[This week’s guest blogger is Dan Meyer, a 21-yo student teacher from Sacramento who doesn’t get along very well with other teachers.]

There was a substitute for my master teacher yesterday. Though she [the master teacher. -ed] does nothing in the class anymore except write comments on my teaching, because I’m not accredited in any way, she has to have a substitute. The kids were confused, too.

I told him that I could handle roll and he could take a nap, but he wasn’t having anything of it. His introduction to the class was not pleasant. He said he had a stack of referrals and he’d use them. A couple of kids buzzed in the back and he ordered them quiet. “Don’t make me be a sub,” he yelled and I got the impression that this was his go-to line, his ace-in-the-hole guaranteed to curry the kids’ favor. I can’t imagine the average reception being any warmer than it was in my class. They hated him. He yelled when a kid dropped a pencil.

After he told the kids he’d refer them if they didn’t listen to me, implying plainly that I couldn’t handle myself, both I and the kids were stifling laughter. I had to turn to the whiteboard and cover my mouth while I gained composure. By the end of today — a low-key test and worksheet day — he had thrown two girls out. That just doesn’t happen under these circumstances.

As the kids filed out after class, his expression was smug. “Good cop, bad cop,” he said to me and sighed, as if he were rubbing the luckiest charm on his bracelet. So he thought that raging tyrant routine was doing me a favor. I wanted to sock him in the nose for all the trouble it would be to clean up his mess.

Plus, he thought I was a high schooler and called me a “TA”. I’m a student teacher, bitch! [look, I apologize for this guy. -ed]