Teacher for a Day

[Chisom Oguh]

Looking through my notes, I was trying to find a moment that I felt left an impact on me. The image I chose actually occurred when Ms. Hebs was not in class (due to personal reasons). Because of that, there was going to be a substitute for all of her class periods. The students were expected to complete a worksheet on inequalities, and even though some substitutes knew the basics of solving them, I was clearly the one who knew where the students were and the one to ask for help on the more “complicated” questions. This was nerve-wracking for me because, in a way, I was the “teacher” in the classroom; I led the class through the schedule that Ms. Hebs had planned. I knew how her classes were structured because I have seen them many times over the term. I was clearly the MKO in the classroom.

Even though I was nervous, I still liked the experience because I felt like I was personally making a difference in the classroom. A moment that I want to focus on specifically is when a student, Jackson, called/yelled to me from the other side of the classroom. Not rising up to the challenge, I said yes and walked up to him. When I reached where he was sitting with his friends, he had his back turned to me so he didn’t see my approach. To retaliate (without disturbing the rest of the class), I called out to him near to his ear. His reaction was hilarious. He looked at me, clearly surprised by my actions. It turned out that he didn’t actually need my help; he just yelled out my name for my attention. Ms. Janet (mentioned in Week 4 blog post) thought that what I did was funny.

Why did I choose this specific occurrence? For the rest of class, Jackon didn’t call out my name; he just looked over at me whenever I walked by to see how each student was working. Whenever he did raise his hand, I was able to assist him and his friends with any questions that they had. I personally feel like that tutoring session was the culmination of my entire tutoring experience. Not only did the students ask me for help (I even got to work out a few problems on the board!), but they interacted with me a lot more casually. By consistently being there and interacting with them, they grew more comfortable with me being around (which makes me sad because I can’t stay forever).

As expected, when the teacher wasn’t in the classroom, the students were rowdier. Not only that, but the substitute was not able to answer some of the questions that the students had due to not knowing the material. This made me consider: is there a learning loss when the teacher is absent? Is there a way to keep the students motivated in their work without the teacher’s authority? How does a teacher’s absence affect a student’s learning?

One thing I know for sure is this: there should be more MKOs in the classroom. What exactly do I mean by this? I believe that with more people (who are qualified) in the classroom to help students, not only would that alleviate some of the stress off of the teacher, but it brings in another person who could connect to some of the students more than their teacher could. The way the American education system is structured makes it much harder for teachers to reach every student they teach because there is only one of them against thirty students. By having more MKOs in the classroom, everything is no longer dependent on one person. Also, if someone is unable to come to a class period, the others can still help the students. I am not saying that a substitute teacher cannot be an MKO. Due to the fact that most substitutes don’t constantly interact with the specific class that they substitute for, they won’t have the “inner knowledge” to manage the classroom.

[Shaw Qin]

Hi Chisom,

I enjoyed reading your post!

I had a similar experience of a substitute teacher not having enough content knowledge/knowledge about a specific classroom. In this case, the substitute teacher for that day was a guidance counselor. This meant that she knew a lot/most of the students, but she could not as effectively help with specific math problems. Luckily, both a St. Olaf tutor and I were in class that day, so we also took over the teacher’s role and helped students with more responsibility than we had before. I also agree that students seemed to be rowdier and less focused on their work in the absence of the actual teacher. It would be interesting to investigate how MKOs can be integrated into the classroom structurally to cover the teacher’s responsibility better when the teacher is absent. Will there be enough MKOs for every class in every school if the MKOs are volunteers? (I think the Northfield public schools can have so many tutors partly because of the two colleges and the socioeconomic status of some of the parents.) Are the MKOs teachers? How to make sure the MKOs have the relevant qualifications? Structured MKOs can indeed be very helpful in classrooms, but integrating them into the classrooms still has a lot of concerns.

Shaw

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