Children are the future. You would imagine that substitute teachers are carefully interviewed prior to being left alone with thirty of them. But, judging from these stories, maybe not.
The Telltale Sub
We had a month-long sub because our teacher was having some health problems. On the first day, she is calling roll, and she gets to this funny kid named, if I remember right, Jordan. But he says, with the straightest possible face, “I prefer to be called G.” Now this was when G-Unit was big, and “G” was definitely “Gangsta.” She called him “G” the whole time, completely oblivious.
This same woman subbed another class, and we were talking and generally not giving a f–k. So she goes up to the board and writes “DISRESPETABLE” and underlines it several times. We are all cracking up laughing even harder at her misspelling and she, again, could not fathom why.
Another thing she did, she was going to do a very moody performance of the entirety of Poe’s Telltale Heart. She turns the lights out, spends several minutes breathing deeply in order to get in the mood…and then some student from another class comes in with a message for her and she just completely flips her shit and refuses to go on with the performance.
No Nonsense, No Work
1:05pm: History class begins.
1:06pm: Our substitute teacher – a man in his eighties – tells us that even though he may not be our regular teacher, we are going to have a regular day. He states that he will not accept any nonsense from us.
1:09pm: The class is treated to several examples of nonsense. None of them, it is reiterated, will be tolerated.
1:15pm: In the course of talking about the various forms of nonsense which will not be tolerated, our substitute recalls a young woman he once taught. She had reportedly come into the classroom wearing nothing but a fishnet pullover as a top and some incredibly tight leather shorts beneath the waist. Realizing that his class wouldn’t pay attention to anything else, the teacher sent the girl away… and then, some five minutes later, received an angry telephone call from the girl’s mother, who screamed that people should not be ashamed of their bodies.
1:22pm: Roll call.
1:25pm: Our substitute reminds us that nonsense will not be tolerated, then asks if there are any questions.
1:26pm: A student asks about what happened to the exhibitionist girl.
1:29pm: While the substitute is offering the second part of his previous story, someone sneezes. The substitute demands to know if the sneeze was nonsense. He repeats the fact that nonsense will not be tolerated, then launches into a tale of a time that some kids in his class kept pretending to sneeze as a means of interrupting him.
1:35pm: Someone pretends to sneeze, thus interrupting the third part of the ongoing tale.
1:40pm: Yet again, the substitute reminds us that nonsense will not be tolerated. We are instructed to open our history books.
1:41pm: In response to a student not having their book, the substitute tells us how lucky we are to have individual copies. He regales us with stories of having only one book per classroom, then starts ranting about computers for some reason.
1:45pm: The computer-centric tirade transforms into complaints about how young people have access to pornography.
1:47pm: We are told about how “Playboy” used to be a respectable magazine that “wasn’t just smut-smut.”
1:50pm: The substitute is asked to define “smut-smut.”
1:51pm: Someone pretends to sneeze. The class is lectured about nonsense.
1:55pm: Homework is assigned.
2:00pm: Class ends.
The Master
In High School, there was a in house Substitute named Mr Bader.
He knew his last name was ripe for jokes, and that dude still ate bee pollen as a snack from his thermos. Drank stinky herbal tea and would offer it to students.
One day, a student asked him if he was a Christian. Not to proselytize, but just flat out mocking him. Mr Bader told him, “No, I am not. I am a Buddhist.”
Student responded, “Ooooh, lookie here. An actual white boy Monk trying to hold us down. Know what, Imma call you Master now. Yea, Master Bader.”
Some of his friends cheered him on and laughed.
“Sure, you can do that.”
Eats a pinch of bee pollen.
“But, you can do that on the way to the office. All of you.”
All those guys got sent to the office. Master Bader leaned back in his chair with a smug little look on his face. I just shook my head and wished my regular teacher wasn’t sick.
The Manson Family Substitute
I once had a sub hold up a class because she thought it was so sad how we all were just silently reading and not interacting, so she proceeded to lecture on serial killers. Charles Manson in particular, and how he was so handsome back in the day and made creepy spiders out of his hair in jail.
I also had an old man once tell my class the story of his wife’s death and all the hospital and doctor trips that he had to go through. We were only to her third operation (removing a blood clot from her brain) when the bell rang, and I was pretty relieved to get out of there.
This Could Have Gone So Much Worse
In French one day the sub never showed up. We waited for the actual teacher, not yet knowing about having a sub, and then after about twenty minutes we voted to send a kid to the bathroom to look for the teacher because she was diabetic and had gotten sick in class before. After the kid came back we sent out two more to check the other bathrooms because she taught in different places of the school.
They came back and we had another vote, this time to take a ‘class trip’ to the office to report the missing teacher. My favorite part was when we got about halfway there and a security guard stopped us to find out what we were doing and where our teacher was. We told him “we’re all taking a class trip to the office because we can’t find the teacher” and he was just like OK then. As it turned out, she did go home for diabetic reasons and the sub she called canceled but never told anyone.
I Kind of Want To Hear The Sub’s Side Of This One
I had a substitute in 10th grade, many, many years ago. He was SO serious, all about the ‘business’. I swear, nearly everyone in class got sent to the principal office at least once during his 3-4 month reign! Our regular teacher was out on maternity leave and she was definitely being missed. Anyway, every time he’d come back from the office, he’d stand I front of his chair and warn the class that he wasn’t taking crap from anyone then he’d PLOP down in his chair. I’d seen this happen enough that as he was giving his speech, I would look to my left and mimic his every work with unfailing accuracy.
So, I got the big idea that I’d had enough of his SOUR attitude and I was gonna take matters into my own hands. I actually had to wait 2 days before he made his “I’m not taking any crap from anyone” speech. I was ready, as soon as he exited the room to escort a classmate to the office, I went to work. I had been carrying about 20 thumb-tacks/push-pins awaiting my opportunity. I walked right up to his leather chair, cut a hole in the seat big enough for my hand to reach inside, and began to place the thumbtacks, completely concealed, in his chair. My friend was looking out for me, I had enough time to get all the tacks that I had in his chair. The whole time, the whole class was watching. I returned to my seat and waited.
Sure enough, same as always, he stood there, said, ” I am not gonna take crap from anyone!” He PLOPPED down in his chair, he let out the funniest GROAN that to this day has not been matched! The gig was up! He was Sooo pissed off, I literally thought he was gonna lose his mind! He was bleeding, not like profusely, but you could see his behind begin to saturate itself with blood! He paced the floor, threatening to have the whole class EXPELLED, not suspended, expelled, like your not coming back to this school for rest of the year EXPELLED. It only took a minute for people to start pointing fingers, they fingered me and told that my buddy was watching.
I was 14-15 at the time, and I just knew this old man was gonna kick my ass! He never hurt me, but he had ahold of my shirt with a death grip and jerked me around a lot while walking to Principal office. I got suspended for 10 days. My buddy got 3 days. I’d say if this was to happen now, a person would most likely face criminal charges. I never saw the teacher again, he was gone and my Regular teacher had returned from maternity leave when I got back from suspension. When I walked into class that morning, she smiled in the most beautiful way and said, “I hear you’ve been a bad boy while I was gone.” I knew then that all was well!
Great Ball Of Fire
Ms. Boone (changed). You incredible woman. Here’s the story:
She was a substitute for our Latin III class in middle school. Just for one day. Apparently she couldn’t stay awake the entire day, and fell asleep in our period for just about the entire time. This was in one of those portables, and the heater was set on solar levels…someone thinks it’s hilarious to spray some Axe perpendicular to the exhaust.
Don’t know exactly how it happened, but there was a loud PLOOM and a decent sized fireball. She woke up a second later, but couldn’t see who did it.
She never reported it because she would have to admit she was asleep and wasn’t able to tell who sprayed the Axe. Eventually administration heard of the incident, and she was fired. One day after she started. If I recall correctly, she came back for one time much later in the year.
She was wearing a police hat. But still a substitute teacher.
This Sub Is “Ingrained” In His Memories
I had a substitute teacher in high school called Mr. Shifflett. He was the greatest sub ever because he treated the entire period like story time. As soon as you walked in the room and saw Mr. Shifflett you knew you wouldn’t be working on assignments, but listening to his stories. They weren’t boring stories either. He would tell crazy stories about his past. One that stands out to me is the story he told about how he got stuck in a grain mill and was scared that he would be buried alive in grain. The man was one of those people that always had a new, interesting story to tell you.
The Blind Leading The Fifth Grade
We had a substitute teacher who was essentially blind. She brought along a device that magnified everything. It looked like an old school overhead projector. She had to put her eyes against the top lens to read anything. And we took advantage of her poor sight almost immediately. As long as you were silent, you could get away with murder in that class. To this day, I can’t figure out why someone thought she was an appropriate sub for a 5th grade class.
Fake News
There was an infamous substitute teacher in my junior high. She would fill in for basically any subject so I had her for English, History, etc. Most of the times she would just read the teacher’s notes or show a movie/documentary.
However, she a few…unique beliefs that she was not afraid to share every time she taught a class. My personal favorite was when she explained her theory about the dinosaurs. She said they are not extinct but when the meteor came that supposedly wiped them out, it actually created a tunnel to the center of the earth. The dinosaurs then followed it down and that’s where they live to this day.
She seemed so set on her ideas but maybe she was just using her accent to troll 13 year olds. Who knows…
CIA Agent Sub
We had a sub in a couple of my classes when I was in my sophomore year of high school. His picture is in the dictionary next to the definition of ‘adorable old man’ – always well dressed in little old man tweed suits, colorful bow ties, very small and kind of meek and nervous, but very, very sweet and patient. Honestly one of the best subs we ever had.
One day he subbed for our government class and, after giving us the work the teacher assigned (which we all finished fairly quickly), he kind of commented idly, “I used to work for the government. For the CIA actually.”
We asked him how that was and he got this kind of troubled look on his face. He told us that he was a lie detector operator for the CIA, and he was sent to Vietnam. One of the major groups that he was asked to interview and test were the wives of the Viet Cong. He said that overall they were intense, but he remembered two incidents in particular. This one got through with her session and he asked her if she had anything she wanted to say. She propped her elbow on the table, put her chin in her hand, stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth, and then dropped her chin onto her hand to force herself to bite it off. She spat it at him and told him that she was ready to leave whenever she could.
We asked what the second story was and he became visibly troubled. He said that it was a very sad story and that he wouldn’t tell it if we didn’t want to hear it. Of course we were curious so we said yes.
He didn’t actually have the chance to interview the next woman. She wanted out of her marriage because she didn’t like what the Viet Cong was doing, but she was afraid to just leave. So the US offered to keep her safe and get her out of the country if she would give them information. She agreed, they sent her home to pack, and went to pick her up the next day and found out that she had hung herself in the shower.
At this point, the sub started to cry a little, as did quite a few people in the class. When he got himself back under control, he said that there was something that troubled him about the situation but he couldn’t figure it out until one of the senior officers pulled him aside and asked if he’d noticed anything weird. He said yes but he couldn’t put his finger on what. The senior officer said something to the effect of, “She didn’t kill herself. There was slack in the rope and her feet were on the floor. Someone killed her and set her up like this.”
The room was silent and we all just kind of sat there in silence for the rest of the period, and at the end of class we all went up to the front of the room to hug him and thank him for telling us the story. I remember walking out of that classroom and feeling weird that I was just going to be going to my French class and everything was going to be normal after that.
Smells Like A “B”
Our french teacher in high school was old and I think she took time off for a while, but whenever she missed school she would always pick the same sub. This woman always wore a tank top and wiped her fucking arm pits with her hands. All the time. I didn’t notice it before, but during second semester, I was sitting in the front and right before she starts to hand out the weekly quiz papers, she wipes her armpits with her hands.
Fruit
Mrs. Coch was eventually banned from subbing in my school district.
In middle school one of the students wouldn’t stop saying “vagina” during class. She sent him to the principals office and as soon as he walks out the door he screams it as loud as he can. She asks, “Are you done now?” He says yes, and she allows him to come back to class. It was beautiful.
She was regularly caught stealing food from teachers, especially when the fruit from the FFA fruit sales came in.
We had one token black student whom we called Blackford, cause what else would you do when his last name is Bradford and he’s the only black kid in the god damn county. They had the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever heard:
Blackford: Hey Mrs. Coch, do you know where I can get any fried chicken?
Mrs. Coch: I have no clue, but I know watermelon is on sale at Fareway.
Those two were good friends after that.