~ Now that it is in the 2012/2013 school year & I have  retired from substitute teaching, life has truly changed.  For the positive, no longer am I getting up @ 5:30am (usually with too little sleep).  Driving in the dark to a school where the students are also still 1/2 asleep. Nor am I having to dress like some prep. The kinda vague teachers instructions are also not missed.
     Yet, there is the mental exchange with the students.  Be they young or in high school ~ the youth had a spark of being that I truly miss.  Even with the reluctance to recognize that they were about to learn something.  I often told students, especially as they would leave my class ~ try to learn 'something' today, even if it is not from a teacher.  Then there were the experiences as the 6th grader who said to me ~ you are Mr. James, I had you in the 2nd grade & you taught me how to do Algebra & I got it. ~  (Did love teaching early grades that all 4 math functions all fit together & just because they were in 1st or 2nd grade did not mean they should not be taught how all fit together.) 
      For 10 years, I moved among the students of Athens City, Athens County, & Vinton County school.  Teaching in every grade & in every school in those 3 school systems.  Walking in the halls & having students ask with anticipation as to who I was subing for, let me know they where hopful I would be their sub.  With this exposure I found that almost everywhere I went, there would be a student that I had taught.  There are the incidents as the student who sees me out of school while he is with his mom & turning to her & saying that he would like to have hair like mine.  Ya see, I have 2 very long dreadlocks, which kinda made me stand out from the other teachers.  Treating the students as PEOPLE instead of some underling also made me stand out among their other adult experiences in the schools.