Subbing for High School Students

Each and every day I stand in front of Middle and High School Students,

and watch them. Yes it seems like an easy job; after all you mostly hand

out papers take roll and make sure none of them stab each other. My job

is to maintain the safety of students, and if they happen to get any

work done, then I did an ok job.  Some days if they aren’t asking you a

billion times if they can go to the bathroom, or go to their lockers so

they can roam the campus in efforts to pass the time, it can be.

Depending on the teacher and the overall class mood the day can go one

of two ways, wonderfully quiet and smooth, or disastrously chaotic. Most

days their teachers assign busy work because they know their students

won’t really attempt to do much when a sub is there. They sit around and

chatter and try to impress each other, they throw notes, and giggle,

they flirt, eat,  tag and well usually do anything but their work. The

rowdy classes can fry your nerves with the ever common outlandish

overdramatic behavior. Tempers flaring and cuss words spewing out of

these temperamental beasts can be enough to make one have a nervous

breakdown. It is any wonder why teachers choose their profession because

after all it isn’t for the money. And as stressful as high school

students can be, middle school is worse. These poor kids don’t know how

to sit in a chair for over 6 minute intervals and they constantly roam

the room like lost sheep.  Your voice is lost after telling them to sit

down 500 million times throughout each period. 

The typical student usually gets to school just barely on time, early in

the mornings they sit quietly as they are still awake, and for this

reason most teachers enjoy the first period of the day. As they wake up,

they begin to gossip, and talk about everything from their mean teachers

and loads of homework to how to get pregnant. When a substitute walks to

one of their rooms a whisper is always heard as a sigh of relief, or

most commonly “free-day.” Teenagers are very social beings and when they

aren’t making out with each other they are thinking about their crushes

or relationships. Mostly they sit and talk hoping to feel apart of a

group. This can mostly be seen at lunch. The jocks sit on the yellow

benches, next to the cheer girls. The guitar kids sit under the tree,

and everyone else sits with their little groups in order to feel like

they belong.