Experience Helps These Substitutes Teach With Class
All the elements for classroom chaos were there. The classroom was filled with seventh-graders discussing sexuality and relationships, and the person in charge for the day was a substitute teacher.
“Who can tell me what petting means?” asked substitute teacher Sharon Simon, who has a master’s degree in psychology.
“You mean chewing face?” queried one student, prompting laughter and muttered comments about anatomy from several others in the health class at Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood.
“This shouldn’t be a silly time. Let’s be serious and talk about this,” Simon said, attempting to restore order. The classroom quieted down.
For many students, a substitute teacher signals a chance to try to get away with misbehaving, substitute teachers say.
Like Variety
Some of the 1,125 substitutes--or “subs” as they’re called--in the San Fernando Valley have learned to keep classes orderly by developing strong voices. Others, like Simon, use quiet authority. But, although to regular teachers it might look like more trouble than it’s worth, many subs say they prefer filling in at various schools to reporting to the same classroom every day.
“Some people consider it insecurity. We call it variety,” said Lyle Rosenthal, a veteran Valley sub and co-chair of the substitute teachers committee for the United Teachers of Los Angeles. “As far as walking into the classroom, sometimes it’s delightful and sometimes there is no amount of money to pay for the misery.”
Besides variety, another advantage of subbing, substitute teachers say, is that when the last class bell rings and they leave school, they leave the responsibilities of grading homework and making lesson plans behind as well.
For Simon, 48, who has been subbing for four years, substitute teaching gives her the challenge of teaching “without the burden of grading papers” and leaves more time for her family, she said.
For other subs, the job is only a temporary occupation until they sign a district contract for a full-time teaching position or find other permanent employment.
Still other subs, like Bobbye Kelly of Canoga Park, have subbed in the Valley for many years and made it a career.
‘Important Niche’
“I feel that it is an important niche to fill. Wherever I go, teachers tell me that it is so important to have someone they have confidence in to take over for them,” said Kelly, whose specialty is English but who has taught everything from physical education to computer classes.
Recently, a call from the Substitute Assignment Unit in Los Angeles, the centralized office that handles all substitute teaching assignments, sent Emory Green, a longtime sub from Studio City, to teach English to 10th-grade classes at San Fernando High School.
“You can tell the constitution of a class by the way they come in,” said Green, who said he is past retirement age. “They tend to take advantage of the sub. I have to make my presence known at the beginning.”
Discipline was called for that day when the class bell found more than half of the mostly male class leaning out of the window whistling at girls and calling to friends. It took several rather loud reminders to get them back to their seats.
“The greatest problem all teachers face today is discipline,” Green said after class. “An awful lot of students say: ‘Oh, it’s a sub, I can fool around.’ ”
Kendall Munn, 16, of Pacoima, whose noisy entrance was curtailed by Green, said: “If they don’t correct me, I keep going, because that means they ain’t on the job.”
Just ‘Drink Coffee’
But the worst subs are the ones who ignore students, Kendall said.
“Some subs send around a paper to sign,” the teen-ager said. “Then they sit back and drink their coffee until 10 minutes before the bell.”
Others “yell too much, or act like we have a contagious disease,” said Becky Ritzau, 12, of North Hollywood, who attends Reed.
Green said some teachers want their substitutes “to be no more than just a baby-sitter. They make it so simple all they have to do is take roll and pass out papers and watch discipline.
“But there is more to the job than just being a baby-sitter. The substitute is a professional. You’re faced with a new challenge every day. You walk into a room, with nothing there to help you. You learn to think fast on your feet. That’s your job.”
However, substitute Larry Berkow said that at times a substitute can only be a “policeman” or a baby-sitter, which is how he described himself recently in a metal shop class at Robert Frost Junior High School in Granada Hills.
Berkow, 35, who usually teaches English, found himself handing out word games to 24 restless students who wanted to work with the shop equipment as they normally do. But Berkow does not have a license to operate the machinery, so the metal-working equipment lay idle during the class.
“The assignment was a dud,” Vincent Garcia, 14, of Los Angeles said after class.
Berkow said: “It’s busy work. I’m not going to try to snow them and tell them this is the ultimate lesson.”
Wait for Call
Substitute teachers begin the day waiting for the phone to ring. If they’re going to have a job that day, the phone will ring between 6 and 8:30 a.m.
“It’s different conditions all the time. It’s less ordered,” Green said. “I don’t like being at the same school more than one day. I feel a need to have variety. Otherwise I would be a contract teacher teaching the same kids every day but making a lot more money.”
In a recent two-week period, Green taught at six schools, in classes ranging from typing to physical education.
Green and Simon earn $85.12 a day, the standard rate, regardless of experience, for most subs in the Los Angeles Unified School District. That’s substantially less than full-time teachers, who start at $20,298 a year--about $112 a day.
Some subs are paid more--$119.16 a day--if they are willing to work at schools that are considered difficult to staff, such as inner-city schools with disciplinary and attendance problems.
District officials say that about 160 of the 3,490 day-to-day subs are in the incentive program.
Fewer Incentives
Experienced subs such as Kelly call themselves “old-timers,” and most agree that times are getting tough for veterans. They claim that the incentives for long-term subbing have steadily decreased, particularly since the district eliminated a sliding pay scale based on experience. This is the first year every sub gets the same flat rate for a day’s work.
In the 1979-80 school year, a sub with 10 years of experience could make $85.45 a day and a starting sub a flat rate of $60.40. In 1981, however, more experienced teachers made a maximum of $74.05, district figures show.
“If you worked for a corporation or a private firm you would be getting increases on the basis of experience. You wouldn’t just stay at the same pay scale forever and ever,” Kelly said.
“Every time the contract comes around, we are the only ones singled out for a pay cut,” she said, referring to the experienced subs.
But, even in the face of cuts, Kelly said she will stay.
A recent early morning call sent Kelly to El Camino Real High School, where she taught introduction to American heritage to students in an English-as-a-second-language program.
After answering questions and practicing the pronunciation of such words as concentration and Churchill , Kelly began to share her own experiences during World War II with the students, who were suffering from end-of-the-day jitters.
“When I was your age, many of my friends joined the Army or Navy,” she said. As her story unwound, the students quieted down and listened carefully. The bell ending the day came almost as a surprise.
“I just try to do the best I can,” Kelly said.
