6th Graders and Bad Substitute Teaching Plans! Run!!!

   Today while substitute teaching 6th grade social studies, I felt like running to the car and never looking back.  During first period I realized that the teacher had left me a job that she didn't want to do.  I was seriously annoyed with her.  She expected a substitute to organize 35 sixth grade students into groups of four on a Friday and finish a project that was supposed to be due earlier in the week!  She couldn't get the kids to finish the project, so she left it to a random substitute to get the kids to finish!
   Now these sixth graders still have the energy of little energizer bunnies, need to create drama, run rampant if not watched continually, forget their directions within minutes, and were burnt out from a long school week and ready for the weekend.  Then I stepped in, and it wasn't pretty.  I had to go into an autocratic mode: "Abrahams here, Moseses there, Davids over there, and Solomons here.  1, 2, 3, go!  There should be no one in the middle of the classroom at this time."
    Once I got the students in their corners I sorted them by taking a student out of each of the groups.  "OK you are a group of four.  Memorize your faces, don't forget who is in your group, don't leave your group for another, and go find a quiet place to work.  Next Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon."  Then I kept repeating the match up again and again.  There was drama about the grouping, too much noise from all the groups collaborating together in a small classroom, bathroom break requests, general requests that they'd never make to their own teacher, students having idle time which is never a good idea---very bad things start happening when students are bored.
    I watched the clock.  I counted the periods that I had left to teach.  I neatly stacked all the finished projects by period. I ran when the final school bell rang and will never substitute teach for this teacher again.

P.S.  To my blog readers:  If you want to support a struggling math/engineering teacher and author, please buy my first book, "The Romance of Kilimanjaro," soon to be followed by my second book at:  https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781613464960         Thank You!