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Shelia Gray was sitting in the
peaceful morning, writing in her journal, listening to the birds
singing, and pausing periodically to watch the shifts in the morning
light as it streamed in her living room windows. The phone rang.
At this early hour, it must be either her husband calling with some
quick communication he neglected before he rushed to work this
morning, or the school calling to ask her to substitute teach. More
than likely, it was the school.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Gray?”
“Yes?”
“This is Frances from the school. We
were wondering if you could substitute for the Kindergarten class
today.”
Shelia thought to herself for a split
second, okay this is it; it’s time to try subbing for the little
ones; besides, I won’t get a paycheck for two months if I don’t take
this assignment today. She had been so busy with her graduate work,
she hadn’t accepted previous offers to work; the school only paid
once a month and they were a month behind. That kind of pay
schedule made budgeting tough, but at least she was earning a
paycheck here and there.
“Sure, I’d be willing to do that, but
I must tell you, I don’t have any experience with little kids. I’m
not a certified teacher or anything.”
“That’s fine, the teacher will leave
you notes and Mrs. Garza, across the hall, can answer any
questions.”
“Okay, what time do you start, eight
o’clock?” Eight o’clock was when the high school started. So far,
Shelia had only substituted for the high school.
“Yes, can you manage that?”
The school was only minutes away but
it was already 7:30 and she hadn’t showered yet. “I may be about 10
minutes past eight.”
“That’s fine. We’ll see you then.”
“Do I just go to the office and check
in first?”
“Yes, you’ll sign in at the office and
we’ll set you up from there. See you in a bit. Thank you.”
“Okay. See you in a bit. Good-bye”
Shelia hung up the phone, mumbling to
herself that she hoped she made the right decision, as she moved
quickly towards the shower. Then she confirmed to herself that she
would never know if she didn’t try this at least once.
She
arrived at the Elementary school and found a parking spot without a
problem in spite of the fact that it was after eight o’clock and
everyone who was going to the school that morning had already
arrived and parked. She walked in the front doors and asked a
couple of teachers standing in the hallway where the office was
located. They pointed her down the hallway and to the right and
asked her as she started walking whom she was subbing for. She
didn’t have the teacher’s name but said she was subbing for the
Kindergarten class.
“Oh, then you’re in the wrong
building.”
“Isn’t this the Elementary school?”
“Yes, but you want the Primary;
that’s where the Kindergarten is. You need to drive down highway 87
and turn into the Silverado subdivision, take that road all the way
down and you’ll see the building there.”
“Oh, that’s the new building they just
built. Okay, I know where that is—thank you.” Shelia jogged back
to her car and got on the road. She would be very late now.
She located the building without a
problem, parked in the first spot she found and walked towards the
entrance. She pulled on the door handle but found the doors were
locked. She peered inside through the glass and saw two teachers
standing inside the doors. They looked at her and seemed to confer
with each other. Finally one of them opened up the door and before
Shelia could utter a word of thanks, shot out: “We’re not supposed
to let anyone in these doors. Don’t tell anyone we let you in
here.”
“I won’t. I’m supposed to sub for the
Kindergarten and I’m late. Thanks for letting me in. Can you
direct me to the office?”
“You go down this hallway, turn right,
make your first left and you’ll see it on your right.”
“Thank you.” Shelia hurried off down
the hallway and heard the teacher shout after her, “Remember, we
didn’t let you in these doors.” She waved her hand in
acknowledgement and thought they seemed a bit paranoid about letting
her in. It seemed to her that the situation clearly warranted
breaking the rules and using their common sense, but they acted as
if they had committed a crime and she was an accomplice they
couldn’t be sure of.
Shelia reached the office and
introduced herself, quickly babbling an apology about being late and
explaining her misconception about the Elementary school containing
Kindergarten. The woman behind the counter smiled and nodded
politely but didn’t really seem to care and just wanted to check her
in and instruct her out of the office, which she promptly did.
“You’re in room 121. You go down the
hallway to the right, then right again, then left, all the way down
the hall and right one more time.”
Shelia’s brain was running too fast
and she promptly forgot the directions after the first few turns.
Luckily, there were adults in the hallways and she found the
classroom by asking for directions along the way.
She opened the door. Twenty-five
running, jumping, screaming kids hit her consciousness like a
torpedo. One little boy, standing by the door, looked at her and
said, “Are you the sub?” Already, Shelia desperately wished the
answer to that question was no and that she could simply close the
door and walk right back out of this room and this building she
struggled so hard to find.
“Yes, I’m the sub. Isn’t there a
teacher in here?” Shelia realized the stupidity of the question
after she voiced it. She scanned the room and found it difficult to
make order out of the chaos in full motion before her.
She made her way through the throng of
grabbing, noisy children, to the desk on the back wall. A few girls
followed her and latched on to her, needing something. Before she
could set down her purse and briefcase—she had brought her homework
to work on—she had at least ten questions brought to her attention:
someone took someone’s toy, someone was hitting someone else,
someone’s knee scrape needed the nurse, someone had to go to the
bathroom, some personal questions about her, someone didn’t like
someone else.
Shelia shut her mind to the outside
chaos and looked for the notes left by the teacher. Her heart sank
as she noticed only 7 handwritten lines on a photocopied sheet.
These were the teacher’s notes for herself, not notes to a
substitute! These were not notes to a substitute with no experience
in elementary school—or primary either! Shelia felt her heart race
as her brain quickly added up her inexperience: these were not
notes for a substitute who was the youngest child of four siblings,
who never had any younger brothers or sisters, who had only babysat
for two kids in her whole life, who never knew how to talk to kids,
who had no children of her own, who never stepped foot in an
elementary school since she graduated to junior high! “Good Lord,
I’m going to need your help to get through this day.” Shelia prayed
to herself as she glanced around the room with her mouth hanging
slightly open. There were so many colors and so much stuff on the
walls, hanging everywhere. It was difficult to get a sense of the
place and the function all the stuff in the few seconds she had
available to her. Normally she showed up 10-20 minutes early to
prepare herself, reading the teacher’s notes and finding all the
necessary materials for the day. “Okay, breathe!” she
commanded herself. “You’ve got to get through this.” She hated to
do it, but she opened her mind back up to the noise and chaos around
her.
“What’s your name?”
“Teacher, teacher, Jimmy’s pushing
me!”
“I have to go to the nurse; my knee
hurts!”
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
Shelia tried to focus; she had to talk
to herself to hear her own thoughts above the din of the children’s
energy. The first thing on the list: “Bins.” What in the world
are bins? She just couldn’t think. With the shock of lightening
striking, Shelia heard a loud clapping and a forceful adult voice
above the cacophony of children’s noise.
“Let’s get quiet in here!
Jacob SIT DOWN; leave Jeremy alone. Let’s take our seats and show
our substitute how well we can behave. Marie, quiet. That’s good.
Jacob, I’m NOT going to tell you again. Okay, let’s play the quiet
game!”
The kids
became one huge mass of reasonably quiet creatures, sitting
relatively still, so the sea of faces and colors became more
distinct. Shelia glanced around and took in as much of this
relatively still detail as she could before the teacher approached
her quickly. Shelia pulled her thoughts to order. She must find
out what “Bins” are and let this teacher know she’s going to need
some coaching. Before Shelia could introduce herself or launch into
any quick explanations, the teacher had taken control of the
interaction and never stopped moving around in a hurried fashion.
Shelia managed to get in “What are bins?” and the teacher explained
as she grabbed some plastic boxes that were stacked inside each
other on the desk and put one on each table of five kids and left
one on the teacher’s table.
“They are to work at their tables for
10 minutes and then switch tables. They know what they’re supposed
to do. At your table you work with them on penmanship. All the
kids should spend time at all the tables. I’m Ms. Garza…across the
hall if you need me.”
And with that frenzied explanation,
she was gone, out the door. Shelia glanced around the room. Most
of the children seemed to be doing something at their tables. She
noticed one little girl with short dark hair, passing out penmanship
books from a box on the floor to all the children at the teacher’s
table. The little girl looked up at her and said with confidence.
“I’m Emily. I’ll help you today.”
Shelia looked at this little girl,
noting how articulate she was for her age and thought she saw wisdom
in her eyes beyond her years. Perhaps it was only a reaction of a
desperate person to the much-needed help that was being offered.
Emily smiled at her—a sweet child’s smile. “Thank you, Emily. I’m
going to need the help. What is it your teacher normally does with
you in penmanship.” Shelia realized she ought to tell the children
what pages to work on—that, at least, was on the cursory notes the
teacher had left her. In fact, Shelia realized now that some of the
children were asking her what pages. She felt like she was in the
Twilight Zone. She seemed to be on delay, not processing the
questions as fast as they were coming in. “Pages 24 through 26.”
Emily had passed out all the books and now sat in front of hers and
replied to the question Shelia had asked her.
“We work on the pages and she helps us
when we get stuck.”
Shelia picked up one of the penmanship
books no one was using and looked at pages 24, 25, and 26. The
exercise was practicing making capital “O”s and “Q”s. No one needed
help for the moment, so she walked over to the other tables to see
what the children were working on. One table had a worksheet with a
picture in which they were supposed to find all the Easter eggs with
various patterns. There was a table on the bottom part that showed
each patterned egg and had blocks after it. One of the little boys
asked her what he was supposed to do in that section. Shelia wasn’t
sure, so she made something up.
“You find
all the eggs with this pattern in the picture on top and then you
draw them down below. You draw one for each egg you found on top.”
The boy looked confused and put his head in his hands, looking
suddenly bored and saying nothing. Shelia wasn’t happy with this
interaction but before she could figure out the remedy, another
child shouted at her: “We’re supposed to switch now!” Shelia
instinctively looked at Emily, who said, “Yeah, every ten minutes.”
Shelia gave the okay. The children assembled into mass chaos again
and after a couple of minutes different kids were at different
tables. Shelia stood there trying to absorb who was where and
realizing at the same time that she hadn’t coached any of the kids
in penmanship—whoops! Suddenly, a little boy stood in front of her,
doing his best to say something to her through the hole in his
teeth. She couldn’t understand him, she asked him to say it again.
The poor child did his best but his missing two front teeth (and the
fact that he probably was not the most articulate kid in class in
the first place) made him near impossible to understand. Shelia
asked him to repeat himself one more time. She still couldn’t grasp
even one word of his sentence. Finally, she said, “Spell it.” He
replied: “R-A-M-I-R-O.” Shelia had to look up to the ceiling
(blessedly blank white space) in order to see the word. She said,
“Ramiro?” and looked to him for confirmation. He said, “Yeah, Where
is he?” Shelia broke out into the fastest sweat of her life as she
realized Ramiro was a child’s name and apparently he was missing!
She called out in a loud voice, “Ramiro? Ramiro?” No reply. She
recruited the entire class to look for Ramiro. They all hustled
about the room and in less than a minute, Emily shouted, “I found
him!” She was crouched down by a multi-colored plastic stove in a
corner of the room labeled, “Dramatic Play.” Shelia walked over to
the child. Ramiro was sitting cross-legged with his chubby head in
his hands and tears in his eyes. She sat on the floor with him and
patted his back asking him what was wrong while silently thanking
God that he hadn’t wandered out of the classroom or, God forbid, the
school! He mumbled something so softly she had to put her ear right
next to his mouth to try to hear him when she asked him to repeat
it. It was something about a haircut. She pulled her face back
again and looked at his closely cropped, nearly shaven head. She
patted his back again and said, “Your haircut looks very nice on
you.” He mumbled something else between soft little sobs. She,
again, put her ear to his mouth. Now he was rambling in his own
soft little way of having to get his hair cut again and again and no
one liked him and…(probably a few other world-shattering issues).
He faded into sobs. Shelia didn’t know what to do. She knew she
wasn’t supposed to touch the kids too much. That was a joke! These
kids demanded physical contact and initiated it constantly. She
patted his back again and told him that his haircut looked very nice
and gently asked him to come out from where he was hiding. She told
him it was going to be okay, that he was okay. He seemed to take
heart; although he still didn’t look happy, he seemed better. She
told the children to switch tables and told Ramiro to pick a table
to go to. She had no idea how long he had been hiding. The
responsibility of keeping track of all 25 of these children hit her
fresh in the face, like a sprinkler on a hot summer day. She looked
around the room at the children’s faces and decided she better make
an attempt to learn their names when she interacted with them. She
went back to her table and gave some positive feedback to the
children who decided they needed to show her their brilliant
penmanship. Each child beamed with her slightest utterance of
positive words. It almost hurt to see how much encouragement meant
to them. She looked at the pathetic notes left by the teacher. 40
minutes after the hour is snack time. She looked at her watch and
noticed that was five minutes ago! She asked Emily where the snacks
were. They were kept in the closet behind her desk. She opened the
closet and found a regular pantry, chock full of Fruit Loops cereal,
bags of fruit juice, a liter of orange soda, jelly worms, Oreos,
Cheezits, and some other snack-food. With the sound of the opening
closet, the children came panting around her just like dogs hearing
their food hit the doggie dish. She sensed this might be the
toughest part of the day. How was she going to control all these
children and all this sugar? She deferred again to Emily’s wisdom.
“Emily, how is snack time usually
done?”
Emily calmly said, “Well, usually I
take my snack…”
Shelia already knew this was a biased
version of snack time, but she was more than willing to give Emily
first rights to the food for the valuable guidance she could give
her.
She continued, “then we play the quiet
game and I pick the next person, and like that.”
“Okay. Let’s start. What do you want
for a snack?”
Emily looked over the assortment of
snacks laid out on the table and picked Fruit Loops. Then it was
time for Shelia to determine how to serve this to her. She again
asked Emily, who said there were cups in the closet. Shelia found
Styrofoam cups and filled one with Fruit Loops. Emily picked
another little girl and she came up to scan the snacks. The next
girl took several minutes to decide, looking everything over very
carefully. She picked jelly worms and a juice. Should Sheila give
both? She didn’t know. It seemed logical to give a drink with the
snack so she agreed. The next child came up and took just as long
to scan the snacks and he too picked a juice as well as a snack.
After two more children repeated the pattern, 25 minutes had gone by
and Shelia finally asked Emily if this was really how they usually
did snack time, because it was going to take all day! Emily grinned
as she lifted her shoulders just a touch, crinkled her nose, giggled
and said “No.” She knew she had gotten away with something.
Shelia decided a brief span of chaos
was going to be necessary to get them out of snack time so they
could go to PE, the next thing on the list. “All right, everyone
come up here and grab a snack!” The power of children in search of
a sugar fix is phenomenal—they surrounded and attacked the table
like a pack of wolves on their prey. Grabbing and shouting at once
what they wanted. When the bags of juice ran out, Shelia had to
resort to Orange Soda. She could tell by the hushed silence that
fell over the room at the hiss of screwing off the top, that soda
was highly valued stuff. Everyone wanted some after that and Shelia
had to try to sort out who had had a juice and who had not. At this
point, she realized instinctively that she must have broken all the
rules of snack time and the regular teacher was going to come back
and wonder who had raided her pantry! Just about everything that
was in the closet was consumed. There was no time to dwell on this,
however; she had to figure out how to get them to PE. When she
asked Emily, she was shocked when Emily said that it was too early
for PE. Shelia thought they were running late! She looked at her
watch and again at the sheet. It was only 10:30 now, not 11:30.
She must have looked only at the minute hand when she had determined
it was time for snacks. Her stomach clenched as it slowly dawned on
her the reasoning behind PE coming after snack time. This was a bad
mistake—she was going to have a room of 25 kindergarteners on a
sugar high for an hour! “Oh God!” What was she going to do? With
her stomach still clenching, she matter-of-factly determined that
the best thing to do was to let them get it out of their system.
She told them to just play. One little boy looked at her like she
was Santa Clause, his face filled with expectant joy, and said,
“Free time?” Her stomach clenched again and she reluctantly nodded
her head, wondering how bad this was going to be. Like a prisoner
loosed from his cage, he whooped and yelled to all the other
prisoners, “FREE TIME!” The same sea of chaos that had torpedoed
her when she entered this room hit again. Children running all
over, shouting and jumping, arguing over toys, boys chasing each
other around the room incessantly.
She breathed and forced herself to
look at the situation. How bad was it? Other than the noise, she
came to the realization that the kids were easier to deal with when
they were doing what they wanted to do. As long as no one was
getting hurt, what difference did it make? She had a guilty feeling
that if they other teachers in this building knew what she was
doing, they would have her burned at the stake. She hadn’t seen the
teacher from across the hall since she came in and set out the
bins. Oh well, the kids had to work it off somehow and she just
couldn’t see story time or nap time happening at this point. She
consoled herself, “Just get through this day and you’ll never have
to do this again!” Two boys were running around the room, chasing
each other. Shelia let them, but kept her eye on them to assess the
danger involved in what they were doing. When they started taking
the toy vacuum cleaner to each other’s heads, she cut them off.
Unfortunately, it was sweet Ramiro who happened to be “vacuuming”
the floor when Ms. Garza came in. Shelia braced herself.
“Ramiro, PUT that AWAY!”
Shelia asked her “Isn’t it okay to
play with that toy?”
Ms. Garza looked at Shelia like she
was from Mars and said yes it was okay but only in the DRAMATIC PLAY
AREA! Poor Ramiro, he was crying again. If Ms. Garza only knew how
that vacuum was being played with moments before, she would have
ordered Shelia shot! Ms. Garza grabbed something off the desk and
left. Shelia wondered if maybe the chaos on this room was not so
abnormal after all or perhaps Ms. Garza thought Shelia wasn’t worth
guiding and left her to her own private misery with this room full
of 25 children out of control.
Ramiro had put the vacuum back and was
now crying over a basket, complaining that they left him there alone
to clean it all up himself. Shelia looked around and saw the mess
of color that was the room, kids colorful toys everywhere, like a
rainbow that had been exploded, there was no order to it, just color
splattered randomly across the entire room. This would have to be
cleaned up before the kids left for PE. Clapping her hands and
shouting as loud as she could “KIDS! KIDS! Everyone over here; sit
down on the rug.” She had to repeat this numerous times and
physically move some children towards the rug to distract them from
what they were doing. Finally, everyone was relatively still and
quiet. Shelia did her best to get the kids into rows. There were
still a few kids who were questionable; she’d figure that out
later. Row by row, she told them, they would get up and clean the
room as best they could for one minute, then the next row would go.
She was proud of herself for figuring out this plan that sounded
like it would work for kids. In fact, once she realized she had to
be more specific about what “cleaning up” a room meant, it did work
rather well. One row was the group of little boys who had been
playing in the kitchen and left it a mess. She directed that row to
clean the kitchen. Shelia quickly realized that she would have to
compromise her standards continually throughout this day. The
“cleaned” kitchen was one of those instances; stuff was moved around
but no more organized or neat than it was before. She remembered to
praise the group for their efforts and they glowed.
She asked Emily about PE and she told
her they line up single file and go to the gym. Shelia clapped and
attempted to get everyone’s attention. A few kids tried to help her
out, but their efforts quickly deteriorated into more chaos. Many
children complained about other children being in their spot,
apparently there was some order they were supposed to follow. Other
children whined at Shelia as they leeched onto her arm that they
wanted her to walk with them and hold their hands—Ramiro was one of
those. Shelia dreaded taking these children outside the room. How
was she going to keep track of them all? She put Emily at the front
of the line and she took the back. When they opened the door, she
realized with a shudder that other classrooms of kids were also
going to PE. As the kids saw their friends in other lines, they
started walking right towards them, totally forgetting the single
file line they were in. Thank goodness other teachers were around
and kept order.
Finally, she could leave them in the
hands of the gym teachers! She nearly collapsed right there with
the relief of it! She quietly walked back to the classroom and
closed the door behind her. She picked up a few stray papers and
gummy worms on the floor. She sat on the chair by the desk and took
a few deep breaths while she reminisced about all the decisions she
had made in just a couple of hours. How do the teachers do it? How
do they keep track of all these children and give them what they
need all day long? Probably most of them go home and have to cater
to their own children. Shelia had never dealt with so many demands
in such a short period of time. She realized that her decision not
to have children was likely on target for her personality. She felt
so fortunate to have the kind of time she had enjoyed this morning
before the phone rang—time she would have again after this day was
over. She felt overjoyed to have the freedom to say that she would
never have to do this job again. Shelia sat there, closed her eyes,
breathed deeply, quieted her body, and then quieted her mind. She
spent the children’s PE time savoring the silence and counting her
blessings.
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