Though Flying Blind, Neither Crash Nor Burn

January 8, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: moral, pedagogy, substitute

The first day of student teaching went smoothly as could be expected, considering that my master teacher called in sick, and told me that I was in charge of her classrooms.

She told me in advance, of course. I serve as her substitute this week, so my immediate there’s-another-adult-around safety net was limited to a teacher-and-a-half, somewhere down the hall. They never showed, naturally.

I was flying blind in the loosest, least literal sense.

Somehow, it pulled together. I had enough mastery of the material — and enough mastery of her established routine — to wing it.

I did make a serious mistake in her first mixed government-English block — I didn’t initially let them out for their customary break.

For the uninitiated, this is an unpardonable sin in student teaching on two levels. First, and perhaps least importantly, I strayed from the established routine without telling the kids beforehand.

It was a minimum day schedule — thanks to a staff meeting from which my master teacher thankfully excused me — and I made the assumption that the barely 35-minute periods were more than enough excuse to keep them in class past the bell. It wasn’t like they had a passing period. Their next class was in the same class, with the same teacher.

Me.

I told them to keep working on their worksheets through the 7-minute passing time.

While the rest of the class moaned, three or four students quickly met my ultimatum with self-righteous fury, and I made the rookiest of mistakes. I caved in.

I probably lost quite a lot of respect from my students as a result. Never, ever, ever break that level of covenant unless ye wish to incur the wrath of the mighty, fiery, five-headed dragon of pestilent famine.

In short, a no-no.

The moral of the story? If you rock the boat, you will get wet.