Blog

by Tom Anselm

Since retiring from teaching in 2010, I’ve had a variety of jobs. Working at a golf course, taking people to doctor appointments. I tried shoe sales and that was a serious disaster, given the low pay and lots of bending. Not to mention other peoples’ feet.

Now a lot of retired teachers say that the last thing they would ever do once they hang up the dry erase markers was to substitute teach. Well, I didn’t have 30-plus years in like a lot of these folks, having done other stuff for about 20 years of my middle adulthood.

So my pension, although a good one, is about 20 years less in accrued value. Still, I have to say that, with some exceptions, I had a pretty good run with kids.

So, anyway, after the first 6 months of retirement, with a cleaned-out garage, a few minor fixer-upper projects (very minor, believe me) and not having a real hobby like woodworking or gardening, I realized that subbing might be a good gig. Pay was clearly above what I would get as a Wal-Mart greeter, and I had no interest in being a cart boy for Dierbergs. Plus there is no paperwork, grading, lesson planning, principal meetings, parents. Work when you want and if you don’t like the school or the kids, then you just don’t have to go back. Pretty sweet set-up, really.

So it is within this context that I have been in for the last seven years in elementary, middle and high schools that I share the following observations.

Let’s start with elementary. I have done both special education and regular, across St. Louis and St. Charles counties. At this age, the kids are still respectful, again with some exceptions, they line up in the halls, walk in a straight line, don’t beat each other in the lunchroom, and most want to learn. And a bit surprisingly, I found this to be consistent across socioeconomic and geographical areas.

Then we get to middle school, and my experiences varied. Mix up the realities of hormones surging out of a kid’s pores, the disparities in physical size, the gaps between how kids were growing educationally and just the sheer idea that these young people were struggling with how they were going to cope with life as a ‘tween’ (defined by some as between 13 and 15years of age) and one could say these schools take on a volatility that doesn’t show up as much from Kindergarten to 5th or 6th grade. But it rears its ugly head daily at the middle level. Not to mention that the demands are becoming greater here for achievement.

Moving on to high school, it has been said that a boy comes in a child and leaves a man, and a girl, who has been maturing already, definitely is a woman by 12th grade.

That short four-year period is perhaps the period of greatest growth, both physically and emotionally, that a human being experiences since they were totally dependent as an infant and then walking and talking and creating general mayhem by 3 years old.

It is a time when they can get their driver’s license, find a job, date, start experimenting with drugs and sex and separation from their parents, all the while wondering what is to become of them after graduation. Is it college? Work? The Military? When will people just stop asking me all these questions I can’t answer? The students I run into run the gamut from loners to extremely social beings, and everything in between. It is a tough time, with lots of temptations, but even more opportunities.

One the whole, with my limited subjective sample of schools and kids, I would say parents are getting their money’s worth, whether by tuition or taxes, in both public and private settings. But there is one glaring issue that I have seen as a problem in schools, and it is that everyone has a cell phone, from grade school on.

In a future visit with you, I will discuss this phenomenon.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us