Tales from the Trenches: substitute teacher in a kilt

[Alan H]

Funniest Story of the Day....

So I'm walking back to my classroom (todays classroom, it's a new one every day) and this Fijian girl comes roaring up to me...quite friendly, not antagonistic at all and asks me out of the blue...

Are you Catholic?

OK, this gives the "Are you Jewish?" question that I got froma Chinese tourist last year, a run for the money. I respond with a puzzled look, and "No, I'm Presbyterian. Why do you ask?"

Her response?

Because you're not wearing anything under that thing....*looking down at my kilt*.

I said.... "Oh, come on. I'm here at SCHOOL, girlfriend. What would happen if there was a little accident and I flashed all the girls in one of my classes? Wouldn't I lose my job?"

Oh...well.... yeah.

But girls wear those...*looking down again*

So I mentioned the lava-lava that Samoan and Fijian men wear to church and formal occasions, and asked her what her brothers would do if she told them they were wearing something that girls wore.

Her face lit up, and she shouted... THEY'D POUND ME...and tore off. I never really DID get an answer to my question.

Wow...just wow. "Are you Catholic?" Hmmmm........

And in other news.

I had four sections of Social Studies today. Three were American Government and one was economics. I start all the classes at this school with a few words onthe board: Kilt...sporran....sgian dubh... gaelic....scotland.... MacNaughton, and today.... MacNicol (because I was wearing a MacNicol kilt). I tell them about kilts (the mascot for this high school is "The Scots") and some of the boys always want to know where they can get one. I point 'em to USA Kilts (the Ramsay Blue colors are a perfect match for the schools colors) and Stillwater kilts, for the budget model. After 5 minutes on that, and of course "The Question" we move on to the days lessons.

However, today was different. In all three classes the discussion turned to Ireland and the kids wanted to talk about "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. I told them about James II and William of Orange and Mary, and some more stuff about how the Protestant/Catholic troubles in Northern Ireland got started....sort of gave them some historical perspective.

We talked about Sinn Fein and the IRA, about the Orangemen and the Ulster Constabulatory. This went on for a good half hour in all three classes. Wetalkedd about he futility of the endless cycle of revenge, and incredibly, on e kid mentioned the recent movie that Elijah Wood was in...."Green Street Rollers" I think it is. Smart Kid.

Unusual, I thought. Why would these kids be interested in these issues?

Turns out that lots of these kids know about The Troubles, but they NEVER study them in school. They study the Middle East, they study about Darfur, they even knew something about Eritrea, but they don't learn about the problems in Northern Irleand.

The first period class was mostly hispanic with three middle eastern kids in it, so there was no point in asking...but I asked the two afternoon sections of American Government class, how many of them had English, Irish, Welsh or Scottish heritage. Two thirds of the class raised their hands.

I think I'm gonna acquaint their regular teachers that there's a need, an opportunity and an interest here. Makes sense, don't you think?

PS: several kids knew about the Isle of Man, and that came up when we were talking about the "United Kingdom" One girl stopped me in my tracks, asking if there was a relationship between the Frisian language and Gaelic. We looked it up online after class. There's not, but there definintely is a relationship between English and Frisian.

Even though I'm sick as a dog with the head cold from Hell, this was a good day.

[turpin]

It's always a good day when the kids shed their blase (accent mark over the "e"), worldly facade and really engage. It is rewarding for both teacher and student, and really get's a true give-and-take going, where respect is given and received.

[Panache]

Alan,

I love reading your reports from the wild and wacky world of substitute teaching. It looks like that perhaps we need to give a little more credit to the this up and coming generation.

Take care of the head cold first though, it isn't quite as inspiring when your kilted mentor collapses and expires due to a cold.

Cheers

[Alan H]

What I've learned in this month is that there is a very, VERY

VERY

large gap between the have's and the have-nots, and I don't mean in money.

The currency of learning is not "smarts", though "smarts" helps. No, the currency of learning and the currency of achieving is MOTIVATION.....and I hate to say it, but I'm seeing one very large demographic group that as a general rule, seriously lacks motivation.

There are exceptions, of course, but when I see a class of nearly 60 girls for dance, two thirds of which are from one particular demographic group, and most of those girls will not MOVE...I mean they sit for an hour and a half and stare at the wall rather than actually getting up. When it's so bad that to get some of them to physically move a muscle I had to physically walk over and boddily pick them up....

ahhh...... not good. When I put on "their music" and they still won't get up...not good.

When I see girl after girl after girl stare into space for a whole class period while her classmates are involved and doing things, when I see girls pasting pictures in a binder and trying to hand that in as a book report when their classmates are word-processing three page book reports...when I see girl after girl, day after day refuse to even consider the possibility of excellence in ANY way shape or form except in those ways which might attract a boy or make her look good to her peers....

....I worry. It's not lack of "smarts" that are keeping the have-nots where they are. Those kids are just as smart as the other three=quarters of their classmates. It's a cultural thing, and they are..... the way I see it....ROBBED of their motivation, of their desire to excel, and it's not the schools that are doing it to them..

Without motivation, their future is severely limited, and there's nothing I can do about that. Those girls need a powerful role model...or fifty of them in their lives starting at about age two or three and being there throughout their lives to make a difference. "School" can't do that.

So it's not all sweetness and light in the substitute teaching world, eh? I celebrate the funny moments and the moments when the smart kids set me back on my heels and challenge ME, and thank God for those moments. But for every one of those, there are three or four when I wince, and just try to make the best of it on any given day. The heroes out there are the teachers that come in day after day....month after month and try to make a difference for as many kids as they can. THEY are the heroes..

[Tattoo Bradley]

I so enjoy reading your "tales from the trenches."

[slohairt]

You're right, there is no real connection between Gaelic and Frisian. While both are of Indo-European origin, Frisian belongs to the Germanic language family (as does English) while Gaelic belongs to the Celtic family of languages.
My parents are native Irish (Gaelic) speakers while I myself have a reasonable working knowledge of the language. Whenever I mention the language to people they either think one of two things: They've never heard of it or they think of Hiberno-English (the dialect of English spoken in Ireland) Aye, Top o' ta mornin' to ye! and that sort of thing.
Irish (Gaelic) is, more or less, mutually intelligable with Scottish Gaelic and somewhat less so with Manx (Gaelic) due to vastly different orthography. These three languages form the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. Welsh, Cornish, and Breton belong to the Brythonic branch which is much different. When someone asks me about the differences between Irish and Scottish Gaelic I usually say it is similar to the differences between Spanish and Portuguese. While I have great difficulty understanding spoken Scottish Gaelic (and I've encountered it in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia) I can read it fairly well.
Irish Gaelic is officially referred to as just Irish and not Gaelic for political reasons. The Irish feel that calling it Gaelic makes it seem like an ancient unused language like Latin. By calling it Irish it seems more like a modern national language (which it is). Scottish Gaelic, of course, is so called to differentiate it from Lowland Scots.

Is mise le meas,

Seán Liosliath Ó hAirt

[Alan H]

You're right, there is no real connection between Gaelic and Frisian. While both are of Indo-European origin, Frisian belongs to the Germanic language family (as does English) while Gaelic belongs to the Celtic family of languages.

Is mise le meas,

Seán Liosliath Ó hAirt

A quick visit to wikipedia in the five minutes between classes showed me enough to know that Gaelic and Frisian were very different languages. What surprised me was that this girl asked me the question at all. First, she knows about the Frisian language, second, she has the concept in her head that languages are derived from one another. I think that's pretty good for a high school junior.

One girl in a class reminded me that when the country threw James II out and he headed for France, and the nobles went looking for the next-closest heir, it was actually Mary they located in Holland, not her husband, William of Orange. Again, an important detail, and three of the kids in class knew it and straightened me out.

I think the fact that I'm a substitute so therefore the day that I'm in class will be, defacto "different" from "every other day" plus the fact that I look radically different wearing a kilt....but yet speak intelligently, treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say, combines to make the days that I'm in class pretty memorable ones for the most part.

The kilt says a couple of things to them. I'm a pretty big guy...6'2" and about 245 pounds so I don't get a lot of abuse in that way. That whole "I can push around the teacher" just doesn't happen. Also, if someone DOES give me a lot of lip, I'll rip on him (or her) something fierce and the word gets around school REALLY fast. "Don't mess with the sub in the kilt".

What happens is that many of the kids think it's wierd, but they know it's a kilt, not a dress. I get questions like "Do you go out with your wife like that?" When I say yes, they want to know what she thinks about it. I hmmm..... "elaborate" things a little bit and tell them that she thinks it's hot. Five minutes of that sort of talk and they see that I'm a real person, I'm not terminally wierd, I'm just a little bit different and they can accept that.

However, the "weirdness" stays, reinforced by the fact that there's tartan around my butt and that I'm not the "usual teacher" in the classroom. I tend to let kids take discussions where they want to take them....one day off the teachers .lesson plan isn't gonna KILL them, and that means that we often wind up talking about something related to their class, but a little bit distanced from it.

For example, sometimes I tell them that I've sailed solo from California to Hawaii. They have a hard time reconciling "kilt" with "sailor", but they can usually wrap their heads around it. In a math class like Algebra II or Geometry or Trigonometry, I'll take ten minutes at the end of class and explain the bare-bones basics of Celestial Navigation to them....how to determine your latitutde by taking a noon sun sight. It's TOTALLY geometry and Trigonometry, it's a perfect real-time application of it. Usually, they dig it, or at least the ones with some imagination dig it. The ones who want to finish the problem set and then socialize and don't have a lot of intellectual curiosity usually won't.

The other thing that the kilt....being kind of wierd and independent, but not TOO wierd seems to give me, is that sometimes kids will tell me stuff that I wouldn't usually expect them to say. The other day in a class full of Hispanic kids, one girl....Her name was Rosa.... said to me "I know I'm smart, but I wish I was as smart as Christian". She and Christian had been the centers of two groups of kids working together to answer questions about a fairly complicated article, written in Spanish. One other girls always works by herself (I've been in that classroom 3x, now), her name is Stephanie but turns out exceptional work.

Because of what she had to say, I asked Rosa and Christian and Stephanie and two other students to stay after class a few minutes. I told them that I wasn't mad at them I just wnated to ask them some questions.

I told them "I've been here three times, and I can tell that you guys are among the smartest ones in your class. Are you planning to go to college?"

Christian said it right out loud...He did'nt say he was HOPING to go...he said it as if it was a fact. "I'm going to MIT".

The others looked at each other awkwardly and hemmed hawwed and finally most of them said they'd go to whichever college accepted them.

I told them "No....you guys have all the right stuff. Don't settle for *whoever will accept me* Aim high. Think like Christian thinks. He's going to go to MIT. Where do you WANT to go? Learn about colleges and find someplace that appeals to you because you guys can go to Stanford or Cal or Yale or places like that. Sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to, and you might not get into a college you really want to go to, but if you don't TRY, then you'll never know."

I told them...."You're not stupid. Look around your class. You know what's going on. Most of the people in your class will only do enough to get by. YOU guys do better than that. You're the smart ones, and I don't mean because of your grades. AIM HIGH....because while sometimes things don't work out, the LAST thing you want to do is mess up yourself by not aiming high enough."

At which everyone but Christian looked uncomfortable, so I laughed and said "Now get out of here before you all die of embarrassment." The whole thing lasted maybe three minutes.

I noticed earlier that two of the big, tough, macho guys were ragging on Christian to fix their computers and he said "maybe". These big, tough guys were easily 40-50 pounds heavier than Christian, but Christian has some attitude on him and when they got just a bit threatening and say "Maybe?" He responded, looking straight at them and not backing down..."Yeah, MAYBE.".

You GO, Christian.

Anyway, I only got to tell them that once, but they HEARD it. They HEARD someone value each of them for their work and their smarts, not for how pretty they were or for how cool their clothes were or for how good they were in soccer. I wonder how often that happens at home, or between their friends.

Without the kilt....without the perception in those students minds that I was "different" somehow, and not afraid to show it and BE different...be who I am... I wonder if they would have HEARD me.

[TimC]

Alan,

You have a real feel for where these kids are and the cultural and social pressures (real or assumed) that they are under. Sounds like a great attribute for a teacher (or anyone ) to have.

-Tim

[Alan H]

Alan,

You have a real feel for where these kids are and the cultural and social pressures (real or assumed) that they are under. Sounds like a great attribute for a teacher (or anyone ) to have.

-Tim

Thanks, guy. I wish you could have seen what Stephanie wrote when I had that class translate, then back-translate that Pablo Neruda poem.

The girl is smart and she's conscientious, but she has a heart, too. A kid like that....she's the hope of the world, you know? She's one of the ones who'll make the world just a little bit better. You gotta love a kid like that. You gotta do SOMETHING that will help her find her way just a little bit more easily.

[bubba]

Wish I'd have had even one teacher like you. I might have stayed in school. Good on ya Alan, keep it up. You might be responsible for a few kids succeeding where otherwise they'd not do well.