The Parent Trap

I don't know if there were this many kids getting picked up from school everyday when I was a kid and I just didn't notice cause I was a bus kid but every elementary school I sub at there are a ton of parents waiting outside the school to pick up their kids and we have to walk them outside and make sure they get to someone who can legally pick them up. Especially the preschoolers... I don't think presschoolers are allowed to ride school buses.

Anyway where I was going with this is it's super awkward and weird to have to deal with parents when you're a sub. I barely know the kids' names and I don't know much about them I just met them today. Then when a parent comes and asks me how their kid's day was it's usually the bad kids' parents who ask that so I have to actually remember each bad thing the kid did during that day which is a lot of work when you have a class of about 20 kids you barely know.

Yesterday I had a parent basically have a mini parent teacher conference with me, telling me she's ex-air force and that her daughter is too advanced for the class she's in and she talks too much cause the work isn't challenging her and I'm just like ok... but have this conversation with her regular teacher.

 I also had one kid who's adjusting to new medication I guess. I asked him to stop making noise in the hallway and told him to either stop or he could go to the office. He decided to he wanted to continue what he was doing and walked off to the office. Since I don't know for sure if a kid makes it to the office, whenever a child leaves a room I'm in charge of unattended I call to the office to have someone find them so they're not unaccounted for. I tried to call down to the office when this happened but I couldn't get through while they were about to use the PA system to do the afternoon announcements. This child's mother was in the building and walked into the classroom and asked me why her son was out in the halls and I told her. But like I said it was a weird conversation to have to explain to her why her child walked off unsupervised. Then she started going into detail about his medication situations...

It's not even that I don't care I actually do care about all my kids even the ones I never see again, it's just that I have no say, authority, or bearing on what happens in your child's class after I leave.