Substitute Teaching: Good teacher or good Students?

I was called back to the same school about a month later, to replace the same teacher. I hoped to have a different group, since students meet only every other day, but it was the same group. I was nerves about seeing again the kid with the black eye. He was there, but seemed OK and more serious and subdued now…

I distributed the worksheets the teacher had left there, and only later realized that their title was ‘Chapter Test’. Since nothing in teacher’s notes mentioned a test I, first, ignored it, but after confirming with students I established test discipline…

During the test, students had asked me questions and it forced me to look at the test and try to solve it. Parts of it were easy enough, but others were more challenging. At one point, a female student had asked for help on a problem that I could not figure out immediately, and I was wondering how other students solved it.

Not much later, my special student ended his test. I did notice on the previous visit that he was very quick, and the first to complete a worksheet or a test. I checked his solution to the problem the female student had asked, but his answer did not seem right to me. He also left out another, longer and more involved, problem.

I started checking every test handed back to me to see who had solved those two problems correctly.  None of the answers to the two problems seemed to be correct, and only few students even attempted to solve them …

I had only three classes that day, and was curious to see how the second period will deal with those problems. They had the same test, and checking each one, I did not find correct answers to the tricky questions, and very few attempts all together …

The third period of the day was of honors students, a very crowded class that I remembered from my previous visit. Their test was in a separate pile but looking at it, I realized it was the same. Now I was really interested in how they will perform.

The difference between this class and the others was obvious from the start. They insisted on having a review before taking the test, so I did let them ask questions.

We spent about half the period on review, despite my advice to start the test to give them enough time. They wanted to be sure, a sign of motivation and ambition.

At last, I distributed the tests and waited, impatiently, to see the result. When the first test was handed back to me, I saw with delight that the answers were exactly right. I complemented the girl for being the first to answer correctly. Later, not to spoil her pride, I did not mention that every single test was absolutely correct too…

So… here we are - same school, same population, with the same teacher - the students in the more crowded class, on the last period of the day (and week), were just superior to students in the other two classes. They were more motivated to learn, it was quite clear, but they were also… how to say it… smarter!

Teacher’s fault? Teacher’s praise? Is she to be blamed for the failure of the first two classes or to be praised for the success of the third class?