Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is one of my wildest weeks of substitute teaching.
Another Week on the Job
I am lucky.
My teaching career started with a year as a resident adviser and substitute teacher at my old high school St. Mary’s. No place can give me stories quite like this one can.
Having to take two kids to a Saturday morning test at different locations at the same time. Working a mess of a camera at the football games. Being recruited to help chaperone a school trip to Washington D.C. only a few days in advance.
And that is far from even half the strange stuff to happen.
I would not have had it any other way. This is a dream come true.
Today, I would like to focus on something less strange for my standards yet still out of the ordinary. I speak of the first week back from Christmas Break. The week I taught geometry.
Something Surprising Back from Break
I got the sub call the last day of break. A simple request. Sub the next few days for the geometry teacher. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I got to class that Monday morning.
No sub plans were left for me. Administration was coming in and out of the room. They were wondering what I was planning for the day.
My first suggestion was a study hall. Standard procedure if a teacher left no plans.
For some reason, that was not good enough. Next thing I know, the small first hour geometry class is being merged with the first hour Honors Geometry class.
Next thing after that? I am asked to teach the rest of the geometry teacher’s classes. And I am to keep teaching them until further notice.
Apparently, the geometry teacher had left, leaving the school little time to adjust his classes accordingly.
My mind raced to the question, “How can I do this?”
I am certified to teach English and history. Not math.
My last math class was in high school. All my college math requirements were taken care of during my senior year at St. Mary’s.
Subbing is one thing. You watch the kids and make sure they do their assigned work. Actual teaching is something else entirely. You need to know your stuff and how to explain it. You need to know how best to communicate it to kids who have no idea what you are talking about and often want to misbehave.
Seriously, how was I going to do this?
How I Did It
Thankfully, I had a few things going for me.
The Honors Geometry teacher was my old Honors Geometry teacher. He is also a pretty good guy.
With our first hours merged, I was able to copy his lessons, notes, and assignments to teach them to later hours of geometry. I remembered his style, and this helped me remember my first time learning the subject from him.
It was pretty good for the kids too. My old teacher and I slung around constant movie references and classroom memories. Quite a few witty comments were made by the both of us. Helped the kids feel this was a normal co-teaching experience rather than a bizarre situation.
My old teacher was also covering an easier chapter this week. Similarity between shapes. Students barely even had to work with any awkward formulas, theories, and calculations until the middle of the week.
The geometry teacher’s schedule helped me too.
He had been working half-time the past year. Out of St. Mary’s seven class hours, he only taught four of them. With the Honors Geometry teacher covering first hour, I did not have to teach a class until fourth hour.
Each morning I could sit in on first hour Honors Geometry. Then I could use second and third hours to write material on the whiteboard and practice delivering the lessons. I could get all that done and still have time to relax with a book before class.
My final source of help was the presence of clear goals for the students.
One of my biggest worries was teaching lessons and assigning homework without building to anything.
I am not a math teacher. I do not know how to make tests and quizzes for a high school math class. I know little of what to look for in students’ homework. I did not even have the access to put grades in the class’s online gradebook.
Thankfully, my worries proved pointless.
My old teacher already had a quiz set for the week. He even took on the workload of grading all these extra quizzes. I would just need to make some extra copies, hand them out, and make sure students did not cheat.
Administration found a replacement geometry teacher almost immediately. I could confidently tell the kids, “Your teacher will be here Monday. She will check your homework, and she will determine how Friday’s quiz affects your grade.”
All these factors were crucial to my week as a geometry teacher. I could not have made it without the people and the circumstances that were there for me.
Hardwork’s Hard-Earned Rewards
The week went well.
My old teacher enjoyed seeing me again and working with me.
Students learned all they needed to learn about ratios, proportions, and similarity. Fourth, fifth, and sixth hours had comparable quiz grades to the first hour students my old teacher taught. Some even called me their favorite geometry teacher all year despite my own lack of certification.
Administration checked in on my lessons throughout the week. They saw me taking charge of the classroom the best I could in a subject I never learned to teach. I earned a whole new level of respect from them.
I even got a request from one of the algebra teachers to do pretty much the same for his classes when he would be out for a week. Be on the lookout for this post’s eventual sequel “My Week as an Algebra teacher.”
I am an English and history teacher who found success teaching geometry for a week.
This was something I would have done only for St. Mary’s and something I could have done only with St. Mary’s support.
The whole thing gives me some reasonable hope for my writing too. I will need to wear many hats if I ever want to find success in it. Hats that I have never had to wear and possibly never even expected. Blogging, marketing, and social media management to name a few.
Nothing grants you confidence quite like meeting a challenge you never saw coming. Nothing eases that challenge quite like doing it for a place you love all while that place supports you every step of the way.
Kotcher’s Call to Action
If you like my content and wish to see more, then you have a few options.
You could check out my book Five Strange Stories on Amazon. Five Strange Stories is enrolled in the Kindle Matchbook program, so anyone who buys the paperback can also get the eBook for free.
You can also check my Essential Posts page for links to some of my greatest posts to the cKotch.Com blog.
Finally, be sure to like my Facebook page and share it with your friends. I post a link there whenever a new blog post goes live each Friday at 5:00 PM EST.