There will always be days throughout the year when staff members are out for one reason or another and substitutes must be called to stand in. This can be a stressful time for teachers because control is out of their hands and into a usually unknown adult’s hands, leaving the teacher to hope that their students are behaving well.

As for the students, they are left to carry on their normal routine with a substitute who must adapt to the way the classroom is run. Having the class run by a different teacher can also be a stressful part of the day for students as well. While some substitutes adapt well to the varying conditions in each room, others do not, and as a result, may leave a unique impression on the students they are teaching. The following are student encounters with memorable substitutes.

Sophomore Elizabeth Pacious: “When I was in New York, I had a substitute teacher for Social Studies. The first day we had him, he came in and he looked really mean. He stood at the front of the class and he stayed silent with a grumpy face. Everyone thought that he was going to be really mean and that we would have to be on our best behavior, but then the bell rang and he became the jolliest, happiest person that I’ve ever met. He was hilarious. He did an impression of Barney, and it was hilarious. Then there were the new kids who didn’t know him and he would do the same thing, be really mean and grumpy, and they would get all freaked out, and I would just sit there laughing.”

Junior Jordan Duda: “I lived in Canada and I was in a bad class in fifth grade. When the sub came in, she could only speak French, and the only words she did know in English were curse words. So the entire time she was trying to help us, we couldn’t understand her, and because all the guys in our class were bad, she was throwing curse words everywhere until class ended.”

Sophomore Steven DeGroot: “In sixth grade, when I was in Pennsylvania, I had a substitute who had the same first and last name. He came into class and he started teaching us about Social Studies. He started rambling on about the battle of the clouds, which was stuff we didn’t even need to know, but he was really getting into it. He was using hand motions and partly acting out some of the battle. The next day our teacher comes back and we said all of the stuff that he taught us and she said to forget all of it because we didn’t need it for what we were learning.”