I let him chug on. The other children, apparently accustomed to his behavior, simply ignored it, and the class proceeded. Joey finally stopped chugging and went back to his desk. I like to read aloud to children and I knew from experience with my own children that reading was a way to still a restless group. I would have read on forever if Maxine had wanted me to.
Every teacher knows that elementary children do a lot of tattling.
The more a teacher is willing to listen to the tattling, the more complaints that are heard. I called him a snot rag. Both regular teachers and substitutes rely on inventiveness at one time or another. In some ways I had to use my inventiveness more in the high school than in the grade school. For example, I didn t have the ability to really teach music even though I could play the piano a bit.