I'm exhausted after an entire week of substitute teaching for a 7th grade social studies class. Keep reading to find out more about my subbing adventures and how it is going to help my own writing! I felt like an anthropologist secretly studying the lives of tweens!

Hello everyone! Yes, I know I've been AWOL from this blog all week. It seems like an eternity since I've had a chance to even visit my own website. FYI, for those of you who don't know, I substitute teach grades K-12 when I'm between book sales and TV jobs because a) I am very neurotic about NOT working and b) I secretly love teaching and love these crazy kids who drive me nuts with their incessant chatting and flicking rubber bands at each other. Teaching is very rewarding and I really do love all my students. They are all so cute and adorable and squirmy. Even the sullen, rebellious Emo kids are, in the end, still children and very vulnerable, so my heart always melts when I watch them rebel. Sullen rebellion is an important part of adolescent development and growing up, so I try to remember that as I yell at them to sit up straight and pay attention in class.

Like many TV writers and book writers in Los Angeles, I've joined the hallowed tradition of taking and passing the CBEST exam to qualify as a public school substitute teacher to make money during the, uh, "lean" years. It's an exhausting job - you basically have to be on call every single day. Your phone can ring anytime between 4 and 9 p.m. or, worse, from 6 to 11 a.m. every day. So I have to be prepared to leave the house at a moment's notice by 6ish every morning.

So far, some of my subbing jobs have included teaching kindergarten, 3rd grade, 5th grade, 6th grade science, 9th grade health, 10th grade biology, elementary school Special Ed, 7th grade social studies, conducting middle school orchestra and band and ironically, coaching elementary school P.E.! It's a mix of making sure your students learn everything on the real teacher's lesson plan, from how to diagram parallelograms to spelling tests to learning about the central nervous system and the Age of Enlightenment. I've conducted the middle school orchestra and band for their concert (the songs included Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust"! LOL!) I had my 8th grade Chorus play "American Idol" where the students participated as either the judges or singers and we voted for the best singer by the end of class.

Given that it's almost summer, my latest sub job involved me just making sure my students did worksheets for the first half of class followed by a "reward" movie for the second half of class. (Showing movies is a big trick among teachers near the end of the year because the kids get WAY too restless, knowing there's only a week or two of school left.)

Yesterday, I saw a middle school talent show that featured some incredibly talented kids - singers, dancers, pianists, fiddlers, and even rappers! I was incredibly moved by the wonderful kids from Special Ed who re-enacted the dance number from "High School Musical." They got a standing ovation.

But on a more realistic level, some of subbing is also babysitting. The kids try to trick the sub with various white lies - they don't sit in their assigned seats, they talk during class and claim the real teacher allows them to work in groups (i.e. blow off work and gossip).

The biggest problem is the classroom size - there are about 38 kids in a class. Talk about trying to keep control of 30something squirmy 12 year olds. Because I look young and am only 4'11" (yes, even the third graders are taller than  me!), I can't be the teacher who is calm and quietly says "Shhhh" to keep the kids quiet. It just doesn't work when the students can't even see me behind the podium. Fortunately, I have a VERY LOUD VOICE (probably Mother Nature's way of compensating for my small size). So I shock the kids constantly with my amazing operatic screaming at them to "HEY! GUYS! STOP TALKING, GUYS!!!!!"

However, the disciplining is very tough and can be both emotionally and physically draining. I've found myself so exhausted every afternoon that the last thing I want to do is blog, maintain my website, or even write. Instead, I come home and collapse on the couch and watch Food TV all night.

I did develop some ground rules as a sub. The picture at the top (and below here) demonstrate my rules that I write up immediately on the board:

1. Do not talk when the teacher is talking!

2. No iPods, no cell phones, no texting, nothing! You can live one hour without texting your friends!

3. No makeup! You look fine!

4. No swearing! No yelling! "Inside voices" please!

5. No rubber bands! No straws!

I also write on the board, "Students Who Are Annoying Ms. Yoo Today" and you'd be amazed at how that works. No one wants their name on the sub report to the real teacher. It's my one weapon that always works.

As for some of my rules... you would be amazed by how many girls will whip out entire makeup cases with multiple trays on their desks and slather eyeliner on themselves in the middle of a lecture. I have to make sure everyone puts their bags and purses on the floor, otherwise they secretly text their friends by keeping their purse/bag on their laps so I can't see. And who knew spitballs and rubber bands would still be fashionable in 2009? I always thought that was a cliche from the 1950s. Today, spitballs have evolved into these little wadded up paper missiles that the kids anchor onto the end of a rubber band and aim at each other. And watch out for water bottles - kids like to squeeze and crack them when they're empty, just to annoy the teacher. Sometimes they'll pierce a hole through the bottle cap and use them as water pistols.

Other random things I've learned from my subbing adventures this year:

-- Today's tweens do not care for the following kid-oriented movies: Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch, Chicken Run. They do not like movies or cartoons with British accents. The movie they love? The Lion King.

-- Today's tweens, no matter how sophisticated and tough and cynical and teenager-y they behave, will turn into little children when you turn on The Lion King. They will suddenly lose all their rebellious attitudes and sit there, slack jawed, riveted at the cartoon playing onscreen. It's like they are hyponotized. It's hilarious because they will beg me to rent "Pineapple Express" or "Dawn of the Dead," but the minute I put on The Lion King, all that rebellious bravado disappears and they become little kids again. And then you remember, these kids are only 12 years old. As big as they are (some of these kids are like 5'9" and have grown up figures), they're still ONLY 12 YEARS OLD!!!!

-- Today's tweens and teens DO NOT READ!!! We have a Silent Reading Period where it is mandatory for children to sit at their desks and read silently for the next 20 minutes. The honor roll students often will read a book required for English class. Very rarely did I see anyone from 6th to 12th grade actually read a real YA or middle grade novel. They didn't even know about some of the most buzzed about books this past year, like Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES. Most of them would read an old National Geographic magazine or literally just sit there, doing absolutely nothing and just staring into space. It was a real wake up call for me as a published YA novelist to witness this. The books they preferred tended to be books that moved quickly - had a lot of action and active scenes. They were not as into the quiet, literary books that win the big awards. It made me wonder how boring GOOD ENOUGH would be for some of them. Although I will not change my writing style and will continue to write what I think is the best novel, period, seeing these kids' reading habits jolted me into remembering WHO I am writing for. Why write if your intended audience won't read? How do we encourage them to read more? I ended up writing a list of books for these kids that I thought they would enjoy. On a brighter note, I did notice one very smart girl reading Jeffrey Eugenides' acclaimed literary novel, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, so the kids that are passionate about reading ARE out there. The unfortunate situation is that they are in the minority. So I'm grateful to have subbed because it's been a very sobering wake up call for me as a writer for this age group. I am fired up to write better books that kids will voluntarily read!

-- Diversity. I teach in Los Angeles where it is a very diverse community. The schools I've taught at literally do not have one majority group. The schools have been equally divided demographically among white, African American, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc. The mix is really spread out. As a TV writer, it inspired me to be more vigilant about writing and pitching teen-oriented shows featuring a very diverse cast because that's the reality of most schools today, at least in Los Angeles. I am curious to hear what diversity is like in schools outside Los Angeles. And as we all know, teens are teens, no matter what the demographic. So in the end, the whole point is to create books and TV shows and movies that have universal appeal because all teens are interested in the same things - friendship, acceptance, finding out your identity, romance, and surviving adolescence. 

--  Kids love to talk about nothing. It is amazing how much my students love to talk about nothing. It's like they just love to hear the sounds of their own voices. Whenever I see TV shows or movies where the teacher is talking to a silent classroom, I now just laugh and laugh and laugh until tears roll down my eyes. There are no silent classrooms! There's a constant, steady buzz that eventually just becomes a white noise that you grow used to!

-- Kids love the slide. When I subbed at elementary school and had yard duty during recess, I developed a  hate-hate relationship with the playground slide. It was this massive twisty slide that all the kids - from kindergarten to 5th grade - loved to slide down. But they didn't just slide down it - they tried jumping halfway off it. They tried sliding down on their heads. They would stop halfway and then slide backwards or try to run back UP the slide. I nearly had a heart attack at every recess, terrified that some kid would somehow fall off and break their arm and I would get sued for not being a good yard duty teacher. It was like I was a prison warden and had to scream constantly at the kids to slide down properly. Oh, how I hate you, Slide!

--Kindergarten kids must have everything done in a certain order. I was excited to teach 5-year-olds because they are so cute and I thought it would be "easy." How wrong I was - kindergarten is TOUGH. These kids are used to order and patterns. So when I had them say the Pledge of Allegiance BEFORE the Alphabet song, the kids freaked out and started crying, "BUT WE HAVE TO SING THE ALPHABET SONG FIRST!!!!!!!" and chaos broke out and I thought there was going to be a mutiny. Note to self: Do not stray from the real teacher's lesson plan. Follow it EXACTLY. Do not switch things around. I fortunately saved the day because I always bring my violin to elementary school sub days just in case, so I distracted the furious kindergarteners by playing Twinkle Little Star on my violin. Phew! But it made me realize how little kids see the world - and how that order/pattern is important to them, and it makes me think differently now about how I would write a picture book for a younger kid. I would definitely include more patterns that they can identify because kindergarten kids. love. patterns.

Anyway, so that's been my life recently, hence the long silence on the website blog. I'm sorry, you guys know I try to blog on a much more daily/regular schedule. But school is ending next week so I'll be back to a more regular blogging schedule.

I'm going to spend my weekend writing - I have a lot to make up for because of the past couple weeks of vegging out! I hope everyone has a great writing weekend and I hope my subbing anecdotes have helped you see the secret life of tweens/teens/children and how we must always remember WHO we are writing for.