Goodbye, Mr substitute teacher

Was supposed to write this post last night but ended up sleeping instead ahaha.

So yesterday, my classmates and I had to say goodbye to our substitute teacher who was with us for about 2 months(?). I'd say it was a bittersweet experience though I can't speak for the rest of my classmates.

The first time we met him was in the beginning of the year during our civic class. Apparently our civic teacher took a hiatus from teaching so before she came back, we were stuck with a substitute teacher. Nobody took him seriously as he was only a few years older than us which makes him sort of like a senior rather than a teacher. It didn't help that he acted more like a senior than a teacher.

Over the lessons, we'd began to learn some things about our sub, like why he wanted to become a teacher, how he was coping in this new environment, his back-stories as well as get some insight on his life as a student in college. We also had the pleasure of witnessing how our sub struggles to speak English, how goofy he actually is and how similar he is to us, being only a few year older and a college student. I remember him saying how scared he was of the teachers here and how surreal it was to be in the teacher's lounge as a teacher as opposed to a student. He described the feeling as " a student trespassing on teachers' territory ". We all had a good laugh.

After a few weeks, our civic teacher came back and it was time for him to leave. However, we didn't send him off like we did yesterday because we barely spent any time with him ( we only had 2 civic lessons per week ) so there wasn't really any will to send him off since the connection between us and him was quite thin. Besides, he was still going to be on school grounds so it's not like we weren't ever going to see him again. 

Little did we know that a few months later, he would be back in our class again, this time substituting for our maths/add maths teacher who went into labour and was going to be away for 3 months. Ah, I still remember that day. When he came in, he told us that he was furious at his friend ( who was also a substitute at our school ) for going to Singapore thus leaving him with the task of teaching us maths and add maths. It was a funny sight to see because his goofiness was showing as he spoke. We couldn't help but chuckle.

Because maths and add maths were way more important than civic, we had more periods of them. So basically, we got to see our sub 4 days a week over the past month which is longer than the time he subbed for our civic teacher. 

Eventually, I think every one of us got used to the idea of seeing him every week that when the inevitable came, some of us were unwilling to see him leave, especially since our maths teacher is an uptight person who boasts about her intelligence at every chance she gets. Having him around was easy-going and fun, and it made the days at school more bearable. I'm pretty sure that once our teacher comes back, all of us will revert to our miserable selves all the while getting stressed over our teacher's incompetence at teaching properly. Seriously, the lady expects us to answer difficult questions after only teaching us the basics. 

And even though our sub is not as good of a teacher as our maths teacher, I still prefer him over her. I'm quite sure that I'd rather have a humble teacher than an arrogant one. Having to endure lessons with arrogant teachers is really distasteful and it also makes the learning experience quite unenjoyable. Also, I do attend tuition classes so it's not like I'm going to fail maths or add maths if I don't learn them at school.

Moving on, yesterday we had our first 2 periods and last period with our sub. We studied a little for the first 2 periods but during the last period, we pleaded with him to not teach and instead focus on saying goodbye. That's exactly what he did. Our last 30 minutes with our sub was spent with people giving him rainbow looms as farewell gifts and having a few pictures taken with his phone. 

When the bell finally rang, all of us stood united and said "thank you, teacher" to our sub for the very last time. This time, he was leaving our school, so it meant that we weren't going to see him on school grounds anymore. 

In conclusion, I'm truly glad and thankful that I was able to experience such a wonderful experience during my short period of time in this class. I have seen some teachers come and go with my old classmates but those experiences can't compare to the one I had the pleasure of experiencing yesterday with my new classmates. The atmosphere was lively and cheerful and I felt that we were all united as a class in contrast to when I felt really out-of-place during my previous experiences. I hope our sub enjoyed his time with us just as much as we had enjoyed our time with him. 



Goodbye, and good luck.