In between my years at Katella High School and Oak Junior High School, I spent a year traveling and taking assignments as a long term substitute for teachers who were going to be absent for two or three weeks for a variety of reasons.
One class to which I was assigned was at a school that was so tough that the chess team was on steroids! (I'm just kidding, but it seemed like it!) The teacher I was replacing had "sold out" in order to avoid conflict. He had made a deal with the kids that if they would do three math problems per day, they could then talk or play games the rest of the period. You can just imagine their attitude when I took over in mid May and gave them a full day's workload and passed out an "F" to each of those who only did three problems instead of the assigned 20.
On my second day in this class, I was subjected to a chorus of complaints, and very creative insults.
After hearing such endearing comments as...
"What'd you do? Leave your brains in your other pants?"
"Your an idiot, what makes you think you can take away our freedom?"
"Hey, Schlatter, when do you Nazi's meet?"
"If you fell on your butt, I bet you'd need brain surgery."
By the end of the day, I was in shell shock. In one 45-minute period, I had heard more insults than I had in my entire career up to that point. Having taught drama, sponsored student government, and done some coaching, I was used to an entirely different type of student. I had never encountered an entire room filled with anger, depression and defeatism.
I felt like a tennis player who had suddenly been thrown into a rugby match without even knowing the rules.
All sorts of thoughts crossed my mind that night.
"Did the prisons know that all these young ruffians were free?"
"Maybe there was a Dr. Frankenstein and he had children, all of them in this town."
I had no idea where to start. It seemed so hopeless. Their anger and apathy seemed to be insurmountable barriers. How could I help them overcome lifelong habits of failure in only three weeks... Continue
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