Portable Electronics & Students

Last week, I met a 5th grader with a cell phone.

Okay, I'm not that old, but I grew up in a time before cell phones.  Heck, I remember car phones.

I got my first cell phone at 20.  Now it seems every kid has their own cell phone, iPod, and whatever the new thing this old lady hasn't heard about yet.  I don't understand it at all.  I've asked students how they got them, and they say their parents pay for them.  That blows my mind!  My future children are going to hate me because I am not going to buy them the latest and greatest cell phone/iPod/electronic device with every feature and service imaginable.  I know I'm unusual; the only thing I use my cell phone for is to make telephone calls.  Okay, well, I sometimes play Tetris on it too, but these day everyone's texting and buying custom ringtones and surfing the Internet on their phones.  Kids can rack up major charges, and I can't understand any parent allowing it, let alone paying for it.

Electronic devices have major issues in education.  Okay, fine, buy your kid an expensive device and pay all of the associated charges.  Just keep those darn things out of the classroom!!  They're impossible to get rid of.  It's almost disturbing how many students I see with those things in the hallways and in the classroom.  Watching kids try to hid them is rather funny as well.  They try to hid their plugs by running the cord under their shirt and wear their big hoodies or they'll only put in the ear plug on the side facing away from the teacher's desk.  More than once I've seen cell phones in their laps as they text a friend.

One of the first questions I get after, "Are you the sub?" is "Can we listen to our iPods?"  I don't get paid enough to fight that battle, so despite my personal opinion that portable electronics is slowly destroying our nation's youth, I just tell them that as long as I can't hear their music, I don't care.  It's sad, I know, but when you're in a different classroom everyday and hardly acknowledged by the staff, it's hard not to be a bit apathetic.

One day... when I have my own classroom, all that will be banned, and if my students want music, they will have to pick something from my music collection!

Welcome to the fabulous life...

...of a substitute teacher. Here are some of the benefits you can look forward to:

• Never knowing if you'll get a job
• Groggily typing your passcode after being woken up by your cell phone
• Watching the same movie five or more times in one day
• Kids who equate substitute with day off
• Teachers & administrators treating you as a sub-par educator and human being in general
• Wondering if taking out all of those college loans were really worth this
• Constant prayer that you will get a full time job over the summer

This blog will be the chronicle of my substitute teaching experience. There are hundreds like me who, every day, participate in this glorified babysitting. Some are retired teachers who must be running low on their social security benefits or are insane enough to enjoy subbing. Most, however, are recent graduates in the field of education, hoping and praying that they can weasel their way into a decent school district and begin the thankless, exhausting task of teaching.

I began subbing in January 2009 in a suburban district in Ohio after leaving the urban charter school I had taught at for four months. Believe me, this suburban kids are cake compared to what I put up with at the urban charter school. I was naive enough to believe that the administration would support me and run the school consistently. Now I'm stuck in the limbo of substitute teaching. My husband is getting his master's, so I'm stuck in this area. He keeps me going, along with the goal of getting 30 sub day so I'll get a pay raise.

So welcome to the jungle.