HOM: Part time Teaching

I tried to break into the teaching profession in Kalispell for a couple of years after I graduated. I did a little tutoring and some substitute teaching when I was working nights or laid off (or fired) from a regular job. I kind of liked subbing. I remembered what one of my college profs told me about his first teaching job. It was a tough inner-city school and one of the older teachers took him aside before school started and gave him one piece of advice: "Don't smile till after Thanksgiving!" He followed the advice and found it to be good, so he passed it on to us. Sometimes you couldn't show any softness until after you had won respect from the kids or they would walk over you. I applied that principle to subbing, since I remembered how "I" had acted towards substitute teachers in my younger days. No -- don't ask! Any road, I guess it worked in practice because I found myself deliberately placed in a series of classrooms that were a tad hard to manage. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)