Adventures in Substitute Teaching...

Many of my closest friends have read this article I wrote probably around 6 months ago about some of my experiences as a substitute teacher. . .

Today, I've decided to share it with the world.

This blog post is dedicated to the Students at Shades Valley/JCIB who have made my experiences in teaching wonderfully enlightening and enjoyable. You all have helped me to find my passion.
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Adventures in Substituting…Diary of an Endangered Species



I am a substitute teacher that takes his job too seriously. I am the one man crusade getting paid fifty bucks a day to baby-sit the children of Jefferson County parents while their real teacher is out sick, on vacation, or just plain fed up. The only problem is, I want them to actually learn something.

Walking into the front doors of any high school, after having received both a diploma and a degree, proved to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in life. My stomach was in knots as I moseyed down the fluorescent hallways to my assigned classroom. Today was my initiation into the world of education. I was to become a member of a fraternity of individuals who not only act as teachers, but disciplinarians, and at times surrogate parents

I sat idly behind the teacher’s cluttered desk waiting on the bell to ring and usher in a pack of trendy hipsters with no other purpose in life than to make mine, the new sub, a living hell. As the students amble in one by one, eyes heavy from their early morning bus rides and late night phone conversations about absolutely nothing, I am overwhelmed with a sense of queasiness that twisted my stomach into a Jacob’s Ladder.

“Hey, we have a guy substitute! Oh my God, and he’s black,” yells the 5’9” track star with the flowing ebony locks of hair, “I have got to take a picture!” I chuckle just a little bit and proceed to ask them to take their seats.

Being a substitute has made me highly aware of two facts. I am Black. I am Male. While these were always very obvious to me, I had no idea how obvious they were to those around me. Being such has made me a benefit to some and an oddity to others.

On the one hand I provide a friendly face and an articulate voice to an entire group of children that are “hard to handle” in the predominately white Jefferson County School System. I look like them, I speak their language, I can relate to them. Only six years (and 30 pounds) ago, I was in their shoes.

On the other hand, a male teacher is hard to swallow for some. A black male teacher that isn’t teaching athletics is even harder to grasp. I never was good at basketball, I’m too short. I couldn’t play football, I’m too small. I preferred Chess, poetry, and females to locker rooms and jock straps. I preferred Sum 41 to 50 Cent. I was simply different.

Patrick Carrington is an anomaly such as myself. The 11th grader prefers to wear button-down dress shirts instead of the long nightgownish tees that his friends swim through the halls in everyday. His square toed oxfords are immaculately polished and provide a sharp contrast to the $200 Jordans and Nike Air Force One’s that his peers wear.

Patrick often walks a lonely road in the land of promise and pain that is high school. He stares straight ahead when swiftly making his way through the crush of students that clutter the hallway between classes. He is a young man determined.
I was Patrick’s substitute for a vocational technology class, and was mildly inspired when the young man with the neck tie in a Windsor knot asked me about college, “Is college really that hard, Mr. Hullett?”

“Well, for me it was. But that was only because my focus was wrong in the beginning. I honestly went to college because there were prettier women there,” I reply with a smile. Amused at my response and shocked at my candor, Patrick laughs nervously and fidgets in his chair. He then sits in amazement as I detail the finer points of success in college. I go through the typical clichés and offer him unconventional wisdom.

“Make sure you study enough to get good grades, but don’t forget to have fun,” I tell him. He smiles and says, “Yeah man, I know I’m gonna party when I get to school.” I smile and urge him to focus more on the books than the babes and beer.

Glancing at the clock, I realized I have talked to Patrick for more than an hour. The bell rings and Patrick gathers his items. He says, “Thanks Mr. Hullett, you’re a really good role model. I hope you come back.” I smile and promise to hurry back soon.

“Why do we have to take math? I am never gonna use this stuff again in my life! This is so stupid,” shouts Rusty in the middle of his Calculus class, his pale face flushed and his mop of red hair tousled all over the place. The rest of the students freeze and look like sheep that have wandered into a wolf’s lair. One half of the class is expecting me to explode and write him up like so many substitutes that they have had over the years. The other half of the class is expecting me to nod and smile and pretend that I didn’t hear any of Rusty’s outburst of exasperation.

What they fail to realize is that I’m not the 68 year old retired blue hair who is subbing to keep herself feeling useful, or the 43 year old retired banker who is subbing just for something to do. No, I am the 23 year old naïve optimist, hell bent on making sure they charge bravely into the future.

“Do you really think that you’re learning calculus to teach you how to count,” I ask Rusty? “You’re not learning how to count Rusty, you’re learning how to think. Counting was achieved and mastered in third grade. Everything after that is teaching you problem solving, critical thinking, and logical reasoning skills.”

“I still want to know when in my life that I’m gonna use calculus! This is not what I need to be a police officer,” he bellows, his response a little less intensely delivered than his initial outburst.

“Rusty, when have you ever seen an unknown number? When have you ever had to find the square root of something outside of school? How did those things challenge you though? How many times have you had to work through some problem in your life without having all of the information? How many times have you had to reason your way through something, or break down a concept for your own understanding,” I ask?

Although the questions come rapid fire and in structured succession, Rusty doesn’t seem to feel challenged, his anger is slowly subsiding as the redness slips away from his face. He eases back in his seat and gives me a puzzled look.

“If you’ve ever figured something out on your own, you can thank math for that,” I said. It appears to be the death blow to his argument. With all the fight taken out of him, Rusty eases back in his chair and continues to do work diligently in his Calculus workbook.
The other students exchange glances and breathe the comfortable breaths of newfound knowledge. Calculus no longer seems as scary to them as it once was. A student whispers, “Damn, Mr. Hullett don’t play that huh?”

Later that day, I am recounting the story to the School Secretary, Ruth Waldrep, and she says, “Wow, you mean you actually got them to understand why they do math without raising your voice? You’re a good one.”

I simply reply, “I used to be them…”

Teaching has not all been triumph. As with anything in life, there is both feast and famine. The times of feast make us smile and remind us of the beauty and wonder that childhood and adolescence contains.

The famine though, is often heart wrenching and emotional. We are reminded of our teenage angst, our frustrations and the gripping fear of adult hood that held us captive as children.
You begin to care so much that your life takes on new purpose. Their triumphs become your joy, and their failures hurt you worse than it hurts them at times.

Standing in front of a tenth grade English class is a daunting enough task, it becomes even tougher at 1:30 on a warm Friday afternoon. To add on to my anxiety, I’ve been given instructions to administer their tests, a 23 question quiz on Perfect Progressive tense.
The first two periods of the day finished the quiz in well under their 30 minute time period. This last class, as I expected, would be no different. Except for one student.

Marquez is having a rough time. With two minutes left for the test, his paper is blank, his brow is furrowed and his palms are sweaty. I stare at him in a futile attempt to gauge what he is thinking. Suddenly, he picks up his pen and begins to write frantically. Scribbling answers all the way down the page in just enough time to beat the clock. He slithers out of his sit and propels his body to an upright position. He ambles up to my desk and nonchalantly lets his paper flutter to the pile. Wondering how the dreaming child with the sad eyes and unkempt hair in the first row is doing, I look at his paper. Each answer is the exact same, “I don’t no.”

I shake my head in disbelief and look up to see Marquez staring back at me. I wave my hand, beckoning him to come here. “You think she’ll understand, since I wasn’t here these last two days,” he asks?

I tell him that I don’t know and began to study his face, looking for some sort of dishonesty or an “I don’t care” attitude. I come back from my cerebral fishing expedition with nothing. Behind the baggy jeans, expensive shoes, and oversized basketball jersey is a young man who needs help, but it seems though his appearance, his vernacular, and customs are holding him back. He looks like a thug to some, talks like a rapper to most, and fights his peers as though his last breath depended on it. On the inside though, Marquez is simply scared.

I later hear him exclaim to a group of friends, “Ain’t no nigga gon’ catch me slippin’ in my cutlass cuz. On everything I love I’ll put two in a nigga.” His fellow students nod approvingly, with beaming smiles. I tell them to quiet down and get back to work.

Five minutes later a young lady who recently transferred from another school system (she had been expelled for fighting) creeps up behind Marquez as though they are children playing Cowboys and Indians. She makes a gun with her fingers and gently presses them to his temple in an almost inappropriate manner and says, “Bang nigga. You dead. Anybody can get got.”

I tell her to move away from Marquez and bring her seat closer to mine in an attempt to gain command of her rowdy group. The tactic restores order but the mentality still disturbs me. I can’t help but see a possibility of foreshadowing in the young lady’s actions and in Marquez’s cold and undisturbed response. While I’d like to chalk it up as youthful horseplay, the scene replaying itself in my head is simply chilling.

The concept of Social Learning Theory teaches us that children often form attitudes and beliefs based essentially on imitating their parents and authority figures. While many of these ideas are formulated during a child’s formative toddler years, one cannot ignore the adolescent stage and children’s impressionable nature in this period as one of intellectual development.

Substitute teaching a middle school class is probably one of the most tiring things anyone can do. Between the overactive bladders, hyperactivity, and general inquisitive nature of 11, 12, and 13 year olds, middle school teachers could most likely be seen as the Marines of the educational field. It is definitely intense.

I volunteered myself to sub for an 8th grade class at a suburban, predominately white middle school that had received a boom in the influx of black students over the past couple of years. While this shouldn’t be cause for alarm, at the end of my day subbing there I couldn’t help but think that there were certain elements fearful of this new wave of students.

“One in four of you will be victims of violence at some point in your life,” said the school counselor. She had taken over my class in a coffee driven, blonde haired, pancake makeup whirlwind. She was supposed to be giving them the lecture that she had given the other 7th grade classes.

She looked out over the bright faces of the class and asked, “Does anyone know what violence is?”

“Rape!”
“Homicide!”
“Fighting!”
“Domestic Violence!”

The MTV generation provided example after example flawlessly, which could be expected seeing as how they watch violence every day on their televisions and play violent characters on their XBOX 360’s and Playstations. “Violence is any kind of harmful physical contact that you don’t invite. This is why football isn’t violent,” says the counselor.

Her asinine statements make me smile. “Football’s not violent because you have a reasonable expectation to get hit,” I ask myself as she goes into the finer points of teaching the students the politics of victimization? I listen to the lecture and watch the kids drift off to the dull monotony of her voice like so many reruns of Ferris Bueller. Something she said snapped me out of my trance though.

“There are some people who are in the school, many are new transfers who tend to solve their problems with violence. You don’t want to be like those people,” said the counselor.

Those people? I can’t help but imagine that she was talking about the scores of black faces that I saw in the hallway that were new residents of the area. They stuck out like sore thumbs with their Rocawear t-shirts and baggy Girbaud jeans against a backdrop of Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Clarks wallabee shoes.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as she began to give the children a crash course in how to successfully perform gentrification. She drew a makeshift house on the board. “Let’s say this is a house in Clay-Chalkville, and it’s on the market for $150,000,” said the counselor. The children “ooh” and “ahh” in wonder because at twelve, $150,000 could possibly be all the money in the world.

“Every time you get in a fight and every time one of these people does something bad, it damages our neighborhood reputation and it drops our property values. After a while people won’t want their kids to come to Clay-Chalkville Middle School and this $150,000 will only be able to sell for about $80,000 because some people come to your school and don’t know how to act,” lectured the counselor.

I could feel the muscles in my face flex and tighten as I tried my hardest to maintain an air of professionalism in the face of such blatant disdain for people like me, people who came from the places I once played, people who moved to this side of town for a chance at a better life.
I stood up with all of the determination I could muster at this point. My eyes were narrowed into two menacing slits; my nostrils flared like a bull ready to charge and gore the taunting matador. An entire rant was formulating in my head about racism, gentrification, gerrymandering, the 60’s, Jim Crow, and the fact that black history month was coming soon. I was ready. I was a warrior. The spirit of Huey P. Newton possessed me and made old Negro spirituals run through my veins. I opened my mouth wide.

And said nothing…

If I had never been aware of the fact that I was a black man before, I most certainly was now. If I was never made aware of my place on the educational totem pole before, I most definitely knew my place now. At the bottom.

I am a substitute teacher. I am black. I am male. I am a rarity. Some may think I take my job too seriously, I say maybe they don’t take my job as serious as they should.





--Chad A. Hullett