Sub Vision: Dear Substitute Teacher

 It is the start of a new school year and whether you are excited to go back to work or wish you had a longer vacation, your summer vacation will probably last a little longer, as most teachers are still present in class. By the time calls start coming you will be mentally ready…

When that happens, be prepared with few items to help you in case you are sent to a class that is not ready for you. Think ahead of some activities that would occupy students in case they don’t have anything to do. Although many of them would not want to participate, some will, and it will make a difference.

I usually carry with me Sudoku to draw on the board and challenge students to solve it. If they are too lazy to copy it (occasionally I copy for them), some will be happy to do it on the board. You may also look for various brain puzzles. I recently found one with symbols representing expressions, and students really enjoy it...

Most classrooms are equipped with an electronic device that can run a movie. You may want to fetch few DVDs, as they are easy to carry. I usually bring a classic, not anything students would watch on their own, to introduce them to good old, yet entertaining, movies, like Charlie Chaplin’s or the Marx Brothers’.

For your own entertainment, bring something to read in case students are busy. Try not to use your cell phone, as it looks unprofessional. Reading a book or magazine will make you look professional, and will give students a good example. I usually carry with me the Time Magazine; it contains current news, fun facts and stories…

Take with you a snack and a bottle of water; you never know what the school cafeteria provides. Bring a hat in case you are to supervise an outside action, and a light sweater in case air-conditioning is too chilly.

Make sure you are cozy and mobile. Use a light handbag, comfortable shoes and be as self-sustained as possible; you may be at an unfamiliar school, or doing unplanned activity at the gym, out on the field, or in an office filing papers...

And my favorite… go to the cafeteria for nutrition and lunch (make sure you have few one dollar bills), and talk to someone; There is nothing as effective in relieving daily stress as talking to another adult who deals with similar situations...

Sub Vision: Get a Job… or better yet – a Career!

When a sales person calls and manages to bypass my answering machine to get to me, I get furious about a system that allows anybody to intrude my privacy at my special time. If a stranger breaks into someone’s home, he is a violator, and faces fierce consequences, so why invading someone’s space is not a violation?

The point that I want to make, however, is not about my frustration; it is about the people who are behind these calls. I want to tell them ‘young people, is this the best you can do with your life? Is calling people at home, trying to sell them something they don’t need, something you probably won’t buy - Is this the best way you can do to make a living? Aren’t you wasting your life?’

As I grow older, my attitude toward all young people is a mixture of parental and educational approach. I want to tell them not to waste time and energy on unimportant matters, to approach money as a mean, not as a goal, and a job as a career of the type that (as I heard once) they would do even if not paid to do it.

I am aware of a ready criticism toward someone who grew up, and raised kids, in a normal family situation, with values, education, and financial stability. And of course, any honest job is better than no job. We all had temporary situations when any honest job was OK; cleaning houses, babysitting or telemarketing. For a student with young family, or a person who supports an elderly parent, every job is respectable! But once situation is stabilizing, one must try to move to a better position, or at least try to find aspects of the job that he/she likes and expend on them…

Another reproof I may face might arise from the type of the job I do; it is not exactly a high profile career, one may claim. Unlike full time teachers, I am not that much of an educator… I don’t have their grueling responsibility of seeing 200 students under their care learning and maturing. Mine is more of a job than a career as it does not develop into a whole process with a start and with end results. I don’t take students on a long path that brings them from ignorance to enlightenment …

Yet, I am a teacher, and as such, I am true to my career indicator - I will do it even if I am not paid to do it…

True, as a substitute teacher I don’t have the satisfaction of seeing the whole progression, but never the less I am still a teacher and an educator. I don’t envision my job as just a warm body in a classroom. I am an instructor whenever I have the opportunity to discuss an academic subject - literature, historical event, or a math problem, and I am a mentor when the occasion arises to discussing social issues, relationships, values or current events, thus making them teachable moments…

There is nothing more gratifying for a teacher than seeing the result of a teachable moment… Not very often, but occasionally, students that I had before, at the same school or even another, would remind me that they learned something from me that affected them. Those are what Mr. Sima, my teaching credentials professor, would call ‘psychological dollars’, worth, infinitely, much more than green dollars…

Sub Vision: Substitutes and Contract Pool Teachers

A teacher that I know had reached a breaking point and decided to resign her full time position. I had met her when she was still at another location, a middle school. Now I see her often at a high school where I frequently work, and watch her repeatedly being upset, sometimes crying, and hear distressed conversations’ bits with other teachers. Not ready to retire yet, she has decided to become a contract pool teacher; staying at the same school but serving as a substitute teacher.

I am not sure this is necessarily the road to happiness, but I know it is the road to a peace of mind. For a substitute teacher, a miserable day ends at 3:00-3:30. For a full time teacher a miserable day may last a whole semester, even a whole year, with short breaks in between. At the end of a school day, teachers carry their head and heart aches home, into the evenings and sleepless nights. Days off are used to reset strategies and plan new ones that maybe, just maybe, will be more effective…

The advantage (or disadvantage) of a pool teacher, over a daily substitute teacher, is that they are usually based at one school. For the above-mentioned teacher it might be a drawback, facing many of the same problem students, and possibly the same unsupportive administration. No doubt, there is a benefit in knowing where you are stationed, and thus avoiding early morning phone calls, that may requests your service at a remote, or undesirable, location. Yet, not committed to a specific location, means that a troubling day at a certain school ends at the end of that day.

There was a time when the district offered a permanent substitute positions at certain schools, usually under-performing ones. I was offered that kind of job in the past, and weighed the pros and cons. One setback was the fact that I did not know ahead of time where I would be assigned. The one school I knew had an opening, and I could have pulled some contacts, was a school where I had several long-term assignments, but my experience there made it an unappealing prospect. The other schools, I suspected, could be even worse and further away, so I declined the offer.

If there is an ideal type of work that I could do as a teacher, I have not found it yet, but substitute teaching, or contract pool teaching, is the closest so far…

Sub Vision: Schools I go to and schools I don’t

Over the years, I have worked in many of the district schools. When I started as new teacher I was seldom called, and when called it was usually to undesirable schools that were probably rejected by others, higher on the list. Assigned to work at the 6-12 grades, I was mostly called to middle schools.

Now that I am higher on the list I can choose and pick, and leave for the new people my rejects… sorry! Interestingly enough, there is a lot of agreement among substitute teachers which are the desirable schools, and which are not...

When choosing to work at a school, the top criterion is whether it is a high school. Middle schools’ days are exhausting, and discipline is almost impossible. To make things worse, many of them don’t have a full time dean, and count on over-worked teachers and over-loaded counselors to do the job. I have seen schools turn around after hiring a dean, or turning the other way when elimination this position.

Another criterion is the main office staff. Main office is the face of the school. No matter how good school’s reputation is, a lemony office manager, and unsmiling clerical personnel, make it an unappealing work place. Angry, mean, or even just sour faces are not a pretty sight first thing in the morning… Often I choose a bad school with nice office employees over a good one, with lemony personnel...

Another criterion is the bell schedule. Schools that cater block scheduling make substitute teachers’ day unbearable; students have very little patience after forty minutes and start acting out. Schools that don’t have a descent nutrition break, with enough time for restroom and a cup of coffee, are inconsiderate to their teachers!

Of course, we all have our own preferences. I am uncomfortable working at a school that has no gate or one that is wide open... I don’t like messy classrooms, dirty bathrooms or littered hall ways. I don’t like classrooms full of aides that do nothing but texting, or ones that feel they should run the class for me (unless the teacher instructed so). I don’t like nonexistent lesson plan, or one that does not commit students to a concrete activity, to be handed over at the end of the class…

Higher on my criterion list, though, is the existence of staff cafeteria. Cafeteria, for me, is the place to relax for a short time between classes, to be served for few minutes. It is not only the cup of coffee, or lunch, it is having comfort food during a hard day… Schools that adult cafeteria is not high on their priority list, are very low on my priority list. I deem them negligent of their most important resource, the teachers, and it often reflects on schools’ atmosphere…

Substitute Teaching: The school that had not changed

I worked at a high school for two years, as a volunteer, teacher assistant, and then a full time math/special ed teacher. I was offered to stay as a special ed teacher, but my goal was to become a general ed math teacher, so I left.

As a substitute teacher, I was rarely sent to that school. Being on the lower end of the food chain, I was sent to middle schools, and not the better ones. Then all of a sudden, more than ten years later, I started to get assignment at that school.

During my first few visits, I was very excited. I studied every staff member’s face and, surprisingly, recognized many. I saw my, then, assistant, who helped me become a better teacher, and other assistants and teachers with whom I worked.

What surprised me was that nothing had changed. Same bell schedule (many other schools had tweaked it with the hope to improve students’ performance). Same long (un-heard of) 20 minutes nutrition break, 35 minutes lunch (you can actually finish a whole salad ball), and, yes, 20 minutes of silent reading (long abandoned by all other schools, replaced by useless advisories, or breakfast in class).

At least as surprising, was to see the same teachers, at the same classroom! Wondering around trying to locate my old classroom, I discovered that the teacher next door, who was my mentor, but also my son’s Spanish teacher, was still there. Another of my son’s teachers, then a young and charismatic teacher, I located at the same classroom where he was twelve years earlier. Teachers did not even aged that much, and the ones I thought were, back then, quite old, don’t look any older.

I have marveled over this phenomenon every time I talk to someone who knows that school, until one day a lady who worked there pointed that something had changed dramatically - the main office!

She was absolutely right! Back in the days, there were two office personnel there, with the same first name, both pretty, both with a bright smile that welcomed you every morning, no matter how stressful the morning was. One had retired, the other was let go during one of the district’s unreasonable reorganizations. Replacing them is a new office manager who may be very efficient, but also very unpleasant.

A public school’s “main office” has enormous effect on school’s environment; it is the gate to the school, the first experience…

It has changed! And not for the better…