My First Sub Job, Part III

There are things I would handle so differently now. Take Marta, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy. She wanted to eat in class, which I didn’t allow. Now I would let her eat, but I would make one requirement: None of those vending machine Doritos. It must be healthy. I’d even bring snacks for her if necessary.

I had one student who had to have his assignments sent to prison. He was 18, so he’d been charged with rape as an adult and his family couldn’t make bail. I don’t know his story, but he never felt threatening to me in the slightest. In fact, he seemed like a very nice kid. Only one student in that school truly scared me.

I never knew if Rolfe's instability was natural or induced or what, but I always felt I had to have my “spidey sense” tuned to his direction when he was around. Once it was not…and another student rested his long legs in the book basket under Rolfe’s chair. Rolfe lost it so badly that I was afraid of what he might do to the other kid.  I had to move his already-up-front desk positively next to mine so that I got the joy of being next to him every day.

As if that weren’t bad enough, he never turned in his work on time, so he got detentions with me on a regular basis—so I got extra time with him as well.

He wrote his final essay on why he wanted to kill a police officer.

(Next week: Part IV)

Conversation overheard between two ninth-grade girls while one was putting makeup on the other: “Just cake on the makeup, because I like a lot. Did you know you’re not supposed to share makeup with other people? I used to share makeup. But not really, because it was just Haley, Madison, Taylor, Brittany, Micah and Sierra, and we were all best friends. But I got a sty. It’s probably because I never washed my eye makeup off. You’re supposed to do that, too.”