School Daze, Or What I Learned Last Week

Last week I was asked by the local high school to come in and sub for a missing teacher who taught Spanish. Even though I am qualifying to teach middle school I thought, what the hey, classroom experience is classroom experience, it's all good, right? And the absent teacher had left lesson plans that were pretty self-explanatory, so all I had to do was make sure they didn't burn the school down. What's so hard about that?

Well, it turns out high school sure is different from when I was a girl!
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Things I Learned In High School Last Week

Today's average teenage girl likes to dress like a sexy pole-dancer or a goth. There is no happy medium, unless you're a jock girl in which case you may wear a revealing track suit that shows off your multiple tats in a pleasing fashion, or the lone Muslim lass wearing a habib and sitting alone at lunch. However, heavy black eyeliner is a requirement for all girls, regardless of their social standing.

Quite a few of the senior girls looked older than me, and I'm 42. Honestly, I found that to be kinda scary.

There is definitely no longer any shame in out-of-wedlock birth. On the contrary, it's the norm. There were two 16 year old girls in just one class that had 6 month old babies and another one - in the same class - who was 7 months pregnant and couldn't wait for her baby to arrive.

It's difficult to reel in student initiated conversations that might have been considered out of bounds twenty years ago. Topics ranging from how worthless they baby daddy is to how drunk they got at the weekend fly freely and it seems pretty pointless to try and stop them when they're showing off pictures of their kids.

There is a fairly strong 'out' gay community who are accepted without comment by their peers, but only if they're white gay boys, 'cause "they're sooooooo cuuuuute". Woe betide the black guy who would like to be a "cuuuuuute" gay guy too, just ain't gonna happen. And god help you if you're a lesbian - they are considered icky and to be called one is fightin' talk round these parts.

If asked to break up into groups to work, the students will divide themselves racially. It never failed to happen.

The Indian kid is still the smartest one in the room.

Teenage boys are still as gauche and pimply as I remember.

Substitute teachers are considered the lamest of the lame and fair game for insults and ridicule. It would appear at least one thing will never change!

The officer manager asked me if I would come back, and even though I said yes, this experience just reaffirms my desire to stay away from teaching anyone over the age of 13. But next time I think I'll wear armor.