My Life as A Substitute English Teacher

As some of you may know, I decided this past semester to focus on studying Mandarin thereby cutting my teaching hours down to afternoons when my company needs a substitute. My company, BSK, *shudder*, has about 50 teachers spread out in public schools throughout Shanghai, and at least 3 or 4 times a week I’m called in to sub somewhere. The beauty of the situation lies pretty much in the fact that I never see the same kids twice, thus eliminating any need to make any sort of preparations or plans ahead of time. I have my staple of games, activities, and sing-a-long songs that I rotate through, but mostly it’s all about me.

For the first half of the class or so, I divide the class into teams, and tell them they can ask me any question they’d like. Chinese students will do anything if there is competition involved, and if I mention the word “stickers” or “prizes” I open myself up to the possibility that kids will literally pee their pants in excitement. The first question is invariably, “What’s your name?” to which I reply, “Chinese name or English name?” They perk up a bit, and I write my Chinese name in characters on the board. The students are not used to their English teachers knowing any Chinese whatsoever, so simply writing my name, 龙海, generally elicits fits of applause. I take a bow, and have them eating out of my hand in the first five minutes of class. This usually makes the next 30 minutes much less painful. Usually.

Then, depending on the grade, we move on to other activities. If it is a fourth or fifth grade class I usually put a writing prompt on the board. This gives me a bit of quiet time while they write, and then another 15 or 20 minutes of class used up by having the kids present what they wrote up front, all for points of course. My standard prompts are, “If I had all the money in the world, I would…” and “If I had no money at all, I could still…” It’s fun to see how creative the kids are, but usually its mostly the same, “I would buy the school” “Help the poor” “Buy many delicious KFC!” Yes, if I had unlimited funds, you’d find me whiling away my time eating a bucket of wings, too. The no money responses lean towards, “Still happy everyday” “Eat from rubbish bin” “Sleep all day.” But every now and then I get a class with a weird dynamic to it. Last week it centered around one boy Norman, who was absent that day. The first boy stood up and said, “If I had all the money in the world, I would buy AK-47, kill Norman.” Everyone is laughing, and I glance nervously at the Chinese teaching assistant who is also laughing heartily. I suppose in China this is indeed a fanciful and far-fetched idea, so a zero-tolerance policy is not needed. Moving on. The next girl says, “If I had no money at all, I could still make Norman go to girl’s toilet.” I find this kind of funny, and true, so she gets two point. I tell the class to please refrain from any more Norman jokes, but no one listens, and the next boy stands up and is sending Norman to Mars with all his money. One by one they diss on him, and eventually they have me hating Norman as well, and we find the rest of class has sped by. Teaching is fun.

For younger kids, I tend to play the “Opposites Game,” which isn’t really a game at all, I just award points and they get confused. All I do is say and write a word on the board, and the first person to tell me the opposite gets a point. Pretty simple, until afterwards I give two points for making a sentence using both words. This usually leads to some entertaining responses. The first kid will invariably say, “I am thin, but [insert token chubby kid's name here {usually Tony}] is fat!” The kids are laughing, and no one seems to take offense. Next, someone will usually follow up, “I eat healthy food like rice, but Tony eat unhealthy food like McDonalds and KFC.” Tony is laughing too, so I just let things continue because a substitute teacher means a goofing off fun day, right?

Then if I have a few minutes to spare, we’ll play another simple game where I put a long word up on the board like “Chocolate,” and see how many other words kids can find using those letters. I used to classify this as only mildly entertaining as the students rarely are able to see beyond “tea,” but every now and then I get a surprise. Like last week when one fourth-grader found “anal” in “California,” and I found myself conflicted between scolding him and awarding bonus points.

Teaching is funny.