Oops Week: Erin

Miserable fail: Math. And fooling 8th graders."I'm a substitute teacher for K-12. Mostly I sub for high school, and usually it's a pretty kicked back job. I love those days when I open the door, and see a DVD on the teacher's desk. Granted, I have to watch the same first hour of the same movie 5 times, but whatever. The only problem that occasionally arises, is when the teacher leaves extremely detailed plans, and wants me to teach an intricate lesson to the students, and I happen to suck at the subject they want me to teach. I can handle these kind of classes easily if it's under 3rd grade. The little guys for the most part haven't learned how to recognize BS when they see it. My most dreaded teaching subject: Advanced Algebra.

A while back, I was called in to sub for 8th grade. The teacher left about 5 pages of detailed instructions for teaching her lessons. Everything was going great until math. I started looking at their book, and it was crazy difficult. I mean, I was relatively good at math in junior high and high school. It was never my favorite subject, but I got by. So I decide to work a little BS magic with these 8th graders. I figured I could do math Socratically (is that a word?) and just ask them questions. They would end up teaching themselves the lesson, and not even realize my mathematical shortcomings!

HUGE backfire. They didn't fall for it. I think 8th graders may have a little shark in them because I'm almost certain they can smell fear. The little sharks began attacking me and heckling me! They were like, "how can you be a teacher if you don't even know advanced algebra!" and so it went on like that for a bit. I was soooo embarrassed and I wanted run out the door and vanish. Instead I decided to tell them sorry, but I haven't studied 8th grade math for 10 years, and I'm really not great at math anyways. Plus I don't ever use this kind of math. And that was my second ooops. I gave them amo to say "when are we ever going to use this?!!" Yeah, that was a difficult sub day.

I did learn a couple of lessons though. Even though they can be jerky little 13 year olds, they are still people, and there is a chance that they might not heckle you when you tell the truth.

Also, I must get this book by Winnie Cooper..."

Erin, doing algebra while being heckled by middle schoolers sounds like a nightmare I had once. You are lucky you survived! You are one tough chick.