A New Teaching Experience

I have been surprised of late that I still get called to go in to substitute positions. For those that don't know, I have spent the last several years substitute teaching for both Long Beach Unified School District and Kelly Educational Services. Summer school positions in Long Beach are quite coveted and competitive, and most of the substitute teaching is done by those that are full time teachers during the regular school year. So I don't get any work there.

However, apparently, several of the schools that Kelly Educational Services contracts with run summer school. I have limited the schools that I accept jobs from to those south of the 10 freeway which keeps me within about 25 miles of home. (I used to get jobs in the valley (San Gabriel Valley, a lesser known part of LA, at least to those outside of LA) but then I spent almost as much in gas as I made at the job.) Still I got a job today and it was within my limits so I took it.

It was litterally in South Central LA. Actually, I turned on South Central Street just before I reached my final destination. The school is inside a converted house, has exactly two classrooms, and is a continuation school. One of my first shocks was when I saw a hand metal detector on the counselors desk (you know the ones they batton you with at the airport if your buckle or hairclip is too big, no I don't wear hairclips and I take my belt off, but you get the point). Then I noticed the front door was locked before school and found out the students were searched before being admitted. Later in the day a student came in late saying he had been talking with his P.O. (that's patrol officer, not post office) and I found out the most of the students had P.O.s.

(I can just hear my various cousins gasps right now. I remember one who asked me in near horror once if Long Beach was really as scarry as in the movie "Freedom Writers". I haven't seen the movie, but I have lived three doors from the school where it takes place and, no, I never found it scary at all. The worst events were when we had to ask high school students not to smoke in our driveway (they complied) or when the half drunk college student came over to offer me a beer (I politely declined). Really it was just a neighborhood with people like any other.)

And the students in this class were really pretty tame. No they didn't hunker right down and get to work like I would hope. And I was a bit off my game so I didn't keep them as well on task as I would like. But there was never a point that I felt in danger and while I did send a student out for being disrespectful, it was more that I needed to make a point to the class than that that student was particularly bad. (In fact until that point she had been one of the more dedicated students, but I can't have students in my face telling me to hurry up either.) All in all it was a fairly successful day. I can't say that I feel particularly talented working with this group of students or that helping wayward students is where I feel my calling, but I was glad to do a small piece for one day.