Miss Beano is a substitute teacher. Mr. Larson was out yesterday, so the American history class was taught by Miss Beano. Miss Beano has been working as a substitute for about a year. She’s eager to have her own classroom, but until there is an opening for a new teacher, she fills in for teachers who miss work due to illness or personal matters.

The students she taught were not very cooperative. Immediately, when they found out that Miss Beano was their sub, students started to repeat, "Miss Beano is a mean-o." She could hear what the students were saying, but she chose to ignore them.

Several students gave false names or exchanged names when Miss Beano took attendance. Steven became Patrick, and Patrick became Steven. Amy became Chris, and Chris became Amy. Oscar became Jose. All of the students thought the use of fake names was hilarious, but Miss Beano didn’t know why everyone was laughing.

When a paper airplane sailed across the room and hit Miss Beano in the back of the head, her face became flushed, first from embarrassment, but then quickly her embarrassment turned to anger.

"Who threw that paper airplane?" she demanded.

Of course, no one raised a hand. The students sat silently and looked away from Miss Beano’s determined stare.

"I want the name of the student who threw that at me," she demanded loudly, again, but no one said anything. Some students began to hum.

Because no one came forward to admit responsibility, Miss Beano told all of the students to close their books and sit in silence until the bell rang for them to leave for their next class. She told the students how unhappy she was with their behavior. She also said that she would write a detailed report so that the regular classroom teacher, Mr. Larson, would know what happened. This suddenly concerned the students. Most of them were scared of Mr. Larson. He is very experienced and effective when it comes to disciplining students.

Being a substitute teacher is difficult. Many students have very little respect for a sub. They take advantage of the sub’s lack of personal knowledge about students. Some of the kids speak in a disrespectful manner. They would never behave that way with their regular classroom teacher, but for some reason, they think they can get away with it when there’s a sub.

When the day was over and all of the students had left the building, Miss Beano began to cry a little bit. She had never expected such bad treatment from students as she trained to become a teacher. She knew that substitute teachers had it rough, but she never knew to what extent the children would be so disrespectful and mean to an adult.

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Now you try it. Read the story above. If you have a microphone, you can record your voice.

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