Being a substitute in the Montessori educational system is an adventure.
My opportunities were sparse as Christmas approached, however, but there were two vignettes, revolving around my limited understanding of the rules and the complexity of elementary schools, in general. Such a strange environment! A place that operates by rules and clocks.
In early December, I was a playground monitor during “Club M” (child care for the students as they wait for their parents to take them home after school). I approached a Kickball game in order to monitor the action. (Sixty years ago we played Four Court – I don’t know where this Kickball game came from.) Two giggling 9-year-olds, a boy and a girl of identical weights and heights, approached. “I’m upper EL; he’s lower EL. Can we switch places? Please?” the girl asked. She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered: “Just say yes!” I said yes, because it made no difference for the Kickball game. Still, I think I misunderstood the context. They were probably asking permission in regards to Club M, not the Kickball game. Older upper elementary students (upper EL – grades 4-6) wait in a separate room from lower EL (grades 1 – 3) students. The boy and girl wanted to switch rooms, just for fun. In the greater scheme of things I still think it made little difference, but it illustrated my limited understanding of how the school functions.
Among the upper EL students at Club M, I watched as a girl, on her own initiative, retrieved a microscope from a box, collected a rainwater sample, and studied it. Then she thought to ask me if she could retrieve glass slides from the same box. I said, yes, of course. There was no need to ask me. But in her mind there was a need to ask, because the slides were a “resource”: items in a separate mental category from the microscope itself. One must always ask permission before using any resource. Mental categories: we all have them, but people in schools have more.
Tuesday (1/14) was my first day as a substitute school teacher. I received a lesson plan in advance from the school, but I found it cryptic. Fortunately the Teaching Assistant arrived early in classroom “Ruby” to assist me.
There were several school rituals that needed to be done at the start of the day. First, the students assembled in a circle, on the floor of the open classroom. Roll call surprised me – the students routinely respond “Ruby” when they hear their name, not “Here.” Then it was time for what I called “The Ritual of the Silence.” I recited a poem about the virtues of silence, then just before finishing the poem I turned over an hourglass. For a minute, the students had to maintain complete silence as the sand ran out. Then I completed the poem. (I thought for a moment about using a much larger hourglass that I had seen stashed in the bookcase, but didn’t). Then the “Student of the Week” (a small but well-spoken young girl) led the “Pledge of Allegiance.” Then, using a monthly calendar display, the little girl announced the day of the week to the assembled students.
Work in earnest started, with three groups of students using different resources at separate stations (iReady computers, Math Facts, and actual instruction) for twenty minutes before switching to another station. I taught at one station and the Teaching Assistant taught at the other. Math for grades 2 and 3 wasn’t too hard, but I found first grade math to be a challenge.
The subject concerned subtraction from numbers larger than 10 and less than 20. There is a multi-step procedure that was supposed to be used, for example, for the problem 12 – 5 = 7. For the first step, 12 – 10 = 2. Then, 5 – 2 = 3. Finally, 10 – 3 =7. There were several steps here that were a challenge for first-graders to understand. (And me too, until I puzzled it out. How did I learn to do these kinds of problems in the first place? It’s like I always knew how to do it, but it must be a learned skill. The steps are lost in the sixty-year-old sand dune called my brain.)
For their part, the first-graders stayed patient as I repeatedly went through the steps with them. Fate had decreed that they would spend much of their life puzzling out inscrutable math problems, and the best way to do that was get together with their friends and patiently slog through them as best they could.
I was warned about two students, in particular. The first was a Total Cynic, who refused to do any work at all, and used the class time to socialize with his few friends. The Teaching Assistant put together a packet for his parents to use to teach him, but who knows if that will happen? The second student was antsy at first, but as the day worn on he got more and more absorbed in a book. The Reader proved to be the best-behaved student of the day.
One of the girl students craved attention and seemed too Handsy. She was pushing the other kids around, including one girl who kicked back in response. The meanness on display disturbed another girl, who tattled on the Kicker. So, there was low-grade friction among the kids.
The Tattler seemed acutely sensitive to the slightest variations in the ordinary flow of the day, which proved helpful to me. When the Teaching Assistant took a break and I escorted the students out to recess, the Tattler informed me that I was out of compliance with standard protocol, that I should be wearing a backpack of first aid supplies. This was the first I had heard about any first aid equipment. When the Reader fell and hurt his face, all I had to offer were condolences. (He toughed it out.) When the Teaching Assistant returned she donned the first aid backpack. She monitored lunch as well with it. Two other students managed to get kicked in the face during the day. A well-used ice pack was floating around the room.
As always, kids could be distracted by gruesome stories. One student almost poked himself with a pencil. I told them how I stabbed my palm with a pencil back in the second grade and the broken pencil tip remained visible under my palm’s skin for decades. They all had stories to share about stabbing themselves with pencils. Another student gave himself a paper cut and I told the story about a coworker who gave herself a paper cut on her eyeball while adding paper to a copier, but even though it hurt like crazy it was OK, because eyes heal fast.
Before recess ended, one student lined up early to return to the classroom. No horseplay for her. She seemed introspective and muttered a rambling story about how she sang Christmas songs, and a Hanukkah song, during the holidays; woke her brother early on Christmas to get presents, and how the presents were placed in a big, blue bag. The story had no apparent point. This girl worried me.
In the afternoon, a group of girls got together, to do schoolwork socially, and they made many appeals for help to the Teaching Assistant and me. The Reader continued reading. The Kicker avoided interaction with me or the Teaching Assistant and busied herself with filling out coloring pages on a Valentine’s theme. I assisted the Handsy girl and she gave me a surprising compliment, that she wished I could be her teacher. Ah, sweet! She just needs attention, and I was apparently giving her more attention than her teacher usually has time for.
At the classroom circle at the end of the day the “Student of the Week” shared her RC robot car with the other students.
A good day with a sweet class. Maybe I can substitute-teach in the class again sometime.
