School Days

I am a substitute teacher at the school my wife teaches first grade. Actually, to be accurate, I am tutoring 3rd thru 6th graders in math. This school is in the "hood" and the students just don't care about anything. They are rude, disrespectful and completely unmotivated to learn. The last couple of days, one of the sixth grade teachers has been ill and the school has called for a sub.

On Thursday the sub lost control of the class (which believe me is not a hard thing to do with these kids) and the principal asked me to go in and help out. On Friday, there was another sub, and they didn't even give him the chance to lose control, I was asked to take him to the classroom and stay with him. These kids are unbelievable... you give them work to do and they stare out you. I couldn't get one kid to work, everytime I looked at him he was looking at me. Finally I asked him why he was staring at me and he said "Iuhno" (I think that means I don't know). He looked down at his paper, so I focused my attention on another student. I looked back at the first kid and he was staring at me again! So finally I said, you know I'd like to think you're staring at me because I'm so good looking that you can't keep your eyes off of me, but somehow I don't think that's it. That produced a lot of groans for the kids and a teacher who had just walked in was trying desperately to stifle a laugh. The kid finally looked down at his paper and did his work.

Friday was pretty much like Thursday. We had an assembly on "bullying" which took up about an hour and a half. I got a break.

Neither sub has any intention of coming back to this school. Who can blame them? May next week I can get back to tutoring and try to help some kids pass.

I just don't understand these kids. They live in a poor neighborhood and we are trying to provide them with and opportunity to learn, get a decent education, and someday move away from that neighborhood into one where gunshots are the background noise. They either don't see and understand the opportunity being presented to them, or they just don't care. I think it's the latter. It makes me very sad to see this, but what else can we do? The teachers all try their hardest, but the kids don't. No one can make them understand that they are just dooming themselves to repeat the cycle and stay in the environment I believe they really want to get out of. Maybe they are just afraid to try... but how do we, as their teachers, give them the courage to try? I'm open to suggestions on this, if anyone has one.

Well, I'll keep trying to get through to them and hopefully I will touch some of them who want a better life. I just hope those who succeed come back and tell me. It would be nice to know if succeeded or have just been wasting my time. No matter what, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. I sleep better at night that way.