March 22, 2004 - 12:08 AM

I Am Mr. Teacher to You

Waking up at 6:30 AM is very difficult to do. Especially when waking up early for you is usually 11 AM. I can no longer laugh at my brother for going to sleep before 10 PM, because now I know how difficult it is to maintain a post-primetime life when you're waking up pre-dawn.

Wednesday was my first offical substitute teaching job at the Community Charter Middle School in San Fernando. I had no idea what subject or what grade level was going to be thrown at me, so, yeah, I was a bit...hmm..."apprehensive" isn't quite the word I'm looking for. Ah, yes. "Freakin' Scared Shitless" seems to be more appropriate. When I arrived at the school, the administrator looked through her notes and decided that I would be filling in for the Health teacher at their second site which was down the road about 5 minutes. She scribbled down some quick directions and sent me off.

Upon meeting the coordinator at the second site, I was informed that another sub who was filling in for a teacher had not shown up, and that I would instead be taking over THAT class. They didn't tell me what subject I would be handling, or what grade level; they just took me straight to the classroom. A counselor was handling the morning activities (taking roll, figuring out who would be getting school lunches, conducting the Circle Discussion wherein a question is put on the board such as "What is your most difficult subject and why" or "How do you feel about having the 6th graders off campus on a field trip" and all the students are required to answer while seated in a circle) and I was allowed time to look over the lesson plan and figure out what I was going to teach. My mouth went dry, and I couldn't concentrate on the papers and textbooks in front of me. I saw that the first subject of the day was Math and I opened the textbook to the noted pages and skimmed the material. Even though I could read the words about Intersecting Lines, Vertical Angles, and Congruency, it wasn't making much sense to me.

The uneasy feeling that maybe I had stalled for too much time prompted me to inform the counselor that I was ready. He introduced me to the class as Mr. Kim and then handed the reins over to me. That first hour and a half was a panic attack waiting to happen. As I began to teach, slivers of recognition wormed their way into the foreground of my brain, and I was able to stay one step ahead of the theorems and equations which I was spitting out. Every so often, I would ask the kids if they understood what I had just explained, or if they got the example I had just scrawled on the dry erase board. Encouragingly enough, they nodded boredly in affirmation. Or so I thought. I would later realize that not all of them were responding, and that none of them wanted to say "no" because they probably didn't want to appear stupid in front of me or their peers. But this realization wouldn't really settle in until it was too late.

Dun dun duuhnnnnn!

The class next had a 20 minute recess during which time I regrouped and sussed out the rest of my lesson plan. It slowly dawned on me that I would be teaching this one group of kids all day. I had been under the initial impression that I would be teaching one subject to several different groups of kids of one grade level, but that was not to be the case. This was a self-contained group (of undetermined grade and age; I learned later that they were 7th graders) who were taught English, Math, Science, and History by the same teacher. I would have to be a jack-of-all-subjects and conquer my fear of Science.

After recess was over, the PhyEd teacher came in and organized the kids, getting them to change into their gym clothes and prepping them for a 2 mile run around the track at a nearby park. I was able to see how he kept them in line, and was quite envious of the fear he instilled in them. They left, and I, in a more steady frame of mind, re-perused the lesson plan. I studied the various books, textbooks, and workbooks that I would need to use and went over in my mind, several times, how I would present the information. Eventually, I felt comfortable that I had the teaching part down; I just had to worry about the wrangling of the kids.

The rest of the day went as such: returning from PhysEd, the class changed back into their school uniforms; went to lunch; returned for English; then a 5 minute break; and finally Science. As I became more comfortable with them, they became more comfortable with me, and that was a bad thing. Because that meant they started testing how far they could go, and they knew that I didn't know what the proper limits were. Some of the kids were decent and helpful, quietly telling me that what the other kids were pulling wasn't proper protocol; other kids were straight up incorrigibles who refused to listen to stay seated; the majority were somewhere in between.

At the end of the day, I spoke with the adminstrator and she told me that they would have me teach that same grade for the rest of the week instead of hopping over to the 6th grade Science class on Thursday and the 8th grade Math on Friday as we had planned. I promised myself that I would actually learn the kids' names the next day so that I could yell at them in person to sit down and shut up.

You know how I started this entry off stating how difficult it is to wake up at 6:30 in the morning? When I got home on Wednesday, I logged on to the computer to type this up, but I fell asleep in my chair. Groggily, I gave in and took a nap for a couple hours. And then I did something that was kind've gloriously stupid. I decided to go to a concert, thinking that the nap would leave me with enough rest to make it through a shorter night.

My friend Mike and I had decided the previous week to try to go see Sam Phillips at a club in Los Feliz. Mike had played guitar with the opening act at a show at Largo in which Sam had performed with the main act, and he had enjoyed her bit (plus, he talked with her and found her to be very nice). Meanwhile, I've always enjoyed her album Martinis and Bikinis and its Beatles-esque pop; found another of her albums, Omnipop to be wacky, wicked, and strangely entertaining; and of course I've been plumb happy to hear her every week, la-la-la-ing on the Gilmore Girls; but I'd never managed to go see her the various times she's played around L.A.

This show made me regret not making more of an effort to catch her previously. She has such a wonderfully charming and funny stage presence, all self-deprecating stage banter, knowing sideglances, and wry smiles. And then there was the performance, the arrangement, the songs, the lyrics, her VOICE. What a wonderful voice, with an emotional careworn-ness similar to Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, and Sarah Harmer, but sprinkled with a quirky playfulness all her own.

While she sang and played guitar (and on one song, played back a piano part on a dictaphone help up to the mic, shaking the tape player at specific moments to get a vibrato and tremolo effect out of the jiggled mechanisms), she had the accompaniment of Jay Bellerose of Paula Cole fame (both Berklee grads) on drums/percussion; Patrick Warren (longtime co-conspirator of Michael Penn) on pump organ and piano; and The Section, a string quartet who I've actually met while working at the studio The arrangements they provided around Sam were marvelous and quite tasty.

Why do I say that going to see this extraordinary show was so stupid? Because it didn't wrap up until close to 1 AM, and I didn't get into bed until 2, leaving me only 4.5 hours to sleep. Let's just say, I wasn't in the best shape for school the next morning. Luckily, first period involved me timing the kids as they ran 15 laps around the track, so I didn't have too much thinking to do. By the way, several of the kids had 1 mile times under 8 minutes and 15 lap times under 40 minutes. I don't think that I could run/jog/walk that distance in that time, but then, I've never prided myself on being a long-distance runner.

This second day, I did learn the names of half of the students, and managed to teach them stuff that didn't just bounce off the tops of their heads. Friday, I think I even managed to make a dent in their brains with the math stuff. At least, I hope I did, since they have a quiz on what I taught them coming up on Monday. I also learned that it is much easier to control a class if you know all of their names and do something like threaten to write down their names and call their parents if they don't behave. That works like a charm.

*psst* Rob, check out Thea Gilmore. She's a british singer-songwriter who will be hitting Pittsburgh today or tomorrow. Unfortunately, I was too tired to drive out to Santa Barbara Saturday to see her, and was unaware of her performance in L.A. until it was too late on Friday.

Now Listening To : Sam Phillips-Martinis and Bikinis
Random Thought : In the next diary, we'll talk about all the other fun stuff I did Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

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