I try to volunteer, but end up getting paid.

I pulled into my mom’s driveway last night and tried to go straight to sleep. But sleep at 10pm just doesn’t happen for me.

I woke up at six in the morning. It was cold. Really cold. All my water froze solid all the way through. I started the van and let it warm up and run for a while, just so it stays happy, before we went to school. School is walking distance. Actually, everything is walking distance here: the town is only about six blocks.

At school, my mom introduced me to everyone and told them to feel free to hand me any projects or tasks. When we got to the secretary she said, “actually, we need a sub for the morning.”

In the state of Alaska you only need a bachelors degree to be a substitute teacher. Background checks and child abuse clearances are, apparently, not required.

Next thing I knew I was wrangling a bunch of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in an earth science class. I’m all about the earth science. I thought I was all about the 4-6th graders too, but wow. They are, like men, a lot different in groups. The instructions left for me were simply, “label maps.” When I got to the classroom I discovered that there were several maps-in-progress, and they had numbered lists of places and landmarks to be labelled. When the kids came in they sat in groups around the maps. Suddenly it was all clear.

But one group had already finished their map, several groups were halfway through, and two groups were just hopeless. I redistributed the people from the succesfull groups to the hopeless groups. This did not have the immediate effect that I’d hoped, because 4-6th graders are apparently lacking in motivational social skills. So I interjected some organization and motivation and structure.

Meanwhile some of the finished kids started pushing each other around on wheely chairs, and some other kids started tattling on them. Holy wow. We proved my rudimentary version of chaos theory by watching them and then I told them to knock it off. They played chess and poked each other with pencils for the rest of the period, while I tried to motivate other kids to stop coloring in little dips in the mountains and label rivers.

Later, in high school chemistry, sex work came up. Luckily I didn’t have to actually teach chemistry or we would have all been in trouble. Instead I just kind of helped them read a section in their book, answer some questions, and make flashcards of the periodic table. Fortunately I am somewhat acquainted with the periodic table. So we were peacefully and craftfully making flashcards, when some boy called some girl a whore.

“Hey,” I said, “no whore-calling in chemistry. Focus on the Boron.”

“Okay,” the alleged whore said, “I’ll leave if you don’t want whores.”

“But she really is a whore,” the boy said.

The alleged whore smiled. “I am, Ms. R, I’m playing one in the play.”

“Oh, are you Abby?” I asked. It is that book about the Salem witch burnings where Abby is the evil slut to blame for it all.

“Yep, see, I told you. I’m a whore.”

“Well,” I mused, “Abby was a harlot and an adulteress, not a whore. A whore is a person who has sex for money, and I don’t think they even had that word back then.”

“No at the end of the book Abby goes to Boston and she’s a prostitute, and a PROSTITUTE is a WHORE,” the alleged whore announced proudly.

“Do ya know what the oldest profession is? Huh? Do ya?” the whore-calling boy asked.

Holy fuck. I was a total sub-failure. Kids get around me and they start talking sex work. This isn’t good.

“Yeah,” another boy (a potential whore-caller?) piped up, “they even had prostitutes in Jesus’ time, Mary whatsername was a prostitute.”

“They had prostitutes way before they had Jesus. But this is chemistry class and it is not an appropriate place to discuss the history of prostitution. Now. Who knows the abbreviation for boron?”

Ha. I won.

It’s only been one day, but so far I think that the school system is not something I want to participate in. So far, it’s mostly been trying to make kids do work they don’t want to do, and it makes me really glad I didn’t go to a “real” high school.

0 comments

  1. You have created in me, Mr. Teacher Man, a smile wider than usual, and a laugh louder than the norm, via this outstanding post/anecdote.

    Ten years ago in my first class, it was a bit more lively ~ it involved a girl-on-girl, black-on-black, Compton school district gang war kick fight … but nobody brought up whores, Mary Magdalene, or Arthur Miller’s McCarthy-era commentaries. Mine had action, but yours had plot!

    You have struck a golden chord with those younguns – you dodged a sex bullet and made it into a lesson on orbitals, noble gases, and ionic bonds – all without confusing them. I’ll bet that the boys will never forget that Boron has an AMU of 10.8 … or that it starts with the same letter as “Bitch” …. you rule, Tara…!

  2. Thanks, K. 😀 Tomorrow I teach elementary gym (complete with 4-5-6’ers that like to beat each other up over first base and a borderline autistic kindergartener who follows instructions but not the social cues inherent in group games). I’m skeered.

  3. Yet another good example for why I’m a proponent of homeschooling. (I’m referring to the animalistic “social mores”, not the wonderful sub. 😉 )

    “it’s mostly been trying to make kids do work they don’t want to do”

    The public school system takes wonderful, playful, ambitious, imaginative children, beats the snot and willpower out of them, and turns them into tools so that, for the rest of their lives, they can serve society by doing “work they don’t want to do”. But, after 12/13/14 years of having every trace of their true humanity beaten out of them, they no longer know that they don’t want to do it, so they go along robotically, unknowing, uncaring, and unchanging.

    Sad, isn’t it? I’m a teacher; it’s my purpose in life, in some way or another. But I’ll never teach in a public school. That’s not teaching; that’s indoctrination and propaganda.

    OK. I’ll hush up my rant now. 😉

  4. The thing is, they were testing boundaries. You totally handled them with aplomb, I must say. I had taught/led discussion in my class for about an hour one time before I realized that the back board read “Autofellatio.” It’s all in your reaction, not whether or not they were having the discussion. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the “No whore-calling” discipline to pencil-stabbing ankle-biters.

  5. For future reference, the next time that you attempt to educate children about the word “whore”:

    You say that “I don’t think they even had that word back then.”

    The word “whore” has been in the English language for basically as long as there has been something that could reasonably be called “the English language”.

  6. hahahahahahahaha that’s awesome. I’m so guilty of that. take me camping and I end up explaining fetishes to my eleven year old brother. sheesh

  7. The oldest profession, Tara, would’ve been nomadic hunting, I’m pretty sure, so you could’ve thrown that at those fuckers.

    P.S. – I live vicariously through your stories, the stripper part exclusive.

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