Students Dispel Chaos Theory

By Cindy Reitzi

February 2005

Most people who want some level of routine or stability wouldn’t enjoy my job. It’s completely different every day. On the surface, while it looks like daily subbing has no predictability, subbing does have its rhythms and nuanced expectations. For example, advanced physics with seniors is probably going to be an easier class to sub than remedial reading for freshman who allegedly “hate to read.”

Despite the changeable nature of my job, student rationalizations of all sorts are about as predictable as snowfall in the Swiss Alps. Somewhere, sometime, because I am a sub, some blond, Anglo-Saxon boy named Brett or Sam or John will switch his assigned seat with Juan, Mohammed, Barack, Bao, or Sabi and expect me to believe “this really is my seat.”

On another day, I’ll walk into a freshman class on a Friday and some wag will say, “Our teacher always lets us watch TV on Fridays” or “Mrs. Smith always lets us play cards/shoot craps/ or play video games in class.”

I can also guarantee that I’ll see some student hunched over a calculator, mesmerized by the read-out, and fervently working the keys in “two- thumbs posture” (with no math book anywhere in sight) who swears up and down the block, “I’m not playing a video game; I’m doing my math,” when I tell him to desist. (And then he’ll marvel, “How’d she know?”). I can also attest that some “reluctant reader” assigned to read a book will testify, “But I was reading” even though when I ever-so-gently shook him awake, his eyelids were still fluttering in REM sleep.

I can count on all of these universals. Because as long as the teacher is away, some student will try to pull something. It’s the cat-mouse principle: when the cat’s away, the mice will play . . . It’s simply the nature of the beasties.

While others might subscribe to the notion of an orderly universe, as a sub I subscribe to more of a belief in chaos theory: things start out “restless” and settle into a natural order, provided I, as the order variable, nudge it along.

I knew I was “at home” in one alternative school when I walked into the teacher’s lounge and saw a laminated sign gauging “school climate” that said, “Student hullabaloo level.” Tacked below was an interchangeable tag that said “Tolerable” (for that day).

But I wasn’t ready for what came next. I was subbing for English for a couple of days. The teacher had left straightforward, easy-to-follow plans, although, as subbing truisms go, that is never a no-hassle guarantee.

So, even though the first class just had to read and answer some questions, the question was, would they read all hour? I inhaled, announced the lesson plan for the day, and waited for the requisite “settling down” period. It didn’t happen. Dead silence immediately ensued and every nose was in a book. In fact, they looked like a poster for some national library association. So I picked up a book myself since the landscape was so unnaturally calm. After several minutes, I looked up and scanned faces looking for signs of restlessness, whispering, surreptitious video-game-calculator play under the table. Nothing.

Shifting in my seat, I felt strangely uneasy. Three-quarters through the class I checked again. Yup. Everyone was still reading. I asked students to read and all of them read. The whole hour. This just doesn’t happen.
And this wasn’t some fluke in just one class. It happened in the next class and the next. In acting class, all the students, even the shyest one, got up to do an improv exercise.

What the heck was going on? Where was I? The teacher Twilight Zone? Had some rift in the “space-time continuum” occurred and sent me hurtling back to a 1950s moralistic sitcom?

Unnerved, I walked into the halls, heard some teen cussing, saw a kid with purple hair, and overheard another say she needed to take her meds. Then I felt more normal. I was in a 21st century American high school.

But when I returned the next day, it all happened again. Students were unnaturally polite. When I told them to read, they read; when I asked them to do a round of charades, they did; when I instructed them to work on their short stories, they hunkered down. ALL of them! Students didn’t resist, stonewall, whine, refuse, or ask to go to the nurse, bathroom, cafeteria, locker, case manager, principal or guidance counselor. I, in turn, did not have to cajole, pester, insist, warn, or glare to get compliance. This was shooting my belief in chaos theory.

By the end of the last day, I was in a relaxed, giddy haze. This hardly felt like work. On the way to the office, I ran into “Bernard,” an exceptionally wonderful young man who wished me “a nice weekend,” and then added (I am not making this up), “Thank you for being our teacher.”

Flabbergasted, I turned to him and said, grinning stupidly, “It was my pleasure…really,” and continued to the office with a skip in my step.

Posted February 1, 2005