60 Second Stories By Cal - Poodle

Did you know that speaking in public is the number one fear that people have? Death is number two..DEATH.

I have lots of fears but luckily this is not one of them. I love speaking in front of people because I have a captive audience. The best part about teaching for me is being on a roll and having the full attention of the students. I have so many factoids in my brain that I can always find an interesting story to go with most any lesson. Or I can pluck a story from my own life to illustrate a point.

Even as a substitute teacher this skill saved me from having to deal with discipline issues. We all know how kids like to rebel when they get a break from their regular teacher - especially if that teacher is hard on them. They love to torment a sub if they think they can get away with it. I may have had a few of these young rebels but they are rare. I like to think that is because of my style. It can't be that kids these days are more disciplined and respectful to ever act up.

How do I do that? The secret is using humor and engaging the students fully in the lesson. Most subs make the mistake of using bullying tactics to maintain order. I find that the opposite approach gets you the most success.

I can't tell you the number of times I have gotten phone calls from the teachers the day after I have been in their classrooms. They want to know what I did to have the kids request that they want me to come back if the teacher ever needed another day off. Some say the kids would rather have me teach the class full-time instead of them.

I don't like to hear that. It's easy for me to come in one day and be entertaining. I don't have to worry about looking after the specific educational needs of thirty children. I don't have to plan the lessons and try to make them interesting everyday. I don't have to do the marking. I just have to be the circus monkey that dances for the crowd.

I once subbed for two days in a grade three classroom. Elementary kids are the coolest at that age. They are not yet moody, snarling teenagers.

This group had been studying for a 50 word spelling test required by the government. They were pretty stress about the whole thing because many had not done well on the practice tests.

Because of that stress I thought I would make the test fun by adding the word POODLE (which is my second favorite word next to 'ennui') to every sentence I used the spelling word in. For example - KITCHEN - "The poodle went into the KITCHEN to get a pudding.") The students go a big kick out of the increasingly bizarre situation I put this poodle into depending on the word they were spelling.

So the next morning I get a call from their regular teacher who asks me what happened the day before. She was looking at the test and many of the kids had several times put down the world 'poodle' in place of the work they were suppose to be spelling. They were unaware they were doing that. They just had a big, huge, poodle standing in front of them and that is what their brains focused on.

I laughed and asked if they at least spelled the word correctly each time and TO A KID - each had.

I of course said I was sorry but she was cool with the whole thing. The kids had such good things to say about me that she knew I wasn't just being a goof.

Of course, the test had to be rewritten. Not good to let the government know that there were 'poodle obsessed' 10 year olds on the loose out there. To this day I still laugh about the situation.