Baltimore City Public School Substitute Teacher

Today, I was a substitute teacher at one of the inner city high schools in Baltimore City. I am a white female. All of the students were black youth, grades 9-12.

I feel sorry for these students. All day long, 5 periods of classes, my students chose to play cards and ignore me. The students were given a reading assignment and a worksheet that accompanied it. For the duration of the day (all day long), 6 students turned those worksheets in. At one time there were 4 card games going on in my classroom. The kids came and went freely out of the classroom. No hall pass. They weren’t even considerate enough to close the door behind themselves.

I realized that the kids were breaking into a storage cabinet during first period. With a heavy chain and masterlock holding the cabinet closed, the kids were able to pull the doors open enough to stick their hands into the cabinet and pull all of the teacher’s “goodies” (candies, cookies) for the classroom out of the cabinet. I watched the whole thing happen. They knew I was watching. They saw me watching and I even walked over to the cabinet and confronted them endlessly. It was futile. I realized they were going to do what they wanted, regardless.

 The entire day, I listened to obscenities fly. Every curse word in the book. There were allusions to the fact that some of the girls were “hookin’” (prostituting themselves). I saw one of the guys giving another a hard time because he wasn’t buying drugs from him. I gave up on the kids entirely after I took the sign in sheet during 4th period and read it. According to the sign in sheet I had an “Obama” and an “Eat a Dick” as students in my classroom.

I stopped taking roll. I stopped telling the classroom about the work. I wrote in my journal and counted down the remaining time in the classroom. I may have even run out of the classroom at the end of the day. I am absolutely sure though that my blood pressure was through the roof!