The Substitute Teacher

For the past two days Sam has been in Fort Yukon chaperoning four students on field trip with the district’s vocational education program. While he is gone, I get to be his sub! Although I have worked in schools for the past few years as an OT, I have never actually subbed in a classroom. It has been an eye-opening experience to do Sam’s job for the past two days!

Have you ever done your spouse’s job for a day? Even though you can talk about your day with your spouse and feel like you know what is going on in their work life, it is a whole different experience to actually do their job for a day!

You may be wondering, how did I end up getting volunteered/asked to sub? Well, in a small village such as Arctic there aren’t many people willing, able, or qualified to substitute teach. So I said I would give it a try. I already knew most of the students, how hard could it be?

Sam left me clear directions and detailed lesson plans, but nothing could prepare me for the challenges of instructing a classroom in which you have multiple grade levels, ability levels and a wide variety of attention spans. Not to mention the fact that I had the same group of students all morning and was supposed to cover content for three different subjects! I felt like a Ring Master trying to put on the whole circus all by myself. One moment I was the lion tamer and then the next I was the lady in sequins riding on the back of the elephant, meanwhile I was also supposed to be swinging from the trapeze! How does Sam do this every day? It is not like a big school where the teacher may get a few minutes to set up materials between classes or can teach the whole class the same lesson. I recently read the book “The Kids from Nowhere” and now I really understand some of what that teacher describes from his experiences teaching in rural Alaska.

I found in the midst of it all, the most important thing was to take a breath and try to spend a few minutes connecting with each student. The biggest hurdle was not what I was teaching, but helping the kids to see themselves as capable of learning it and motivating them to do so! It was also very important to go do some laundry for the kid who went fishing last night and smelled so bad of fish guts that the other kids would not sit next to him!

After my first day of subbing I was exhausted, but I stayed after school to work on a personal project, sewing curtains for our cabin. We have been doing a little cabin makeover; personalizing our cabin and making the most of the small space. Two of the middle school girls were very interested in what I was doing and hung-out after school to watch.

When I offered to let them do the sewing they were so excited! They had never used a sewing machine before and thought it was really fun. We were there for at least three hours pinning fabric, sewing, ironing it and sewing some more.

Maybe it was actually the best class I taught all day! Later that night, I hung the curtains in my cabin and beamed with pride. Those curtains mean the world to me because of the time I shared with those girls while they helped me make them!