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Memoirs of a Substitute Teacher

A trend in elementary-school classrooms: Go around and name your favorite XXXXXX.

Your favorite sport. Your favorite color. Your favorite bird.

I find this mystifying because (a) I have to feign interest in all of the inevitably bland answers and (b) the question isn't actually a chance for a deeper conversation. The answers just hang in the air, and they die; there's silence.

Yesterday, with third grade: "State your favorite ice cream flavor." This moves along as predicted, awkwardly; at times, the pause is so long that I want to shout, I want to say (uncharitably), "You can think of one, just one, ice cream flavor. Tell a lie. Make something up. This isn't a physics problem."

The class clown understands some of the subtext here, and he hijacks the conversation: "My favorite is stracciatella," he says. (Eyes get wide.) "And butterscotch. Cioccolata." (The kid isn't even Italian.) "Mint chip...Cinnamon....Black raspberry....Moose tracks....."

Should I let this go on? The answer has become a performance. Maybe it's useful for the children to see what you win when you cultivate a large vocabulary? (You win some smiles and widened eyes.)

Later, an irritated little boy informs a girl--perhaps a crush?--that he doesn't "think that sweater is ugly." He says it in a way that conveys: "I really do think that sweater is ugly...."

The girl has inner resources--both of her parents are lawyers--and she makes text of subtext. "Your tone and words don't agree. You say you're saying one thing but you really mean something else."

This stuns the little boy--he didn't know such an observation was possible--and he returns to the letter of the law: "I didn't say the sweater was ugly!"

The conversation continues, in a fruitless way; everyone knows the girl is right, the girl has won.

"Children," I intone. "There will always be people who annoy you. This never changes. Annoying moments never go away--and there is nothing, really nothing, you can do about it."

The children listen; I think they expect me to invent a moral, or offer words of wisdom to coach them through an argument.

The silence grows.

"It's the dead of winter," I add. "So annoying things can seem *especially* annoying."

And this is all I have to offer. Soon--at least--we're able to end our class.
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