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With a few days off due to the snow, I have had a chance to reflect on my substitute teaching thus far.  This semester has been a blow to m ego to be sure.  It is a rare situation in education for a substitute to be treated the same as a regular teacher.  From the students it is not as challenging, but when other teachers regard you as just a sub, I find it difficult.  This is particularly cutting, because I have a teaching degree and have been a regular teacher.  The humiliation is intensified when I substitute beside teachers that I graduated with or ahead of.  I may need to just get tougher, that’s true, but I am keenly aware of this when I walk into the schools.

I have also found that during my experience with children as young as three and as old as twenty, from students with severe mental disability to students blessed with exceptional intellect, that at every level there are students who will annoy and students who will endear.  For me, I have found no “right age.”
The teacher voice, that loud distinctive talk for conversing with an entire room, I have yet to develop with any fluency.  That fact may be the reason I have to grit my teeth when other teachers struggle to turn off said voice.  Some teachers speak as loudly in personal conversation, and I struggle with listening.

This brings me to my next educational struggle.  Being a conscientious objector, I am deeply committed to the truth that force and coercion are not the appropriate Kingdom means for convincing others to adhere to the desired idea.  So in the same way I don’t believe war creates peace, in education I do not believe loud creates quiet.  I am very weary of raising my voice to quiet the voices of students.  I believe in this principle and am seeking ways to implement that style of management in my classrooms.

Lastly in this list that I hope seems less like gripes and more like areas I see that could be better, I believe that teachers develop a subtle racism by not recognizing the difference between correlation and causation.  If two factors have a large correlation but there can be no causation of one to the other, then I believe it should not be a focus.  This happens most often, that I have seen, with race, particularly black students.  We see it in schools, universities, and national policy.  Race is a heavy focus in education.  It starts with a correlation between black students and poor performance.  To me, we have to decide causation.  Since we are not going to say that poor performance changes your skin color, then maybe some races are physiologically poorer performers.  If so, we cannot really change it anyway, so why talk about it.  I venture to say most of us do not want to agree with that.  Then we need to stop talking about race.  Save race discussions for what shampoo to use and how much sun you need.  Find a different correlation.  Stop being lazy, and looking at color because it’s obvious.  The cause might be parenting, culture, socio-economic, but I’m almost certain it is not race.
With about six months of a teaching career, these are my thoughts.  Take them for whatever they may be worth.