First of all, the next person, students in particular, who refers to me as "just" a substitute, is gonna get the most phenomenal, epic, Charlton-Heston-as-Ben-Hur bit*h-slapping ever delivered by anyone, at any time. C'mere and tell me, middle school child, or high school young adult (maybe,) are you the one between the two of us who worked his a*s off to get a Bachelor's Degree, only at 40-something, to be still paying for it? And given the state of the economy, are you entirely certain that mumsy and dadsy, even in the most well-off of communities are even going to have the money so that you can be more than "just" what I am? Are you certain that you're going to even have the opportunity to attend college, on the basis of your educational performance? Or are you going to clog up the system with more children who are much like you someday, underpaid and undermotivated, and at some point, possibly incarcerated? You think about that. And to teachers, well....I have a blow of my own to deliver to some. Once again, I will spare the district and teacher in question the embarrassment of naming names, but I subbed for two days last week in a classroom where the students were preoccupied with crocheting projects. Yeah, like, crocheting, with the hook, and the yarn, that kind. Not like I as a substitute don't have enough to deal with in simply trying to get students to pay attention to me, but the teacher has to introduce something like crocheting into the educational mix, just to make certain that whatever capacity these students might have had to even semi-pay attention to me has been sucked dry?! And what the hell kind of teacher introduces crocheting into the educational mix anyway?! This is an elementary school classroom, not a senior center! And I know it was the teacher who introduced it to these kids, because there were basic, photocopied, "how to crochet" sheets scattered amongst the normal educational detritus of an elementary school classroom; also, the "crocheting fever" was far too pervasive among the students in the class for this simply to have been a fluke, one or two students with interesting hobbies. No, sir, the yarn was flyin' everywhere, and in this case the teacher was the facilitator. My question to teachers who choose to act in this fashion, introducing their own hobbies to their students, is how does this serve them? What real good is it going to do the lion's share of your students to know how to crochet, other than giving them another reason to ignore the substitute? Or is this another part of your personal vision you're hoping to propogate, that just because another teacher, or another person isn't exactly like you, they aren't worthy of your regard? Yeah, you, as the teacher.....you mull that over. Nobody is "just" anything in times like these, particularly when so many otherwise viable people are unemployed, and thus "nothing," at least in the sense of Americans as we have all known ourselves. Education is going to play a leviathan role in the future, ergo even a substitute teacher is still a person playing a vital role. And the next time you seek to introduce one of your hobbies to your students, you consider the above, and then ask yourself if they're really being served by what you do.

Beyond that, crocheting involves the use of a metal or plastic hook, and I had a few students in the classroom that I was in who had some anger management issues, so I'm inclined to see that hook as a potential weapon. There are potential legalities involved here, do you, as an educator, want to be the one guilty of fanning the flames of a potential physical incident by doing something this ill-thought-out? Given the average district's paranoia about liability....that's what I thought. There are classes I've taught that I, for example, would have loved to have shared some of my own writing with. But my novel has one love scene, which seems tame compared to what even the middle school kids are reading, but which, none the less, would have probably caused some parents to just lose their minds. Last thing, here; as the classroom teacher, please make sure you leave as much information about your students, all of them, as you possibly can. I was barraged those two days by para-pros, speech teachers, and student responsibilities and obligations I knew nothing about, ergo, I didn't know if a particular student was telling me the truth about what they needed to do, or just trying to skip out of class because others in the class were safety patrol students, or whatever. Supposedly we're on the same side, trying our best to put something useful into the minds of young people, and help them be the best they can be. It's my goal, too. I'm not "just" anything.