Subbing, Steepling, and Shorts-ing with Style

As track season is winding down, and the school year is a distant memory, I have had the chance to reflect on my experiences as a substitute teacher. Some moments I will look back on with fondness, such as the day a former student came up to me with his mom, weeks after I had taught his class, to remind me about the time that I read them "The Gingerbread Cowboy". This is a charming tale about a Southern woman who, bored of baking biscuit dough, makes the switch to gingerbread with runaway results! Sound remarkably similar to another story? The little doughy delinquent even crows a rather familiar,

"Giddyup, giddyup as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Guessing they couldn’t find many words that rhymed with cowboy…

As I read this to the students, I had explained, as an aside, how confused I was by the idea of biscuits and gravy, since in England a biscuit is a cookie! This little six-year-old apparently found this so amusing that he was still talking about it weeks later, and wanted his mom to meet the British lady who thought you put gravy on Oreos! Funny what sticks.

I also received my first letter of recommendation, albeit from an eight-year old.

Other memories warm the heart a little less. It was, for example, a little bit of a shock when my kind request for a 3rd grade student to put away his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stickers was met with "Miss Mel, why don't you go **** yourself?" That one threw me for a bit of a loop. You really do never know what you’re going to get with subbing. I like to think of it as a very frightening, interactive grab bag or lucky dip.

Every experience, tremendous or traumatic, definitely taught me a lot. For example, I really do owe a thank you to the little first grader who introduced himself by kicking me square in the shins, followed up by emptying the contents of each and every crayon box as he ran out of the room, before finally returning to the room brandishing a pair of scissors. Although he might take a little time before he occupies the top spot in my teaching memory book, he taught me how to think on my feet.

That is the beauty of working as a subsitute- you learn, out of necessity, to roll with the punches. In this particular instance, as it became infinitely clear that the class read-aloud of “Mrs. Wishy-Washy” would need to be postponed, I had to very quickly think of an alternate activity that would allow me to placate the scissor-wielding seven-year-old in the doorway. It needed to be student-led, and simple enough not to create any serious disputes. I got them into a circle, keeping a close eye on Edward Scissorhands over in the corner, and told them they were going to tell a class story about Mrs. Wishy Washy, guessing what the story might be about from the first page we had read. Each student would say one sentence, and it would follow on from the previous person’s. I modelled a couple for good measure, "then she did this..." "and then..." and reminded them that the last person in the circle would end the tale. To my complete amazement and delight, post scissor-wrestling, a class story awaited me! And so a new game was born! Every cloud, even if it is laced with blades and small children, really does have a silver lining!

Another important learning curve was my discovery that "having a field day" is not merely an idiom. I took a sub job on the penultimate day of school in a challenging first grade classroom, and as I picked up my keys, the secretary wished me luck and added “oh, and by the way, we’re having Field Day!”. Assuming that she was speaking figuratively, and had simply omitted the “a”, since this was the only way that I had ever heard this used, I interpreted her comment as meaning, to reference the good old English dictionary, as her informing me that today I would:

have a field day (Fig.): “experience freedom from the usual work schedule; have a very enjoyable time”.

Apparently, cultural differences abound. In fact, what this "Field Day" meant was that the entire school flocked outside into the 95 degree heat. In an order that seemed somewhat perverse, the day’s events began with a whipped cream fight, after which children covered in rapidly perishing dairy product rushed to me to play a good old American game that I thought, for the entirety of the day, was called “Hey, Ho, Cheerio!”.

Turns out it is called “Hi. Ho. Cherry-o”. So I really out-Britished myself there and likely gave the parent volunteers a good laugh. I might as well have throw in a couple of "toodle pips" for good measure.

For those unfamiliar with this game, the premise is that students are trying to get all the balls from their hoop into their bucket. A spinner determines how many balls they can collect, but should the spinner land on a dog or a bird, an angry dog or hungry bird will come and “eat” two, returning them to them hoop. For a game that was supposed to get students moving, this one seemed somewhat of an odd choice. They stood in line in the heat while my role was to dart from one group to the next spinner in hand, rushing from hoop to bucket, sometimes in character as a tremendously cringe-worthy bird, flapping wings and all, or an equally embarrassing dog, using my hands as dog ears and letting out the occasional bark. The students looked on, some laughing, some giving me withering expressions that seemed far beyond their years.

Ten rotations later, tired, sweating and lunch-break-less, with the outline of my shirt seared into my back in a beautiful red and white sunburn lattice, I had experienced my first American field day. It was quite something.

An indisputable perk of subbing is that the wonderfully temporary nature of the job means that you can try out all manner of teaching personas. And lineages… Much as I hate to “play the British card”, there were some moments where it was too tempting to resist. Whilst training at altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona, my teammates and I took a trip to the local Goodwill to find souvenirs. I, or course, ended up with an enormous dancing lion necklace, wearing a crown bedazzled with red jewels. I took to wearing it most days as my teaching lucky charm, and after a solid three days of being asked whether I was related to personally knew the Queen by my students, I decided to have some fun. I explained that this blingtastic lion was, in fact, a family heirloom, and signified that I was the next in line to the British throne. Perhaps the ethics of pretending to be a future monarch are questionable, and I’m certainly no Kate Middleton, but I can’t complain about the royal treatment that followed.

The real downside to the impermanence of subbing is that there are those teachable moments that you really want to revisit at a later date but can't, and so you will never know whether that concept really stuck. The distinction between the short and long "i" sounds springs to mind, since it really can change one's meaning quite dramatically...

Much like subbing, steepling this year has had its ups and downs. Literally. I have fallen in both of my steeplechase races this season, but my limbs and most of my pride are in tact, so I reckon it has been character building. I did mix it up by colliding with a land barrier while racing for England, spending the evening in the emergency room waiting for an X-ray of my knee, and then for a change of scene I fell face first into the final water pit at the Portland Track Festival, setting a PR of 10:16 in the process. My coach offered the fateful words of encouragement with 200m to go, “just make it over these last two barriers, Mel”. A terrible multi-tasker, I attempted to both think and run, telling myself, just time your run up right, push off the barrier, and…. swim, apparently. This now means that my 3 fastest steeplechase clockings have all include a final water jump faceplant..

Moving on swiftly to the third “s” in my title (because I do love a good ascending tricolon), a new development in my life is the acquisition of my SNAZZY SHORTS! I have recently become a brand ambassador for a company that understands my outlandish sense of style! I like to live by the mantra "look good, feel good, run good", and although having a US flag emblazoned on your butt cheeks or gallavanting about in outrageous tie-dye or rainbow print might not be everyone's cup of tea, it is most certainly mine! It feels pretty good to wear shorts that make you, and those around you, smile. BOA USA’s shorts do just that, and I can’t wait to rep some new additions, from galaxy print to lime green leopard! There is also the most wonderful sense of camaraderie when I encounter a fellow BOA-wearer on the Eugene trails (often an older male or high school boy, but I like to add some diverity to the demographic). We smile and greet each other with an appproving “nice shorts”, as we trot off in our starred and striped or red hot chilli peppered prints. The mutual respect and bond between fellow runners with a love of all things bright and outrageous has been a blast, and I’m pumped to spread the word further about this awesome company!