Substitute Teaching 6th Grade Science - Part 1

I arrived at the school at 6:55 am. 🌅

1st period apparently starts at 7:30 am and they wanted me there 30 minutes early. I waited outside with some parents and kids until they unlocked the front door. We flooded in. The front office asked me to check-in via filling out a Google Form. The name dropdown had a preloaded list of substitutes. There were a lot of names, but mine wasn’t there. The woman said, “K that’s fine just skip it.” As a person who automates things for a living, broken processes kill me.

I proceeded into what felt like the dungeons of the school to find my classroom.

Typical science classroom. There was a globe. It had the classic lab shower thing with the handle we always wanted to pull. Window shades down. Fluorescent lights on. Projector on top of a whiteboard. I started taking chairs down to help with nerves.

A teacher (I’ll call her Ms. James) from next door peeked her head in, “Hey! I’ll take them for 1st.” Mid 40s, short hair, pretty overweight, in jeans and a t-shirt, it-is-what-it-is attitude, but generally friendly. I shuffled through my packet, trying to learn my schedule. “Oh! Hello … okay. Well let me know how to help. I’m pretty new at this but here to try to make your life easier.”

“Yeah I teach the other science class. [Your class’s teacher] has COVID so he’s been out. We’ll make it work.” She clearly knew the drill and had been dealing with this for a while. She was also eating some sort of deeply seasoned chicken dinner out of a Tupperware. I was grateful for her. I was also eager to first-hand witness a full-time teacher in action.

The 7:25 bell rang and I dropped into the time warp. 🌀

35 kids funneled into the room and the 7:30 bell rang. I started towards the head of the room just as Ms. James stepped back in and jumped into attendance. I was left standing awkwardly, uncertain of the opportune moment for self-introduction. Those were legitimately the first moments of my adult life spent with middle schoolers. 🤡

The kids babbled and squeaked and yelled and laughed. She contained them at a steady simmer. I remained standing next to her randomly looking around with a smile pasted on my face.

“Why are you getting louder when I’m doing attendance. STOP.”

She then told them to join her class for the period. They left and spent their 1st period in the hallway with huge sheets of paper to prank the teacher I was subbing for by drawing outlines of him. One group of girls drew a playboy bunny on the groin area and her friend giggled, “Zoey … you CAN’T!!!” A lot of the boys stood around awkwardly. Some were laughing tracing their classmates as they laid on the floor. I was the definition of a lingerer. Milling around … totally unclear on my role but attempting to help.

Kids asked me for black construction paper and I found it. That felt like a win. One girl was alone and decided to draw the teacher’s cat TaterTot instead.

The bell rang. They hauled all their unfinished work to the back of the classrooms and went to their lockers.

Now for the solar oven project...

I had second period off as well but Ms. James still had her class. Her kids were apparently making solar ovens. I asked ChatGPT what that was and it seemed like a cool project. They needed a lot of supplies for their projects: thermometers, tape, paper, foil, seran wrap, boxes, marshmallows, etc.

I felt dumb sitting there thinking about whether I should go help the teacher in her classroom or if "your" classroom is a sacred space and I’d be annoyed if someone did that to me? I’d like to think all hands on deck is better but idk how things work. So then I was awkwardly anti-lingering via sitting at the desk in “my” classroom.

For several minutes I sat separately and overheard:

• I’m in zero rush to make our solar ovens so if you want to keep messing around fine. I’m in no rush. No rush.
• Abigail, what are you eating?
• Henry, bring those to me.
• Hey! HEY!
• Stop. Eating. Your. Marshmallows.
• If he gets hurt, I’m going to be pissed off.
• ** a large crashing noise ** HEY EVERYBODY, YOU’RE DONE. SIT. IN. YOUR. CHAIR.

I bucked up and went over to see if there’s anything I could do to help, remembering an impetus to do this in the first place was to help teachers. She told me they were going to go outside and test their ovens and that I could come.

35 kids clamored outside with flappy box projects.

They scattered around the front lawn of the school setting up their ovens. I walked around and it was very obvious that the majority had little idea how the oven is supposed to work. Either their boxes weren’t facing the direction of the sun, or they were casting a shadow on their oven, or the seran wrap wasn’t encasing the oven, or the foil was on the outside of the box instead of the inside … there were a lot of variations.

A girl said, “THIS IS STUPID. IT’S TOO COLD. THERE ARE CLOUDS.”.

I suppose she understood that the sun mattered.

A stampede formed.

A kid ripped foil off his oven and created a ball. A game instantly developed and a herd of ~20 kids formed. They were playing a variation of 500 and keep-away. The herd moved along the lawns, accidentally trampling some of the projects. Girls were cartwheeling amidst the swarm. One boy log rolled down the hill babbling and laughing. A lone holdout was hunched over his project further away trying to understand it. When his project was clipped in a fleeting catch attempt, he shrugged, abandoned his project, and joined the game.

Ms. James during this time stood keeping a loose eye on the herd and the other kids dispersed around. I didn’t see her specifically helping anyone with their project. It was more high-level supervision. She seemed to have accepted that it wasn’t a learning moment. I lamely said, “Wow, lot’s of energy!” and she replied, “Yeah, they need to burn it off. Weather isn’t great but this is the only day we can do it.” I commented on how many kids there are. She nonchalantly replied, “I used to teach 40. I think that’s illegal now though.”

Five kids stood over by the street talking and looking angsty.

They said someone ate their marshmallows so the project was pointless. They blamed one girl. She responded, “I can’t have marshmallows. I’m gluten-free.”

A girl with green hair was coloring next to her dilapidated project. I sat down on the ground next to her. She told me she likes to garden. She thought growing things and then being able to harvest them was satisfying. I pointed to the garden on the east side of the building and asked if she participated in that but apparently only 8th graders are allowed to garden. 🤦‍♀️

Another girl eagerly stared at her oven. I asked her how she thinks she could improve her oven and she had some good ideas. She liked science and wanted to understand the function of the seran wrap. I started to ideate with her when Ms. James looked at her watch and shouted, “OKAY! TIME!” and we began wrangling, cleaning up, and heading back inside.

I’d effectively been in charge of nothing and was already tired two hours in.

Meanwhile, Ms. James had juggled 35 to 70 kids at once and was just getting going. The 8:55 bell rang. The bodies jostled out. I felt relief. Then I realized there were 4 minutes and 55 seconds until the next bell would ring and I’d be teaching my own 6th grade science class. Into the breach I went.

Takeaways

• The project required a lot of resources and resulted in very little learning.
• I never heard the teacher teach anything.
• Regardless of the above, Ms. James stamina and patience was impressive.
• It seemed like a daycare going through the motions of project-based learning.
• 6th graders are way smaller than I expected.
• 1-on-1 conversations were great again. Kids were respectful during this time. They also, for the most part, seemed to genuinely like the attention.
• The foil ball game was very resourceful and looked really fun. I liked seeing them have fun. 🤷‍♀️
• I need to deeply reflect on this experience and be self-aware about how it informs my future thoughts on education, teaching, and learning.

Questions

• Is this what most other 6th grade science classes are like?
• Why and how does the school keep operating this way?
• How does Ms. James have the stamina to do what she does all day, every day?
• Does Ms. James think the kids are learning? What is success in her mind?
• Would purely playing outside the whole time have been a better use of time?
• How could a project be structured to be actually effective?
• How much of the issue was that there were 35 kids and one teacher?
• How much of the issue was the rigidity of the schedule and curriculum?
• Can I blame my tendency not to finish things on being conditioned, like these kids, to drop what I’m doing when a bell rings and move to the next thing? Seriously though. 😂