Do students take advantage of a substitute teacher?

Of course they do! We sit in different seats, and get each other into trouble by using each others’ names. Once, a girl named Diamond who acts up in class a lot told the sub that her name was my name. Then she kept getting “me” into trouble. We have a lot of fun. Our regular teachers don’t teach much anyway, so it wouldn’t matter if we learned.

I never did, no. I can’t say that I was an angelic kid or anything like that.. but I was raised to be respectful at the very least. Definitely witnessed this, though.

Yes, every time we had a substitute we all played all kinds of tricks on them.

one of the things we used to do, was unscrew all our table tops and every time the teacher turned his or her back, we used to slam the wood up and down as hard as we could and stomp our feet. I remember one time a teacher called Teresa burst through the door and said “what the fuck are you doing up here, I thought the school was falling down”.

The other one we used to do, is we had a classroom that used to be a lab, and it had water taps at the back. we all used to bring in water pistols to shoot each other with or shoot the teacher with.

some others where… celotaping a lit cigarette under the teachers table so they walk round for ages demanding to know who is smoking, or we would put a cigarette over the fuse of some fire crackers and put them in the trash can, we would put tacks on their chairs, put any kind of animal or insect we could get inside of the teachers draw. we would use rubber bands and paper clips to fire paper clips at the teachers rear end when her back was turned or put toilet paper in the sink hole at the back of the class and leave the tap running to flood the classroom.

@poisonedantidote Wow you guys were horrible. Poor teacher.

Poisonedantidote, great answer. i did a few out of the way incidents, but nothing like yours.

It was worse depending on what grade we were in. When I was in primary school, kids would get chatty when we had a substitute teacher, but my classes didn’t try any funny business like you typically see on the telly.

In middle school, it was near impossible to get students to listen. Subs wound up sending lots of students to the principal’s office as a result (and their penalty was typically earning demerits… ugh. The demerit system was ridiculous.)

In high school, students were more inclined to actually get work done… but not always. On more than one occasion, my peers rifled through our absent teacher’s desk while the sub sat idly by. I reported them. They also showed little respect to the majority of the subs (whom I thought, for the most part, were genuinely kind people.) The only one they listened to was Coach Kunishima who made you do push-ups if you were late.

The worst I ever did, was ignore the substitute in favour of doodling in my notebook or taking a nap. To be fair, I usually did this when my teachers were around.

@Aesthetic_Mess indeed. but the teachers where often worse than us. i am all for education, but that is not what they where serving up at our school.

I.E.S. Son Servera was its name, it was actually listed as the 3rd worse school in all of europe one year.

i have mentioned this before on other questions, but to give you an idea of the quality of education, im 6ft 6in tall, i once had a teacher ban me from her lessons for a full year, on the basis that i was too tall. she said that i scared her, and that the only way i could have got so tall, was if i had been possessed by satan.

@john65pennington for the most part, i would not do anything if i was left alone.

@poisonedantidote I stand corrected. That teacher was discriminating against you because you were tall? I would have sued.

@Aesthetic_Mess well, i dont know about stand corrected hehe, we where a bunch of asses. but most of the teachers where no better.

as for suing them, thats not really possible, nothing would have happened. where i live, it has only recently started to modernize. when i was at school, it was very behind the times.

but yea. i could write a few pages on some of the things teachers did. one teacher called Dori, grabbed my friend Christoff by the hair once, and slapped him, and said “why dont you go back to Germany you f-ing square head, so hitler can execute you for chewing bubble gum” the same teacher that tried to get me in trouble for “throwing a kids back pack out the window” an allegation she later dropped when my parents asked how i could have done that when i was at home sick all day.

But yea, education was not good when i was at school here. i once visited my cousins school in the UK, so i know the difference for sure. to give you a further idea, in maths class, we once had a teacher explain to us, how you could make $10 by extorting tourists by selling them sea shells, and other ways of scaming them. it was quite backwards indeed.

@poisonedantidote Oh my gosh. That’s all I can say. Bet you’re ecstatic that you aren’t there anymore

Most of us had a BALL w/subs!! We loved having them. Ours never taught us anything; they just chatted and smiled. I wish I could recall the shananigans we pulled

Always.

I recall that in my Spanish class we had one particular sub from time to time. He was an old man, past normal retirement age, who only came in for spot sub duties. We called him “Goldrush”, on the fanciful assumption that he had been part of the 1849 California gold rush.

If we could get him onto anything to do about “the old days”, then we had a free period to listen to stores.

Mine are probably still taking the valium. What little darlings we were…..mwwwwahh!

@Aesthetic_Mess kind of, in a way i would like to go back there knowing what i know now. good times.

Im just glad i have internet and am naturally curious, otherwise i would be real dumb.

Being a 17 year old girl…YES.
But, not all the time. If the substitute is a complete push-over or mean for no reason (it happens!), then most likely the sub will be taken advantage of.

Just last week, some of my friends had no-bake cookies. They molded the cookies into a turd like shape and sat it in my friend’s chair. Well the sub ended up sitting there on accident…She was not happy.
Last week I had a sub in my English class and we convinced him that it was impossible for us to our quiz because we never go the chance to study.
In the 9th grade, my best friend and I also convinced our foreign substitute that a guy in our class was illiterate. I was surprised that he believed us.

I know they try, my son-in-law sometimes substitutes. However, they do not take advantage of him. He’s an E-8 Sargent in the Air Force and body builder with a really loud deep voice. His wife has to remind him to tone it down when he teaches the little kids. His has the ability to make them pee their pants and that would be a big mess.

The middle school and high school kids are pretty intimidated.