A second straight half-day of subbing at a middle school has smoothed out my ruffled feathers and damaged teacher-ego. It was, first of all, a different middle school. Blalack has better stewardship and more carefully worked-out standard practices. They handle misbehavior far better and the actual teachers are respected far more. I do not blame yesterday’s teachers or assistant principals. They were doing their jobs as best they could.
But today’s 8th grade Reading Classes were smaller. Twelve to fifteen students rather than almost thirty. They were given routines to follow every day in class that maximized their time on reading tasks and left students with little or no time to think of evil misbehaviors or acting out.
The differences in race, socioeconomic backgrounds, and cultures are practically non-existent. The kids I had a good time teaching today were no different then the ones I hated dealing with yesterday. The differences were all in how each set of kids are treated and managed every day.
So, we had a good day. Practically no student was involved in a reading-related death. No skulls of non-readers collected at the reading-raptor’s feet. Today teaching was fun.
Catch a Falling Star 
The differences between one class and another always amazed me. I could not identify a particular school as being better but within the district but it sure did help if the office was supportive.
Teaching styles made a big difference. One teacher would assign free time while another would keep them busy. One class would be highly organized while another would be chaos. I came to love seating charts and names on desks and detailed lesson plans.
A lot of the difference was the luck of the draw. One class had 3 problem children while another hand none. Big, big difference.
I know what you mean. Bad 7th Grader day featured a class of 29 with 12 bad kids in it. I found that to be too many to neutralize and redirect. I had to execute two to get the rest under control.
By “execute” I mean send them to the principal, not cut them up into bite-sized chunks and feed them to piranhas. I do admit to thinking of the second thing during that class, however.
Great, to have a good teaching day.
Amen to that!