MASKS. We love them, we hate them, and we NEED them. Apparently, children hate them. Or, they like to push my buttons and refusing to wear a mask properly is an easy way to start the day with attitude. Either way, even the argument of keeping masks on in the classroom is one of the many, many difficulties that comes from being a teacher during a pandemic. Can you imagine beginning an entirely new career in the midst of a globally spread attack via virus? Well I can…because I am. And boy is it wild.

My first substitute job was a two day placement at a local elementary school in Sonoma County in a first grade classroom. At this point in time, my only experience was in fifth grade, my student teaching placement. I was excited, nervous, and a bit queazy as I struggled to fall asleep the night before. The worst part of substitute teaching is being unfamiliar with the campus itself: where the office is, where the classroom is, what buildings students need to be walked to for library or computer lab, and most importantly where the adult restrooms are. As the anxious individual I have always been, these are the concerns that keep me awake at night and nauseous during the day. However, once I greeted the tiny, smiling faces waiting for me in a perfectly straight line on the blacktop, my stomach settled and I was happy to be living out my college dream of being a real teacher.

One of the most important parts of a primary grade classroom routine is changing the calendar date. As simple as It sounds, this activity can take thirty, maybe even forty-five minutes. Typically, this part of the day includes changing the day of the week, the calendar date, discussing the weather in relation to the season, and any other specific activities each unique classroom incorporates. This process also tends to incorporate a handful of songs including the days of the week calendar song. Most classrooms have a designated student each week in charge of changing the date, day of the week, and leading the song. The star student of the week led the calendar song, and another student raised his little hand and asked to lead another song. As the newest teacher on the planet in that moment, I could not resist his sweet face and quiet hand so I agreed, thinking he meant another calendar song. The little boy stands up, moves to the front of the carpet to look towards his group of peers, and catches a case of stage fright. He looks at me with nervous eyes, and I encourage him to begin leading the song. He takes a breath…and begins to sing Old Town Road by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. When I tell you this is the only moment in my short-lived teaching career that I was grateful for masks, I mean it. It took everything in my body to stop myself from absolutely dying of laughter as this adorable five year old performed Old Town Road to his entire class.

Feeling more confident after successfully completing my first day of substitute teaching, I was far more excited to return the next day. As I struggled to find an accessible entrance to the office the next morning, another teacher walks past me and says “Oh, you’re back. I thought you got moved.” Knots return to my stomach, but I follow her knowing she would be able to access the front office. As I enter the front office, ready to be handed the keys to the (first grade) kingdom, the woman at the front desk says “Hello! The principal would like to speak with you in her office.” As I swallowed my vomit of anxiety, I smiled and asked which way to get to her office. As I enter the office, she smiles and informs me an emergency has happened at a local high school and I needed to report to the high school immediately. She would be covering the first grade classroom instead. As a twenty-one year old college student, I felt completely unprepared to be in an environment of high school students. Teenagers are…meaner and not as cute as first graders. I made a couple comments about being excited to be teaching first grade, and the principal sent me on my way to dive head first into an “emergency.” Later, I discover she had known what the emergency was, and she made the conscious decision to not prepare me as best as possible to be put in a situation overwhelmed with grief and tragedy. I call my mom on the drive from one school to the next, one hand on the steering wheel, the other shaking as I hold my phone on speaker. My mom laughs, assuring me I am strong enough to handle a classroom of teens. I park across the street, because the thought of parking in a high school parking lot is too much to handle, and hang up the phone. Immediately, my mom texts: “you’ve got this!!!!” I take a deep breath, and approach the front office.

I step in the office and immediately feel a wave of discomfort on campus. I notice an underlying sense of calmness, with a negative energy radiating from the students and the faculty. I introduce myself to the woman at the front desk, and as expected, she chuckles as she tells me she mis-identified me as a high school student. Shocker. She tells me she will let me know what she needs from me momentarily, as she hugs the next adult to walk in the office. I notice both their eyes begin to fill with tears. As the first bell rang, indicating students should begin to move towards first period classrooms, the woman at the front desks begins to explain to me why I was sent to support the school. As she walks me to a classroom, we pass the student center. Outside of this building, tables are lined up against the wall with markers, blank paper, and posters. I questioned what this station was for as we quickly move in a different direction. She begins to share at a very low volume that a student had passed away. The night before, a student had taken her own life. Many students were already aware, and already spreading rumors. My role was to support the classroom I was being rushed towards in listening to the announcement that they lost a classmate to suicide. I felt like I could barely breathe as I faced one of the most horrific situations a teacher could ever experience. I may not have known the student personally, but that moment surfaced my own triggers, experiences, and emotions-on top of feeling beyond unprepared to be the role model figure for these students. As the day went by, the dark cloud levitating above the high school seemed to never go away. I spent the rest of the week mentally struggling with the process of understanding how I ended up in every teachers’ worst nightmare…my second day of teaching.

As I attempted to confide in mentor figures of my early teaching career, I ran into multiple situations where I was shut down because of the trauma tied to the topic of suicide. My heart shattered every time I realized my story had ruined another individual’s mental health, especially as mine continued to decline. Eventually, I was able to find the space I needed to reflect on my experience, and used the lessons I learned to grow. My career goal is ultimately to grow in the educational system and become a school principal, or even superintendent. From the administration perspective, errors such as bringing in college student substitutes would never happen on my watch. I believe an assembly format for communication may have been more appropriate. For myself as a new teacher, I learned how much trauma and mental illness is circulating our schools. Especially post-pandemic, children have been isolated for over a year and are suddenly expected to uphold the same social skills as before lockdown. The pressure of school social-life can be too much for so many students. This needs to change, and students need to be able to feel supported at school. For my individual being, I learned so much about myself and the world around me. I learned that in times of panic, people often make choices they would not make regularly. Understanding this immediately gives you the power to forgive yourself for any discomfort, and practice patience with both the situation and yourself. I blamed myself for being in a situation I shouldn’t have been, but I know now that I did nothing wrong. Being able to say “I did not do anything wrong” gave me the power to move into the growth phase of this difficult workday. I also blamed myself for shifting into a more depressed mental state of mind the week of this situation, but I now understand that traumatic situations resurface emotions and feelings that root from other traumatic events in the past. I was able to reflect on a handful of different feelings and experiences, and develop an understanding of what I expect from myself the next time I face another school trauma.

As students come back to school after quarantine, teachers are realizing the enormous amount of social learning opportunities that children lost because of COVID-19. Part of being a substitute teacher is moving through the district, meeting children of all different ages, races, genders, socio-economic statuses, and more. More often than not, if I return to the same classroom more than once the students feel a connection and begin to communicate with me as an adult figure in their lives. From grieving death to experiencing toxic home lives, these children are experiencing traumas I could never dream of. Children are victims of assault, illness, crime, loss, family trauma, and more on top of being a child in the middle of a global pandemic. These students lack the resources to learn about the world individually, and are stuck in the political and religious echo-chambers of their parents. Children come to school against the idea of masks and mandates, as if they know the definition of the word mandate. Kids recite the words their parents speak, as they tell their peers that Joe Biden is the worst thing to ever happen to the United States. “I mean, he can’t even walk properly!” -sixth grade student. On top of children being the most traumatized and the least able to socialize, expectations per grade level have not changed. Teachers are expected to properly teach kids grade-appropriate curriculum, even though students are showing they are almost two whole grade levels behind. While substitute teaching a sixth/seventh grade math class, the lesson plan told me to have the class do a set of problems from a specific module in the book. As we began the first problem, the class told me they never learned how to multiple triple digit numbers. A few months into middle school, and these students didn’t know how to multiply large numbers! I was the young student who fell behind in math class, and I never stopped struggling with math. All the way through college, math was my biggest concern and most frustrating work. I had a family that had time and money to support me in my learning, but a majority of students do not have family members able to help them with homework problems, or pay for a tutor to support them. Students need extra support right now, but in reality, teachers do too.

Another part of substitute teaching that is uniquely complicated is the balance of classroom management and connecting with children. As a substitute, student behavior is already more chaotic than a routinely functioning classroom. Students love to take advantage of having a substitute teacher to move seats, wander around the room, attempt to write on the white board, and try other behavior related things that they know they regularly are not allowed to do. As the teacher, part of my job is managing the classroom and maintaining positive behavior. While I do spend a lot of my energy monitoring these things, I also empathize with these kids. They have been through so much trauma, and are facing more social drama than they have since before the pandemic. Hand sanitizer, masks, and social distancing is being shoved in their faces, on top of the regular emergency protocols such as fire drills and lockdowns. Being a student isn’t easy, and a lot of children never complete their journeys as students. Knowing all of these things, I also try to utilize my time moving from classroom to classroom simply connecting with children, listening to their stories and letting them know that they are seen, heard, and loved. Children will not look back and remember that one day when they had a substitute in their fifth grade classroom, but they may remember the day they felt like someone finally heard them when the world felt scary and isolating.

I quickly learned that substitute teaching middle school would be a wildly different experience from elementary school. Middle schoolers are a completely different breed of human being. Every day I spend on a middle school campus, I wonder how my parents survived having middle school daughters. One morning, as I was connecting with students and going over the agenda for the class period, a student blurted out “hey, you got a weave?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I informed the class my hair is real and all natural. On another day, as I walked around the classroom connecting with students, one kid let me know that my pants made me look like I had “little boy legs.” Children are brutally honest, and I absolutely love it. My toughest critics! I had to develop unique ways of gaining the attention of middle school kids. One thing I created is a counting game. I say one, another student says two, and so on-all the way to twenty. Here’s the catch: two students cannot say the same number, or else we start over. Oh, and no talking! They have so much fun with this, and I end up with a quiet classroom with complete focus and attention on what the class is doing. I was so proud when this actually worked! Another classroom management trick I picked up from middle school was catching kids off guard with “on-trend” references. When I shout out a trending ticktok phrase, such as “you’re done,” I watch as a wave of little eyes grow wide with surprise and everyone is eager to ask me if I watch tiktok. I gain the attention I would have never had by simply asking, and the kids are tricked into paying attention. Win, win!

As I move into my second semester of teaching, I reflect on what my first semester has taught me. Classroom management is the most difficult learning process as a new teacher, but trial and error is an acceptable method of learning what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to try new things, take suggestions from other teachers, and adapt to what works for you as a unique educator. Prioritize student connection and communication. These kids are traumatized and need social-emotional learning now more than ever. We need to normalize emotions and regulating the wave of feelings we experience as humans. Appreciate the kindness and opportunity teachers do have, but understand what it means to advocate for more rights as teachers. Teachers do endless unpaid work and write it off as “for the kids.” To love your job enough to do unpaid work is amazing, and I already find myself doing this, but teachers do deserve higher pay and more room for growth. Expectations of teachers during these unprecedented times are unachievable, and this needs to be recognized by the community and the government. We need teachers to educate our children in a variety of ways, and we need children to learn how to become outstanding citizens in our community. Teachers deserve to be recognized for the endless new difficulties that the pandemic brings to the education system and the relationship between teachers and students. Children are traumatized, and teachers are not financially or professionally acknowledged for the extra work put in to support these broken children. Entering an underfunded system as a young woman is scary, but I believe in the possibility of change and I plan on learning as much as I can in order to be able to advocate for change responsibly.