Archive for November 19th, 2008
Today, I was a science teacher’s substitute in an inner-city high school, a school with a reputation as poor as it gets. His students were assigned a grueling amount of bookwork for 90-minute block periods at a time.
By all rights, this was set to be a stressful, almost unmanageable day. I had accepted the job above the elementary schools available only because I felt like having a free period. I just checked out an oral history of the zombie apocalypse, and I wanted to get some reading done.
Sure, they got antsy about halfway through — I let them off with a five-minute break of walking around. Sure, there were a few chatters — a stern look set those two straight.
It’s a testament to their leash’s normal tightness that while I had no free period today, I’ve known 201 pages of World War Z.
Substituting doesn’t have benefits, but it certainly has perks.
