Don’t dis the teacher you’re replacing. The only case I can remember where a sub managed to get away with saying that she thought the regular was making a serious mistake… the sub was the regular’s sister.
If you’re going to lose control, do it calmly. No, really, I’m serious! We had the following incidents in the same year. We only changed location for Draftsmanship, Gym and the French students, for French (English stayed in our regular classroom). Windows at the left, a raised area before the blackboard with the teacher’s desk at the left, door at the right and on the back:
- a bird gets into the class during first hour, hides under the raised area at the blackboard. We leave every window open during mid-morning break and lunch. Last period, the math teacher tells us to close the windows, we explain about the bird, she says it’s probably left. At one point, we’re all silent and she’s at the far right of the blackboard. She moves besides her desk and we notice a shleepy featherball (do birds yawn?) standing there. She puts her hand besides the bird. It wiggles a bit. She moves her hand without looking… puts it on top of the bird… bird looks startled and finally awake but can’t move… she turns her head… looks at the bird… and YELLS fit to wake the dead! Leaving the poor bird behind, she jumps over two rows of desks, runs through two more and hides behind the door, yelling “take it away, take it away!” with enough exclamation marks to be declared insane right there.
The poor birdie, having been freed from the opressing hand, hides back under the raised area. We manage to get him out (the teacher’s yells bring the next-door teacher looking; next-door teacher rolls his eyes and goes back to teach), toss him out of the window.
The teacher walks back in cautiously and starts explaining something about allergy to feathers as we’re closing the windows (old building, they were creaky).
Bird flies back in.
This time, the teacher didn’t stop at the door…
- French class, so I didn’t actually see it, but they were next door so we heard some of it. The guys having French were the ones from my group, we were having English at the same time.
Teacher, a tiny, ancient nun more feared than the 7 plagues of Egypt, sees a rat.
Teacher stops mid-sentence. Thinks. Stands. Takes chair away from desk. Gets on chair. Gets on desk. Tells the one guy in the class who has a reputation of being able to scare said 7 plagues away, “Mister Student, would you kindly remove that rat from my presence? And do not forget to come back here, class is not over.”
He grabbed the rat, took it down to the patio, came back.
Guess what teacher wasn’t there next year?
PS: sorry about the double post, please someone remove the first one!
