...and then there are the good days.

"I love my job and the students with whom I've worked, with a few exceptions... every day is something new and it's usually amazing. It's not always pleasant, but it's something I'm grateful I got to experience, something that I like to believe I'm better off for having gone through"


-Dave (from 'On Subbing: The First Four Years')

Last year I had a student who I was not getting on with, her dad had died recently and I think she found it very difficult to take orders from another male as a result. She was always beating up on herself, telling me that she was stupid, she couldn't write or read, she should fail. She ran out of class crying on many occaisions. Eventually after having tried everything else I rang her home and told her mum that her daughter was refusing to do work because she thought she couldn't, I suggested that the girl stays with me an hour a week after school and we will work on her reading where she can't escape.


I wasn't sure how this would go down. The girl fronted to her friends about how much she hated what I had done, she made me out to be a total dick. That didn't bother me, kids aren't allowed to admit that they appreciate the attention from you, the more they do the more they complain.


We read together for about four months, slowly at first, swapping over to share the reading a paragraph for me a paragraph for you. We read every week, she complained about me most days, we never spoke on a human level and she wouldn't look me in the eyes but she started trying in my class. I was never sure what she really thought of me but every time I forgot about our sessions she would be there waiting without fail, she'd never said a word but she'd turned up every week and by now no one was twisting her arm.


Together we finished the first book she's ever read cover to cover, we got good grades in my English class and she stopped telling me how stupid she was. She never said thank you but then she never really spoke to me at all.


I don't mind that we never finished up chummy, at least I know I will always be remembered as that prick teacher who made her read her first book all the way up to the end... for better or worse.