On Appreciating Substitutes!

On Jackson's blog, I found a response he wrote to Luis's post on substitutes.

Subs want to help us and care about all of us. We need to in turn show our care for them too. If you don't appreciate your education, leave the classroom instead of wasting the sub's time. Teachers are extremely important figures in society and everyone should realize that; they care for our future, even subs.

Like Jackson mentioned earlier in his post, substitutes are also teachers, but they are temporary.  Even though they may not know all our names or the norms of the particular class, they still have valuable knowledge that they can share with us, but oftentimes, students tend to disrespect and take advantage of substitutes.

Many times, when a teacher sets a rule in the classroom, when the teacher is there, a vast majority of the time, we follow the rules to avoid getting into trouble.  When there's a sub though, we choose to ignore those rules, and just do things as we'd like.  We take advantage of the substitute's minimal knowledge of the rules at the school and in the class, and use electronics or eat, and often do not do the work assigned, but on rare occasions, we do.

It's true though, just because the substitute doesn't stay for a long time at the school, dedicated to teach students at the school everyday, it doesn't mean that they don't care about your education or want to teach students.  We should appreciate substitutes more often, we under-appreciate them and all the effort they put into teaching or at least just watching us at school.  ASTI subs are extremely generous in my opinion, for being willing to find our small campus, and to stay with a room full of teenagers for a day.  It doesn't sound like a very fun or easy job.

Just a little story I'd like to mention about a substitute in fifth grade:
I remember back in fifth grade, I had (what I thought was) the coolest teacher ever.  He was nice, our history lessons were super fun, he had awesome books, lots of free time, and I always enjoyed my time in his class.  One day he was absent though, so of course we had a sub.  The trouble-maker of the class and the girl he liked (who btw was a goody-two-shoes) both teamed up and set up a string in the front of the class, where'd she would walk by, a few inches away from the floor.

I remember seeing her tripping over it, falling, and all the students began to laugh at her.  She started to cry.  Yet, the ignorant elementary students we were. people continued to laugh.  I think I probably did too.  But still all these years later, whenever I remember that moment, I feel guilty.  She was a nice person, she didn't deserve it.  She didn't do anything, but come in to substitute for us, which the students decided to take an advantage of, and use it to their entertainment.

Please don't do anything like that to a sub. Ever. It's not nice. At all.

Just saying.~