Teacher 0, Sleeper 1

I had to persistently work on keeping one of my students awake in yesterday’s first hour. Every time I’d get him to sit up, he’d have his head back on the desk in moments.

He sat in the exact same place in the room as did a student in my first-hour class years ago when I student taught. And he was doing the same activity as that student.

Every morning, that student from long ago would come in and immediately drop his head to the desk and instantly fall asleep. I was greatly annoyed by this behavior. It set a very bad example for other students and, truthfully, it was very discouraging to me.

Finally, I requested advice from the other teachers. They told me to stand next to him and drop the largest book I could find.

I located the biggest teacher’s edition the classroom had and set it on the corner of my desk. I was primed to give him a big wake-up call. My mind lingered on the delicious sight of him jumping several inches out of his chair, perhaps even to the point of carrying his desk with him. Oh, it was a glorious picture. Teacher 1, Sleeper 0.

The next morning, the student came in and actually stayed awake. He sat up in his desk and participated in class. Any other day, I would have been delighted. But on this day, my reaction was more like “Darn!”

My student teaching time was nearly up and I never had the opportunity to drop the book again. What an anticlimax. My lovely picture burst just like a soap bubble.

Teacher 0, Sleeper 1. Sort of.

Survival of the '70s

A few days ago, some of my students came to class in Kiss and Led Zeppelin T-shirts. I could not believe my eyes. Another one showed up Wednesday wearing an Alice Cooper T-shirt.

Kiss? Led Zeppelin? Alice Cooper?

I was never much for metal, but my friend Cathy was a big metalhead, as were my best friend Jean’s brothers. Kiss and Led Zeppelin were high on their list of favorites, although they never cracked mine. Metal was never my choice of music. “Beth” was the only Kiss song I ever liked. Alice Cooper grossed out all my friends.

I can’t imagine wearing Pat Boone T-shirts when I was a high school kid. Maybe an Elvis shirt, but nothing else from any time period other than the 1970s. Those oldies were total has beens.

Recently I heard a music professor on the radio. He said that music stopped improving in 1974, that nothing good had been published since then. That position is a bit extreme for me. I like/d disco. I thought it was fun music and I still do.

I enjoyed a lot of the ’80s music as well, but, looking back, it had a sameness to it that ’70s music didn’t have. Hubby heard a program several years ago where the DJ played numerous ’80s tunes to the same beat. And they all fit.

’90s music and the new stuff the students play today seem like a vast wasteland. Is there nothing original?

The appearance of classic metal bands seems to validate my opinion.

Rockin' Robin

“Rockin’ Robin” was a golden oldie when I was in high school oh, so many years ago.

Friday morning I taught junior high vocal music. I popped in a performance CD of “Rockin’ Robin” and my mind went back to my high school days.

We didn’t sing “Rockin’ Robin” in choir, but the pep band often played it at games. In those not-so-far-off days, we had no CD player. Eight-track tapes, then cassette tapes, were in vogue when I sat where those kids were sitting. I don’t think we’d ever heard of performance tracks in those days.

How technology has changed.

Unlike technology, great music never dies.

A girl named Robin with flaming red hair was in the class ahead of me. As the students sang “Rockin’ Robin”, I could see her in my mind’s eye. When our band would play “Rockin’ Robin”, she’d get up and dance. She was our personal “Rockin’ Robin” and did she ever rock.

“Go, ‘Rockin’ Robin’, ‘cause we’re really gonna rock tonight!”

One more sign that I'm not as young as I used to be

One of my students held up a Razr phone yesterday. She asked me, “Can you hear this?”

“No.”

She tried again. I still couldn’t hear her phone.

Another student asked, “Is that why you have your phone set to that awful high-pitched tone?”

“Yes, people over 25 can’t hear it.“

He said, “Mrs. V can hear it and she’s definitely over 25. But then, she can hear everything. You’d better not say anything in her classroom that you don’t want her to hear.”

Is that “teacher’s hearing?” If so, I definitely could use it.

The candle burned up my homework

Thursday I was an English teacher. One of the students was not journaling. When reprimanded, he said, “I don’t have a pencil.”

I said, “That is a lame excuse! You need to become more creative.”

Suddenly, my mind was back in my eighth-grade English class.

When we were seventh graders, Mrs. Redman had told us that she’d been teaching for over 30 years and was just a couple years from retirement.

“If you can give me an original excuse for not finishing your homework, I’ll give you an A for the day. But if you give me one I have not heard before, you’ll receive an F.”

We tried a few times to get by with excuses, but never found one she had not already heard.

In our eighth-grade year, we had a very bad snowstorm that knocked out power for a week, even for those of us who lived in town. Those who lived on farms were without power even longer.

When school resumed, Andy said that he hadn’t finished his homework because “I was working on it with a candle. The candle fell over and burned it up!”

Mrs. Redman burst out laughing. “I’ve never heard that one before! You get an A for the day.”

He said, “Can I get two A’s for the day? I really did my homework and was just joking.”

He got the second A.

Command presence

When I was in college, many of my friends belonged to ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps). They tried to recruit me, but camping out in snowstorms just was not very appealing. After I broke my foot and had to have it screwed together, they stopped recruiting me. Ground pounding on a damaged foot wasn’t a good idea.

However, I am very much interested in history, especially military history, and was always eager to hear what they had to say.

They talked often about how to induce people to obey. An officer must have a command presence, they said, a confidence in their ability to direct those subordinate to them.

At nearly 5’11”, I have a presence, but I usually find effacing that presence to be useful. Being taller and bigger than nearly every woman I meet, along with many men, tends to be threatening.

But there are times I can hear my ROTC friends in my ear: “Take charge! Stand tall. Snap your voice. Believe in your ability to command obedience.”

I’m not fond of portraying a cop and enforcing rules. But I’m a substitute teacher. At times, command presence is required. That or turn into a doormat for chaos.

Today was one such day. I told the class politely twice to be quiet. I wasted my breath. Finally, I swung around in my chair and loudly dropped my hard-soled shoes.

I marched to the front of the room and snapped, “I am not in a mood to tolerate this! You will be quiet starting now!”

The students’ eyes goggled. The paraprofessional’s eyes goggled. And we had quiet. Blessed, blissful quiet.

Thanks, ROTC guys!

KO'd in badminton

In front of Kansas City’s shuttlecock sculpture in 2004, about as close as I’ve ever gotten to badminton since I stopped taking PE.

I started substitute teaching again this week.

Thursday I was a PE teacher. I hated PE throughout school. I was almost always the slowest, clumsiest student and nearly always the last one chosen for any game requiring physical skill. Math was not my strong suit academically, but at least academic issues could often be hidden. Failures in PE were public. Very public.

I could empathize with those students who hung back and did not want to participate. I certainly didn’t when I was in their shoes.

As they attempted to play tennis, I thought of an incident during my school years.

My best friend Jean had about the same physical skill level that I did. We were usually partners for friendship’s sake, but also because we didn’t embarrass each other with our lack of athletic prowess.

We paired as a doubles team during a badminton unit and actually did reasonably well, climbing to the middle of our class tournament’s chart. I usually played in the forecourt while she took the back court.

Did I mention that I’m accident prone, that things happen to me?

During one match, a high serve came over the net. I leaped to make an overhead smash. When I connected on these (a hit-or-miss proposition), I usually scored. This time, Jean had much the same idea. I didn’t usually call for the shot because I was never sure I’d actually hit it.

Well, I did hit it. And she hit me right below the crown of my head. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with my partner and the teacher standing over me.

I have never met anyone else who was KO’d by a badminton racket.

'Tartuffe' and 'The Full Monty'

For some reason, I thought of my college friend Lynn the other day. Every time I think of her, I remember the theater appreciation class we took together. The professor was a prim, stuffy old maid. Most class periods we saw videos of whatever play we were studying. Prof sat in the front row to deal with any technical difficulties.

One day, we watched “Tartuffe”. Actually, we heard all of it, but only saw part of it.

At some point in the play, a naked man appeared on screen. Immediately, Prof leaped up with a sheet of paper to cover his nakedness. She peered over the top of the paper to see when he would go away. He was on stage for some time. She would become engrossed in the video and the paper would slip downward, exposing the naked man.

“Ooh, ooh,” she said. “Oh, that’s disgusting! Why doesn’t he put on some clothes!”

When she would realize that she was no longer covering the nakedness, she would jump and jerk the paper upwards.

We were nearly rolling in the aisles, except that we couldn’t laugh outwardly. We knew that laughing out loud would break the spell, so we choked on it. Tears were streaming down our faces from the effort of suppressing belly laughs. Thankfully, all the lights were off so she couldn’t see our faces.

When play finally ended, she took some time flipping on the lights. Perhaps she wanted to cover her reactions to seeing a man’s full monty. Fortunately for us, her delay gave us time to wipe away the tears and compose our expressions.

“Well,” Prof sniffed, “I’ve never seen such a disgraceful exhibition as that!”

Every student in the class went rigid with the effort of controlling laughter once again.

Once class was dismissed, we rushed away from the classroom and all dissolved into helpless laughter. Nearly everyone reported aching sides the next day, the result of holding in guffaws.

I remember nothing about that class except for the naked man in “Tartuffe”. So much for appreciating theater.

I’ll bet Prof never showed a film again without previewing it.

Mr. Romero's lab coat

When I was in high school, I borrowed the chemistry/physics teacher's lab coat. I was set to play a mad scientist in a haunted house.

When I asked him to borrow the coat, I told him what we were doing and that I wanted to look as authentic as I could. We intended to spatter blood and guts around and I knew that I'd get spattered, too.

He said that he didn't mind getting his coat dirty, that a blood-spattered coat might make him more intimidating to unruly students.

My best friend played Igor. Another friend was my poor tortured patient. Patient screamed and thrashed around very convincingly, spattering me. Igor limped around with one shoulder higher than another, throwing blood and guts around freely. I was pretty convincing myself, speaking in a voice so deep, gravelly and frightening that I've never been able to use it again. From that night on, talking in that voice has sent me into coughing fits.



We put on a great show. We enjoyed the gasps and shrieks our onlookers produced. When the night ended, we howled with laughter as we discussed our reception.

Then I looked at Mr. Romero's previously immaculate coat. Caught up in the moment, we didn't notice how bad it had gotten. Jackson Pollock couldn't have done a better job of covering a canvas with paint. Think Joseph's Coat of Many Colors after his brothers had dipped it in blood. All laughter ceased as we contemplated what Mr. Romero would say and do to us.

When I took it back to him the next Monday, he turned as white as the coat had been. Long pause. "Are you SURE this is my coat?" he asked.

"Um, yes."

Long pause.

"Well, if I tell next year's freshmen that I've dissolved unruly students in a chemical bath, they'll believe me!"

Here's how to get a Mad Scientist's Union lab coat. I'm neither endorsing nor getting paid for this. The art was just too good to pass up and I can assuage my conscience by giving them the credit.

Bleach and ammonia

I've never taken a chemistry class, but here I am as the substitute. Duty calls!

I've always appreciated variety in my work. Substituting is definitely varied. The short notice doesn't tend to bother me, either. This is an adventure.

Before I left home this morning, Hubby suggested that I show the students how to mix bleach and ammonia. He tried that a few years ago when he was working as a maintenance man, even though he knew better. After all, he took chemistry in both high school and college.

I said, "What are you trying to get me to do? Make a bomb?"

"Don't you want some excitement in your life?"

"I had enough excitement when I found out that you'd done that a few years ago!"


Hubby said that he had been lucky to avoid chemical burns. "As soon as I poured them together, I had a volcano. They just shot up."

I said, "Didn't you read the directions?"

"Well, no. I had completely forgotten that ammonia and bleach are so volatile. And I'd also forgotten that they produce poisonous gas."

He had to flee the building. When he returned, the item was very clean.

"Hey, it worked!"

"Yes, but at what potential cost?"

NOTE: The bleach bottle image points up the need for recycling. Amazing how our garbage lasts forever.

Carbon paper and typewriter erasers

I stood in for Ms. Math Teacher today, getting called in at the last minute. School starts at 7:50. I got the call at 7:15. I had been up since 5:30, but hadn't showered or eaten breakfast yet. Yep, I never know what I'm going to get.

She told me to show an episode of the TV show "Numb3rs", but we couldn't get it to work. iTunes insisted on a password that did not exist. Technology is wonderful, but only when it works!

Instead of watching a great TV show, I had study hall all day. Actual teaching was out of the question. I'm not at all qualified to teach math! As I told one student, "Math and I are not friends."

During one "class", a paraprofessional and I started discussing my previous post about technological changes in the classroom.

"Do you remember carbon paper?" she asked.

(It's the blue sheet in this picture. The artist has drawn or traced the image on the top sheet. The pen pressure transferred the ink on the carbon paper to the bottom sheet.)

"I hoarded every piece I got," I said. Carbon paper was relatively expensive and didn't last long.

When I was in high school and early in my college days, carbon paper was the main way to make copies of one's work. It was messy and inconvenient. Mistakes could be erased on the original, but they would still appear on the carbon copy as strikeovers. And if the carbon got too worn, pieces of the original would be missing.

Since the machines had no memory, mistakes could not simply be deleted and redone. Enter the typewriter eraser.

In theory, the typist could use the rubber wheel to erase the mistake and the brush to sweep away any crumbs of eraser material. My eraser hated me. It didn't erase the mistake; it erased the paper! Holey documents just don't tend to be acceptable.

Correction fluid (like Wite-Out or Liquid Paper) was also a mistake-covering option, but it had grave disadvantages as well. Theoretically, white correction fluid matched white paper. But white to one paper manufacturer isn't white to another. And the typist had to wait for the fluid to dry. If she got in a hurry, the ink from the typewriter ribbon would smear.

The fluid often began to dry out before the bottle was empty. Correction fluid that was laid on too thickly made an unsightly bump on the paper. So typists had to keep bottles of thinner on hand. To use the thinner, the typist put her thumb over the top of a pipette and remove it from the thinner bottle. Then she injected it into the opening of the fluid bottle and removed her thumb. Thinner theoretically flowed into the correction fluid and a few shakes would make the fluid reuseable. Note that I said "theoretically". Sometimes the thinner worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I had thinner on my desk instead of in the fluid bottle.

When erasable typing paper appeared on the market, I bought it. That paper was more expensive than regular typing paper, but the lack of aggravation was worth every penny. No more typewriter eraser, no more correction fluid. An ordinary eraser took care of typographical errors. Typos be gone! That paper had one drawback, though. Type tended to smear if handled immediately, but that was a minor issue compared to the alternative.

I was so delighted when memory typewriters appeared on the market and overjoyed when I finally got a computer that could erase mistakes before they ever ruined a piece of paper.

But more about that later.

New technology = distractions

Classrooms have certainly changed since I went to high school and even since I student taught.

I graduated in 1980. The school building housed not one computer. We learned to type on IBM Selectric typewriters. The roar of those motors and the chatter of the keys was audible well away from that classroom. We watched movies on reels.

I was ahead of my time. During study halls, I hid a tape recorder in a large notebook and ran an earpiece from it up my coat sleeve into my ear. The sound quality was horrible, but it was music!



I student taught at my alma mater in 1993, the final step before earning my second bachelor's degree. The typewriters had been replaced by computers. The first time I walked past the typing classroom, now the keyboarding room, I was shocked how quiet it was. Instead of that roar, only a light clicking sound came out of a classroom full of computers. I showed movies on a VCR. I once confiscated a Walkman. We'd seen cell phones on "Hart to Hart", but no one I knew had one.

Students passing notes were the main classroom distractions at both times.

This morning, my class went to an online German teaching site, Hennings' Haus. Typewriters were loud, but I never had found their sound to be annoying. One of the educational games on this web site featured a man searching for various destinations. His shoes squeaked on every step he took. Fingernails on the chalkboard, especially after 4 hours of it.

I circled the room continually looking for students who had sneaked over to YouTube. I wrote up half of one class for "YouTubing" and I probably missed more of them.

Friday I confiscated my first cell phone. I nearly confiscated a BlackBerry today.

All these toys distract both the students and the teacher.

Technology definitely has its downsides, but I still wouldn't want to be without it.

Life is like a box of chocolates

As a substitute teacher, I truly never know what I'm going to get in a day's work. Yesterday, I was scheduled to teach German in the morning, then be done for the rest of the day.

When I turned in my key after teaching German, the secretary asked me if I could fill in for an English teacher. Her father had fallen ill and needed to be taken to The Big City for treatment. So I taught English in the afternoon.

Teaching certainly does test my memory. I took two years of German in high school and a semester of it in college, but that was nearly 30 years ago. Fortunately, Frau Deutschelehrerin has me show videos, "Anna, Schmidt und Oskar" when I take her place. Wikipedia says that "A, S & O" is the German equivalent of "Sesame Street" in the US.

They are the cheesiest videos imaginable and I cannot get their tune out of my brain!

"Ich heise Anna. Ich heise Schmidt. Der Hund ist Oskar!" [I am called Anna. I am called Schmidt. The dog is Oskar.]

Anna is a teenage girl who befriends her neighbor, the 70ish Herr Schmidt. Schmidt adopts the stray dog Oskar in the first video. Schmidt possesses some magical abilities, but doesn't always use them. He broke his chair and ruined his sweater in one episode yesterday and had to go buy replacements. In the next, he lost his glasses.

This man had enough magic to repair a junker Volkswagen in an earlier episode, but he can't fix his chair and sweater and he can't find his glasses.

Makes no sense to me.

After each episode, I go through some questions about the episodes with the students. I am surprised how many of these words I remember. I learned a new one yesterday, "lecker", meaning "delicious".



In English, I had to lead discussions about "Lord of the Flies" in one class, then "The Great Gatsby" in another. I remembered "Lord of the Flies" rather well, probably because I was fascinated by the boys' quick loss of all civilized veneer. We read "The Great Gatsby" in high school, too, but I mostly remember being frustrated by that book. I just hated the shallow characters and wanted to learn nothing about them.



I crammed with the Cliff Notes Mrs. English Teacher had left on her desk and hurriedly read the chapters, but I'm not sure how much real teaching I did.

At least I wasn't trying to teach math. Now that would be hopeless.