards, according to a new study.” http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/18/common-core-gets-awful-review-in-new-study/The study, conducted by the Brookings Institution, compared standardized test scores for all 50 states over the last five years. It found that states using education standards that are most dissimilar to Common Core tended to score the highest on math.

Check out http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373840/ten-dumbest-common-core-problems-alec-torres for a little graveyard humor on the Common Core standards.

[1] I don’t know whether to hope the Common Core survives this administration or not. The Core has serious flaws in my view, especially in its non-research-based expectations for students in earlier grades and lack of planning for alternative high school programs beyond the one goal of college, college, college. But rewriting all those standards and making everyone drop everything to learn another new set of standards… Again! …Aaghh. We would probably minimize our pain by fixing the Core, rather than creating yet more standards. The whole situation reminds me of a North Shore remodeling run amuck, where a too-wealthy, too-bored trophy wife keeps changing her mind about floors, fabrics, paints and lighting until nothing works and nobody knows what to expect. We don’t need to create the perfect standards as much as we need to find a good set of robust, adaptable standards that we can and will stick with – allowing for much needed continuity of instruction. The Core has played hell with that continuity, incidentally. That’s a major part of the reason my students were drowning that last year.

I don’t know whether to hope Trump succeeds in scuttling the Core.

Changing learning standards should never be taken lightly.

The Common Core has shifted the emphasis in reading toward nonfiction. I will not take issue with the Core’s new emphasis, except to say that districts must be careful not to leap too exclusively onto that expository bandwagon. Our critical thinking requires access to words and many words simply never make their way into nonfiction literature. Others pop up only rarely.

“And the ring had fit him very well. Yet, now it spun round, loose and wobbling. His appetite had been poor, of late. The wooden platter of bread still sat. Drying out, untouched. The cheese looked crusted. Almost brittle.

 Was that a mouse he had seen, scuttling away?”

In nonfiction, no one scuttles. Few things wobble. And the cheese hardly ever becomes untouched, crusted and almost brittle.

Eduhonesty: Too many standards may suck the poetry out of English and language arts classes. Real-life events supplant imagination. Diaphanous images are replaced with concrete instructions. What words are perishing, as standards shove our souls into chutes, forcing us to crawl in serpentine fashion toward this new, more-prosaic world?

Districts start with a set of standards, most lately the Common Core. District leaders then craft a curriculum based on those standards. They require teachers to teach the full curriculum — often at exactly the same pace with the same materials — because the new standards-based curriculum includes all the items expected to be on the annual state test.

Pity the kids in this scenario who are not functioning at grade level.

Simply, when a fully fleshed-out curriculum becomes obligatory, the absence of time for remedial instruction can become a crucial barrier to learning. No substitute exists for remediation time, but pre-established demands can squeeze out that remediation time. When a standard eats all the minutes available for the week’s instruction, those kids who have fallen behind will have made no progress catching up.

Before-school, lunch and after-school tutoring seldom solve the problem. A few extra hours of help per week will not catch up a student who has fallen years behind classmates. Older students often tend to avoid tutoring, too. It’s embarrassing for a middle-school student to admit he or she can’t read. Sometimes students can’t come early or stay late for family reasons. Maybe they have to babysit. Or they have to take the bus because no one can drop them off or pick them up.

Rigid curricula resulting from the standards-based movement have been a disaster for many kids, especially our most academically-challenged kids.

Eduhonesty: The above is a picture of an obligatory, standards-based test given to a student who should never have seen that particular test. 

Government officials measure. They measure their measurements against past measurements. No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) data-based approach always had more in common with tax accounting than education, and beleaguered teachers could only watch while NCLB led to education-by-spreadsheet, spreadsheets of test scores having become defining measures of school quality. Unfortunately, while NCLB itself has technically exited the scene — leaving little or no progress behind — that measuring goes on. State departments of education hired so many people to measure, record measurements, and assess measurements that the measuring probably cannot stop without massive layoffs in government education departments throughout the nation.

In the meantime, educational administrators in “underscoring” districts do not and frequently cannot take a long-term view of the educational process. These administrators and sometimes teachers may be anxiously trying to hold on to jobs that depend on showing elevated test scores. Our understandable, but too-often frantic, efforts to push up math and English scores at all costs are natural consequences.

In the meantime, the faces behind America’s test numbers go unseen and unrecognized. Has a district doubled its English-language learner population? Have funding losses led to increased class sizes as teachers and paraprofessionals were laid off? Has a district been forced to cut back on tutoring and other interventions because of funding or staff losses? Those numbers may not get counted, yet those numbers are crucial to understanding what is happening.

One difference that passes mostly unnoticed between wealthier and financially-disadvantaged districts can be seen in the number of qualified paraprofessionals in a district. A shortage of English or math teachers will be noticed, but a shortage of paraprofessionals seldom hits the radar. In District A, one paraprofessional may be working with six disabled children, while in District B, each of six lucky children have the good fortune to receive their own aides.  That one fact has the potential to hugely skew test scores from school to school, but will not be factored into comparisons of final test scores.

The socioeconomic status, early educational experiences, rate of vocabulary acquisition, and family situations of America’s many students form a patchwork mosaic of readiness for school and learning. Our picture has only become more complex as this country continues to diversify. We ought to at least acknowledge the power of finances, family and language background.

Yet only final test scores will be counted by state and federal government educational accountants.

I actually got this as a sub plan. This is not a sub plan. The kindergarteners and I had a fine time but … 

You had to be there. The Principal led me to the classroom, looked around for nonexistent plans for a few seconds, saw some worksheets on desks, and said, “You can do these.” Then he quickly walked away, leaving me with no idea where my still nonexistent students happened to be located. I ran down a few fellow kindergarten teachers to tell me where to find my minions and leapt into action.

I guess this column is about what to do when you are on your own:

1. Find fellow teachers of your subject or grade. Tell them the nature of your crisis. I’ve never had anyone refuse to help.
2. Ask younger kids for help. Have them tell you their routine.
3. Tell the kids that you may have to do things a little differently than their teacher. Especially if “calendar” requires software you cannot access, you are going to have to think on your feet.
4. It’s best to stick to the routine if it’s working, but bail if it’s not working. Is “read aloud” going badly? Too many minions who are not sitting criss-cross applesauce? That regular teacher has routines and reinforcement strategies. Maybe she is using clothespins and red or green lights. Maybe the kids get strikes. You can try clothespins and strikes. You should remove disruptive elements from the crowd and sit them in less problematic places. But all those strategies tend to work more seamlessly for the man or woman the kids actually know. So if you keep having to dive out of the story for behavior management, go to Plan B. Make it individual silent reading time in our seats instead. Or make it math time. Sing a math song. Teach the kids a math song.
5. Learn a few useful songs if you sing. Singing can bridge some challenging gaps in plan and in behavior. Young kids mostly love to sing.
6. I know a read-aloud strategy that tends to work for me. If you can adapt books on the fly, you can usually hold onto your audience. The kids probably all know the most popular books in their class. But once you add in the aliens in their tall, brown, chocolate spaceship and describe their landing in Whoville, everybody will be listening.
7. With older kids, start with the standards on the board nearby if you have them. Start with fellow teachers. If you are lucky, you will have a few minutes before the madness begins. Don’t be afraid to ask the office to make you a bunch of copies of the worksheets the other seventh grade math teacher was planning to use. Assuming your classes are somewhat in sync, well, you have to hand out something.
8. Move fast. You hope to find the lesson plans that accidentally got hidden under a stack of papers. If those plans somehow don’t exist, you must find that teacher on the team who is teaching what you should be teaching. Especially if you are shaky on the subject you expect to teach, you will need written work for reinforcement that will prevent wasting even a small chunk of your students’ school year.
9. If you end up absolutely up the creek, with no help from admin and no other teachers teaching your subject, teach anyway. I usually go to economics, student loans, the latte effect and other useful money matters. That tends to hold the attention of older students, who need to know how student loans work anyway. I find it’s a lot less stressful to share useful knowledge than to let a bunch of adolescents loose without any firm plan or expectations. With younger kids, I work on literacy.

From the Blue Room: Good luck and have a great week!