This is the first entry to what will hopefully be many annoyed rants about being a Central California substitute teacher. Since I have been riding this roller-coaster for a couple of months now, I thought it would be appropriate to share some of the more memorable stories with the one visitor to this website. You know who you are, dad.

A couple of weeks ago I was teaching at a high school here in town. There were about five or six classes, two of them being honors, one of them sheltered English (or ESL), and a couple of regular classes. The ESL students were so pleasant and provided no trouble, but students from the regular classes were being difficult. This appeared to be a fairly affluent school, which accounted for many of the students’ bratty attitudes.

One child in particular wasn’t on the roll sheet, but the other students seemed to know who he was. I probably should have called the office to ask why he wasn’t on the roster, but instead I just wrote his name down.

This student was constantly talking with the other students and being disruptive. I told him to put away his iPod and he pretended to do so, but moments later he had it out again. I told him a second time to put it away and that the next time I would confiscate it. He did not comply so I had him hand it over. After class he asked for it back but I told him he would need to pick it up at the office after school.

Flash forward several hours, this student returned to class and I told him again he would have to wait at the office. But instead of going to the office to wait, he returned with two of his friends. Luckily I had already closed and locked the classroom door, but this did not stop him from pounding on the door and shouting for me to come out. I told him through the door that if they did not return to the office immediately that I would call campus security on them. They were waiting at the office when I got there.

The attendance secretary was surprised when the child told her that he was not a real student at the school but he had some arrangement with the regular teacher to sit in on the class. I don’t know what this arrangement was all about, but it was clearly putting teachers and students at risk, especially when the child had no accountability for his behavior in class.