The Collective

On occasion I would substitute teach for a school district near my home in Western Washington. For the most part I worked in the middle school and high school grades. I had worked with those age groups in the past and I was most comfortable with them. I actually like working with middle schoolers the most, crazy I know. I tell my wife it is because my mentality is about their level. There was this elementary school close to my home that needed a sub for P.E. and it basically consisted of letting six different classes of Kindergartners run around the gym for 45 minutes. Then all I had to do was send them back to their prospective teachers; piece of cake!

The year before this, my very first sub job was for a 5Th grade class at this same school. They ate me alive! I did make it through the day; barely. As a result of that, up until the successful kindergarten P.E. class, I had shied away from elementary school for obvious reasons of mental stability. However, fresh off the high of successfully teaching kindergartners P.E. I received a phone call from this elementary school indicating that they desperately needed a substitute teacher for kindergarten. I thought to myself; how hard can it be? They were so cute and harmless. When I was teaching P.E. they would randomly come up to me, wrap their arms around my leg, look up at me with their big eyes and say “I love you teacher, I wish you could always be our teacher” or some such similarly cute and endearing prattle.  So with this endearing memory in mind, when the call came in, I, in my weakened and self-delusional state of mind said, “Sure, I’d be glad to!

There are two things every teacher learns very early in their career (if they are to survive). First, you MUST stay at least one step ahead of the students and second; you must fool them into thinking that you are firmly in control of the class at all times! So when I excitedly arrived early to the classroom that day I looked over the teacher’s lesson plans and found them to be in some sort of Greek short hand. My confidence waned a little. I could not even understand half of what she had written and I could not locate any of the items the lesson plan referred to in the classroom. To make matters worse, all of the regular teachers were at a conference so none of the substitutes in classes around me knew any more than I did. When I found the principal and asked her for help, she gave me a look similar to the one a deer gives you when it’s in your headlights...so while she went off to try and call the teacher, little people started showing up. I knew I was in big trouble.

I won’t bore you with a detailed list of the day’s events...about how they destroyed the classroom, climbed all over the tables and filing cabinets; belly flopped off of tables into the stuffed animals, etc. . If I turned my attention away from the class for one second; when I looked back they would be dismantling furniture! But, I will share one fascinating insight I came away with. And that is what the Borg and Kindergartners have in common. “Resistance is Futile!!!” If you missed watching TV in the 90’s you may not know who the Borg are. They are a fictional race of cyborgs depicted in Star Trek, you know the ones; the collective… the race of pseudo-humans that all work in mindless unison. Like I was trying to say, the ones that reminds me of Kindergartners…