curiouser and curiouser

To refine my theory:

Teaching: A job.
Special Ed teaching: A different job.
Subbing: Still another job.
Subbing Special Ed: A freaking nightmare.

I subbed a Special Ed math class yesterday composed of about 20 students (HUGE for SpEd), 17 of them boys, about 12 probably classified as "behavior disabilities," with no lesson plan and nothing in the room for them to do - no worksheets, no mini-activities, not even a TV. So they entertained themselves. You might think you can imagine how they did so. But you would be wrong.

Picture this:

• Students chasing each other around the room at a flat run
• Students standing/jumping on top of desks
• Students shouting obscenities and racial slurs
• Students pushing/slapping/punching each other
• Students standing waay too close to me, asking me waay-too-personal questions, and touching me on the arm and back whenever feasible
• Students "chirping" each other on their phones (curse you, Boost mobile!)
• Students stealing dry erase markers from the teacher's desk, taking out the cores, and using them to tag
• Students stealing paper clips and tacks from the teacher's desk and hurling them, along with the marker husks, across the room at each others' heads
• Students sitting in the room's two rolling chairs and pushing each other, very fast, into the walls, or, alternatively, into each other, sumo-style
• Students sneaking out of the room, then pounding violently on the doors and windows
  

All at the same time.

My favorite moment came when the most out-of-control of the bunch, with the biggest-ever glob of snot leaking out of his nose, rather than go get a tissue, started dancing "gettin' low"-style around the room singing his own version of the crazy-offensive "Whisper Song," changing the lyrics to "Wait til you see my snot, b****! Wait til you see my snot!"

To make matters worse, this was the day's long period, which is a combination second period and homeroom. On top of this, the 10th grade classes were all taking the PSAT, so we had a special extended period. Of course so one bothered to announce this, so I also had to try to quell a mutiny when the bell did not ring for an additional thirty minutes.

I kept thinking, This cannot seriously be happening. This is the kind of thing right-wing suburban cartoonists draw to show how insane and fundamentally useless teaching in the inner city is. I seriously considered walking up to the front office and telling the scheduling ladies, who tell me every day how they abuse me by sending me period-to-period where no one else wants to go, that this was it, my limit, and that if they did not find me another class, I was going home and would be back when my track came on. I could not bring myself to do it, though, and it turned out OK - the teacher's other four periods each had a maximum of five very calm students. We are masters of scheduling at my school, we are.

So today I thought things could not get weirder or more stressful, until oh, about 6:25 am, at which point I snapped awake on a no-longer-moving bus only to be unloaded on the street, where four cars' worth of police were waiting to arrest a schizophrenic-sounding young man who had been unnerving the other passengers with his shouted obsecenities (in two languages, no less) and frantic head-pounding. As the police (all eight of them) attempted to subdue and cuff him, for what crime I could not tell you, he kept shouting, "They're terrorists! They're here to kill me!"

I was so sleep-deprived and hazy, all I could think about was that people were going to rush the bus and take my good seat once we got the all-clear to get back on board.

I decided my day needed resetting and stopped on the way to school to buy myself a donut. It seemed to help.