Enter Obi-wan
My assignment was for a local elementary school where I had met the teacher.  He ran his class like a Jedi boot camp with posters and models to match.  He had taught his fifth graders to be fairly independent and I hoped this behavior would continue today.
Arriving in the classroom early, I noticed the lesson plan from the day before.  It highlighted lots of independent work and study periods.  A note from yesterday’s sub said the class had been wonderfully well behaved.  “Thanks for an easy day!” it concluded.  Would I be so lucky?
Less than plan
For starters, I found no lesson plan on his desk.  His illness had extended another day, so this omission neither surprised nor upset me.  I liked talking to the kids, taking my own best shot at making them see things with interest and curiosity.  The absence of a rigorous plan gave me more flexibility to explore with them.  After checking in the office for a sub plan and finding none, I looked over yesterday’s.  I could easily work with these subjects, taking each a next step.  The bell rang; I walked out to meet the troops.
Pleasantly ignored
The teacher’s notes had suggested that the kids would go about their morning tasks independently.  So they did – collecting homework, noting who had not finished on a whiteboard, passing out new material, checking attendance.  I asked a few of them what tasks they were doing; largely, I let these impressively organized activities continue.
Ruling the masses
After introducing myself, I gave them my four basic rules:
“1) Subs do things differently sometimes, and that’s okay.  It might be fun to do things in a different way.”  This kept at bay the swarm of well-intentioned children simultaneously explaining how the class was to be taught.  It also gave me a little room to move when accomplishing an academic objective.
“2) One person talks at a time – whether it’s you, a classmate or me.”  That way everybody can actually listen to peers and their teacher.  With my waning sense of hearing, it was especially important for me to minimize the background noise.
“3) Learn something new every day.”  Otherwise, what’s the point of coming to school, or of walking out your door to anywhere?
“4) Learning should be fun!”  As should life.  And why not?  The kids learn better if they’re having fun; it’s a repeating cycle when it works.
Perfect students
Yesterday’s first formal activity involved journal writing on the subject of “I would be a perfect student if I …” fill in the blank.  Today I started a discussion by asking some of them to share the thoughts they had written.
“I would be a perfect student if I turned in all my homework on time, came to class with sharpened pencils and paid attention,” offered one student.  Nice, but not quite there.  I wanted to open this up a little, beyond the superficial actions of classwork.  School should be about exploration, not regimen.
Philosophy 101
“Why are we here?  Why do we come to school?” I asked.  Some faces looked taken aback by such fundamental questioning.  To my pleasure, I saw that most were pondering this existential puzzle.
“To learn things,” answered one boy.  At that moment, I knew we were into a good day.  On the surface, it’s a simple question.  Yet many kids think school is just where you have to go, a place that gives you homework and where you meet your friends.  For them, school is just something that happens to you.  I want them to pick up the reigns, to make school happen for them.
“Right!  We’re here to learn, and learning things is more important than knowing things.  We can’t know everything.  Even if we did, we forget!  But the ability to learn things — to look it up, to figure it out — that makes us strong.”  They seemed to be following along.
“Who are you learning stuff for?  Your teacher?”  Some nodded.  “Your parents?”  They hesitated, now suspecting a trick question.
“For us.”  I loved this little guy.  He was being my straight man.  I always try to find some way to put empowerment into the classroom, some ownership.  Learning is their responsibility, their advantage, their privilege.  He was picking up on this train of thought wonderfully.
“Right!  You learn for you!  It makes you smarter and stronger.”  An independent group like this easily got the concept.  “Not only that, it’s fun!  It’s exploring.  Think of it: you get to come to school and explore stuff together, to find out about things with your friends.”  We talked some more about “the perfect student.”  Those who had written only of homework and polite behavior I prodded for a few words about learning.
Role reversal
Next was math.  I saw they were doing fractions so we started simplifying.  I wrote down some homework on the board.  “These are some answers to plain number problems, and here are some to word problems.  You be the teachers.  You write the questions for each of these answers.  It will be your test.”
They looked puzzled at this change of position.  We worked the first one of each type.
The first answer was 1/3.  “It can be anything!  Simplify 3/9, or 100/300.”  I always figured one could understand problems better if he could see them from the origination side, the tester rather than just the testee.  With lingering hesitation, they wrote down the assigned answers.  A few started offering source problems out loud.
“And here’s the pitch”
To liven things up, I started a game of “math baseball.”  That always added a competitive relevance to problem solving.  Soon we had kids answering my problem pitches and running around bases in the room.  Each was eager to be up to bat at the board.
Next we had a study hall.  I’m not very good at sitting around while the students work by themselves.  They had a study hall yesterday.  I sounded the waters to see if they wanted to have one today.  “No!”  “It’s boring.”  “Let’s play math baseball.”
Off the beaten track
“Okay, remember the rule about Subs doing things differently?  Let’s choose something to learn as a class: whatever you want, we’ll do our own research.”
“Let’s play real baseball!”  “Flag football!”  “Heads up seven up!”  Several more games were suggested.
This wasn’t going the way I had hoped.  Where was the curiosity about some subject other than sports?
“Sputnik,” said a boy in the back.  All right!  We were back in business: a science topic, and a political one too.
“Great idea.  Does anyone know what Sputnik had to do with Americans getting to the moon?”  No response; I continued.  “In 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik.  It scared the Americans to think of the Russians peering down on us.  So we started our own space program.  Several years later, President Kennedy announced that we would send a man to the moon by the end of that decade.  All of this started with Sputnik.”
“No, he meant the game,” said a boy near the front.  Ah, Sputnik the game, I sighed with recollection.  The last time I subbed here I was a PE teacher.  Sputniks were spheres the kids assembled with hula-hoops.  Opposing teams tried to knock them over with dodge balls.  So much for the innocent curiosity of the world around us.  Maybe I had to reset my sights a little.
Children of invention
“Okay, we can’t just play a game.  This has to be a research project.”  Their enthusiasm started to fade.  “We have to invent a game.”
The hands flew up again.  “It can be like flag football, but we’ll play with balls.”  “Yeah, we can knock over Sputniks.”  “There can be safe zones inside the other teams territory.”  “Flag Sputnik!”  If I couldn’t get academic pursuit, at least I could engender some creativity and class empowerment.
Organized chaos
“We need flags!” said one girl.  I sent her back to our room in search of paper strips.  I claimed a grassy area for our class and started them on their sputnik building.  At the sound of my whistle, they were off.
Flag Sputnik was a little chaotic at first, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.  Moreso, they enjoyed playing a game they had invented. Chalk one up for empowerment.  I watched more than ref’ed as they swarmed over the field, tides that moved to some rhythm understood by them if not by me.  At the bell we gathered our gear and headed back to the classroom.
Life is but a play
The next item on yesterday’s list had been to write about conflict resolution and avoidance.  A chart had some basic principles about ignoring insults, reflecting attitudes and consulting authority figures.  I asked kids to work in groups and present skits to demonstrate.  I watched budding actors and actresses stumble through likely social encounters and resolve them.  They laughed at themselves and their friends.
Too often in elementary schools I’d seen kids run to teachers.  I didn’t like this tattle-tale attitude – not so much for the whining but for the victimization of it.  Those kids abdicated their authority and capability to someone else.
“Remember to tell the person that you didn’t like what he said or did.  Maybe he didn’t mean it, or maybe he didn’t realize that it hurt you or your feelings.  Don’t run to a teacher before you try to communicate with that person yourself!”  Take the reigns, kids.
Outsourcing
The last two periods were conducted by specialists in the fields of Science and Choir.  Absent my class, I walked around the room, amazed by al the models and action figures frozen in ardent battle.  Whatever got their attention and made it fun, I thought.
Oops
On a table near the board, I saw it: Lesson Plan, Wednesday.  Jeez!  Now I find it.  I looked over the pages: mostly independent study on work in process, and a math packet.  He was making it easy for a sub.  Nothing seemed urgent or essential.
After marching the kids back from choir, I distributed the math packet.
“We have to do al this too?” complained several.
I countered: “We have to do the homework your teacher gave us.  That comes first.  But I’ll let you pick just two of the problems from the answers I gave you.”  They seemed assuaged.  “And I’ll tell your teacher I gave you an extra day to finish the packets.  I was guessing he’d give us a little slack.
They began their ritual of preparing for departure from another day in school.  “Well kids,” I asked, “did you learn anything today?”
They continued their gathering.  Then one boy shouted, “I learned how to make a great game!”
“I learned you’re a great sub!” added another.
“I learned math baseball is fun.”
“I learned that if you go to a teacher right away, you skipped a step.”
It was indeed a good day.