It's easy to identify which students might benefit from individualized instruction (answer: most of them).
It's easy to leave a lesson plan for a sub.
It's easy to schedule a tutoring session.
Whenever I had a chance to meet a school's principal, I offered my services. I told him/her that I had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for my old school and that I'd be happy to help them find grants for their school during the week I was assigned to their school. I offered to research what's available for any particular program they were interested in pursuing. No one took me up on it. I also offered to tutor and even help with clerical work (which many teachers refuse to do - which I totally understand). Every once in a while, a school secretary would let me help in the office, stuffing envelopes, answering phones. I would have LOVED tutoring kids. Every time I was placed in a class to assist another teacher, I jumped at opportunities to work one-on-one with students.
It was amazing to me how many times I was sent into a class with no lesson plan in some of the schools. This happened in science classes and in art classes. Again, this is poor leadership. It would have never happened in my old school where the teachers create curriculum by serving on teams. They share responsibility, have each others' backs, make sure their students advance. They are an integral part of the school's leadership and have a voice in just about every major decision. My former principal was a facilitator with strong leadership qualities, especially his ability to listen and his flexibility.
Although I thanked Comus, the god of comedy, for the wacky, explosive principal who went ballistic when I asked her for the bathroom key; she was a perfect example of a "top-down" school leader. Whenever she made her entrance into the main office, the secretaries put their heads down. You never knew when the next explosion was coming. Everyone in that school seemed crabby to me. Now -- think of all the creativity in the people who go to work there every day: teachers, social workers, guidance counselors. Instead of encouraging them to create enrichment for their students, they seemed fearful...afraid to speak up. But - I was only there for a week. Who knows? Maybe the school was celebrating "Cowering Week" and the rest of the year, everybody brings each other flowers and chocolate and they all hug it out.
I do want to point out that in some of my 25 schools, the administrators were perfectly polite to me and very well organized.
JB: Good point. Your memoir is often amusing but really a very disturbing account of your year as a sub. I'm assuming you burned bridges if you had ever hoped to return to the NYC school system. Were you worried about offending guilty administrators by making them too easily identified? Have you received any feedback from any of those schools?
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