Mind you, I was merely classified as a “sub” (even though I was there every day, writing lessons plans, coming into school early to give lessons, and even starting a mentor group for older boys), so I had no support from the union, no paid time off. Nothing.

By the time January rolled around, the school was just plain out of control because the students knew there was no recourse for bad behavior. The dance, art, and gym teachers and I sat down a large group of 6th and 7th graders—some of our best students—to beg them to stay on track and not get caught in the nonsense. The school got so bad that full-time teachers were taking leaves of absence due to stress. Some teachers were physically assaulted. Verbal abuse from students was a daily thing. Substitute teachers refused assignment at the school.

This reached its pinnacle in the early spring when I was put up against my smart board by a 7th grade boy who turned to the class and said “Take a picture because I’m about to beat the shit out of the music teacher.” Luckily two other students came to my aid and get him to back off.

Not only did I finish the year, I went above and beyond the job of “substitute.” I presented concerts, gave lessons, established relationships with some of the toughest students, and made an impact. But in the midst of the chaos, I was never able to move into the alternate route program. The principal was let go at the end of the year, and, due to school closings, I was moved out and replaced with a certified/tenured teacher.

So all of the work I did was for nothing. I was informed it couldn’t be applied towards my alternate route work, which I couldn’t believe. A year in this school wasn’t only worth a teacher’s certification but an MA in Education AND Purple Heart!

However, I was so affected by my time, and the kids, that I still returned to the school for the year after and continued to run a mentor group free of charge.

Another sub, Paul, was able to avoid the violence in his school, and he offers some advice to other teachers:

I was tempted to do a little storytelling about my fun times as a sub after I read your “Chill Substitute” note, but I realized I’d be playing the part of Jordan Peele in the clip you embedded, since my story is strangely parallel: On one subbing assignment, I ended up toasting hot dogs in a glass-blowing class. No mind-altering substances were involved for me, but otherwise the stories track rather closely!

I’ve also had a tiny bit of experience with one of your other topics: school violence. I’ve only been peripherally involved in a few fights between students. What I’ve noticed—and other teachers should feel free to correct me, since I’m new at this [hello@theatlantic.com]—is that fights tend to be more vicious between girls, and they tend to be between younger students. Boys are generally one-punchers, and the juniors and seniors usually have enough maturity (or apathy) to avoid actual brawls, or at least to avoid them on campus.

I’ve long felt the best way to handle a fight (any fight) is to keep it from happening in the first place. One day during my student teaching, my mentor and I noticed that our hallway was much more crowded than usual, probably waiting for something—probably a fight. We waded out into the crowd and made ourselves visible, and the crowd dispersed.

In contrast, a fight broke out just outside my door on the one day I hadn’t posted myself in the hall. Since it was two boys fighting, it was over by the time I got outside. Another day I did get between two girls, which was against all my training. They tell us to never interpose your body into a fight, as you might get hurt. I took that risk anyway and it worked, but it might not have. Probably my smartest move in that encounter was to widen the gap between the combatants: as an administrator took one girl to the office, I took the other in the opposite direction—ostensibly to her locker to get her bag, but mostly to keep them out of sight of each other for a while.

Other times, a student comes looking to start trouble with me. In that case, the best way I’ve found to deal with it is a sort of aikido [a Japanese martial art]. One day when I was subbing, I was handed a note by a student that said “Fuck you sub” (and yes, I automatically corrected his punctuation in my head even as I read it). I handed the note back to him and cheerfully said “Thank you!” As I walked away, I heard another student ask the note-passer what I’d said, and I heard the note-passer say, baffled, “He said ‘Thank you’!” The note-passer gave me little other trouble that period—and he returned to my classroom no less than three times, over the course of the day, to ask if I was mad about the note.

My philosophy is that if a student wants to start a fight with you, why give them what they want?  

I felt like I passed a test that day, and my confidence as a sub skyrocketed. In fact, that confidence may have helped land me my current full-time teaching job. Now classroom management is much less of a problem (though I’ve found that my laissez-faire attitude that I had to adopt while subbing is still with me, which is not always for the best). What’s killing me is the paperwork which I never had to deal with in the past, including inventing emergency sub plans. I should probably do that tomorrow, come to think of it …

Sometimes it’s the substitute teacher who gets violent; here’s a local news segment from Prince George’s County, Maryland, showing a sub whipping his students with a belt, and in the following segment from Phoenix, a substitute throws a kid to the ground after the latter spits a racial epithet at him:

If you’ve had an experience with a sub who went too far, drop us a note.

The district had told me I’d just be a teacher’s assistant that day, but when I got there, they told me I’d have the class to myself. The kids must have known they had a newbie, because it was starting to get a little rowdy when the office came over the loudspeaker to ask if everything was OK. They clammed up and I told the office we were fine. Then I said to the class “Y’all didn't tell me they could hear us at the office!” They thought that was the funniest thing ever (and honestly, I had no idea they could hear us at the office), and the rest of the day, they were in the palm of my hand. I even considered going back and taking some elementary education classes because it was so much fun.

In contrast, Bernie had a terrible time with second graders—and subbing overall:

I’ve attempted to do some substitute teaching a couple of times in my hometown, Burlington, NC. I found the position to be nearly impossible as it was presented to me. I was rarely called to be a sub, and most of the time when I was called, it was the morning of the day I was required. In two years I was never given the opportunity to teach two days consecutively at the same school.

Since most of my jobs were at schools I was not familiar with, I spent a large portion of my time trying to figure out where the lunch room was, what the proper procedures were to get there, and what I should do while my students were eating. Just imagine filling orders at Amazon one day, a local coffee shop the next, and working on the Ford assembly line the next.

Then there was the issues concerning the rules at each school. I was never told how to handle the use of electronic devices in class. I occasionally would resort to asking the students what the policies were concerning phone use. Of course, that made it difficult to determine which students were trying to mislead me.

Even though I was a male over the age of 60 while being a sub, there was virtually no respect given to me by the older students. I was just another sub to be ignored. In some of the high schools the discipline in class was atrocious. I struggled to keep the chaos from spilling into the hallways.

After a couple of assignments in elementary schools (one day at each, of course) I realized I was more intimidated by 2nd graders than I was by adolescents. Controlling a group of unknown 7 year olds was very difficult. They were often very sweet young people, but keeping the class orderly was nearly impossible, if there were some kids intent on acting out.

Even though I had raised two boys, had a MBA and needed the job, I finally gave up trying to do this work. I never learned the layout of any of the schools because I almost never taught at the same school twice. If I limited the grades I was willing to “teach,” my opportunities to work plummeted. Naturally I was given the classic treatment of subs by many students: no respect, no discipline, and little cooperation. I say “classic treatment” because I remember subs being treated the same way when I was in school.

Our school system had gone to a completely automated program of determining need and finding a sub. The system resulted in random assignments to a variety of schools. Of course, there were the subs who were called by individual teachers who received multiple consecutive days in the same classroom, or the subs who got assignments to replace teachers on maternity leave or other extended absences.

I never had the opportunity for one of these better assignments. As the author stated, you needed to have a friend as a teacher or know the person in charge of substitutes at a particular school to get a good assignment.

I removed my name from the substitute list after two years of trying to adapt to the changing conditions of this work. I have great respect for public education teachers—perhaps even more so now. But being a substitute teacher is not teaching; it is baby-sitting under the worse conditions possible.

Pity the substitute.

Regarding that automated program of random sub assignments, Bernie might have instead benefitted from the tech mentioned by this reader, Luke, who subbed in the Seattle area:

Many ex-substitutes talked about getting phone calls in the evening or starting from 5 a.m. for open sub positions, but I did mine all online. After checking a website online for a month, I started paying 5 dollars/month for a sub app that sent me notifications as soon as an open position was posted (and allowed me to reserve an opening from the app). I got as much work as I could handle.

The most popular such app seems to be SubstituteAlert. Mary in Kentucky doesn’t have to worry about such apps because she seems to have a pretty steady gig at the same school:

After teaching English/Language Arts to middle school students for 30 years, I retired at the end of May 2016. My plan was to come back this fall as a “guest teacher,” a title coined by a dear friend and fellow educator. Yesterday was my first day back at Burgin Independent School, a small independent school where I spent 16 years as a teacher.

I taught all day, and when I left I realized that I had no stress, no papers to grade, and no state-mandated paperwork to complete. There was actually intellectual space—no racing thoughts, no future plans rolling over in my mind. Just the peace that comes with doing what I was meant to do, without the stress. I loved it.

I think you substitute teach because you want to, no because of money. But I also understand why people give up on this option, given the social state of our country. There are tough situations with kids these days. But I will never give up on them, and my presence in the school after active duty has ceased gives kids something consistent in their educational lives.

And no, I am not a babysitter; I am a teacher, a mentor, a guidance counselor, a friend. I am not a “sub.”

To end on a high note, here’s a retired lawyer who ventured into subbing:

I especially liked special needs classes in elementary and middle school.  The experience is heart-wrenching and tremendously joyful. There are no words to properly describe the fleeting experience of connecting with a child who most of the day appears to be inhabiting a distant universe. You cannot imagine the intensity of the satisfaction that comes from teasing just a couple of normal sentences and eye contact from a child who is incoherent most of the day, and then have that same child recognize you when you come back to sub the next week, run to you at the doorway, and give you a big hug.  

Some classes are boring. Often the teacher had time to prepare a lesson plan for you, which might just consist of having the class answer the six questions at the end of Chapter 9, and then start reading Chapter 10. So you just take attendance and make sure no one sets the room on fire. But I have now decided that at age 68, I do want to teach as a second career, prepare my own material, make a difference in someone’s life, and hopefully get an occasional hug.

Physical restraint, removing clothing, forcing the victim into obviously pre-assault positions—these I would take very seriously. I of course was not present to witness the situation, but from “a few seconds of observation” of “ruffl[ing] her hair” we can neatly conclude that a sexual assault was definitely about to occur? This is only my first problem.

As a minor note, the attitude of the writer towards the students seems problematic. He describes them as “circling like sharks.” That’s somewhat dehumanizing. He also feels the need to employ scare quotes when they are described as children. Are they younger than 18 or not?

But lastly, all of this aside, how does any of this justify the writer’s actions? He admits to brutalizing each and every one of the students, slamming them against walls and doors repeatedly. Why? Presumably he is trying to teach them a lesson. But what lesson is it, exactly, that he is teaching? That violence is the ultimate source of power? That justice is not restoration or the rule of law, but pure retributive fury?

His inability to understand his coworker’s complaint that he is exacerbating and reinforcing the very worldview that leads to the kinds of acts he purports to have prevented is the most frustrating sort of bull-headedness. I hope no one glorifies this kind of behavior. If he had not quit, he should surely have been fired. That fists are not universal problem-solving tools is precisely what violent young men need to learn in school. Indeed, it is hard to teach them anything else until this one lesson has been taught. If this teacher can't grasp that, I am quite glad he is no longer charged with the care of children.

If you’ve ever been a substitute teacher—or any teacher, for that matter—who felt compelled to physically intervene with a student, please drop us a note: hello@theatlantic.com.

He also told me to “post the PBIS [Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports] rules; they work.” I had them on my wall, in our school colors (as they were in every class), plus our office would have handed him a stack of token rewards as part of his sub folder. Our students said he sat on my stool and looked like he was spaced out and sleeping half the time. I was furious, and my principal had him removed from our rotation. Thank goodness.

We had another frequent sub who never did the lesson plan but just told the kids (inappropriate) stories about his Vietnam days and the stuff he used to get away with. He picked on the pretty girls, because I think he was one of those types who resented every pretty woman who wasn’t available to him, even if they were in middle school. He probably assumed that because they were pretty, they could always get their way, that every pretty girl must be manipulative, and therefore he was there to take them down a peg or two with every interaction. Not that he was skeevy, just resentful. And he wouldn’t stick to the lesson plan. (He passed away recently: poorly managed Type 1 diabetes.)

Here’s some advice from a reader who “subbed for a couple of years in the ’90s, mostly high school and junior high”:

The trick is to manage expectations, both of the students and the regular teacher. If the lesson plan was obvious make-work, it would be pointless to pretend otherwise. The kids aren’t stupid, after all.

The trick at that point was to keep them engaged and therefore non-destructive. What this meant in practice would depend on the class. Reading the room was an important skill.

On the other hand, my thing was that I could actually teach calculus, because I actually understood it. Once the math teachers realized this, they requested me specifically. The kids appreciated it, too. Any kid taking calculus in high school is bright and engaged, and having a different teacher explain things slightly differently meant that sometimes I could help make things click in the kid’s head. At the job’s best, I was in the same handful of classes often enough to have a relationship with the kids.

Oh, and no grading! That almost made up for the crappy pay.

This next reader, Bill, who—like Nicholson Baker—substitute taught in Maine, has a great little success story:

I have not read Baker’s book, so it is hard to comment on its contents.  Having read Sara Mosle’s review, it’s likely that my own experiences and opinions will widely differ. The book somewhat interests me, and it it would be nice to see if Baker and I had any overlap in Maine schools (either working or attending). It seems this book has more to do with the viewpoint of the writer than anything really going on. Thinking that two hours of school is sufficient time for the average student daily is a horrifying belief.

Here’s a quick story for you. When I substituted, it was in Southern Maine around exit 3 and 4 (back then). The high school I had attended was exit 2 and in many ways the place I call “home.” The last time I substituted was in 2002 or ’03, prior to my decision to go back to grad school. In 2005, I was living in Gardiner, Maine, a very small town in a state that has a largely static population (most of the state drains into Portland). In the line at Hannaford there, the check-out boy asked me if I had ever subbed at his school. It seems that he remembered me teaching his algebra class once and told me that he learned more that day than the rest of the year combined. To this day it remains firmly in my top 5 greatest compliments.

That is the coin that teachers work for in the absence of actual pay. “Seeing the light go on” is one of the greatest gifts to “good” teachers and it is amazing to me such aggregate commitment to our children is held in such low esteem. If the institution of education hadn't made schools, students, and parents all working against (and blaming) teachers, it would be possible to contemplate returning to the classroom.

There is a huge problem is American education over a large swath of this country, but being a substitute AIDE for less than 30 days total, especially in the completely broken system of “Special Ed,” isn’t going to reveal any mysteries about the system.