The Worst Job Ever

When you’re unemployed, there are times you feel desperate to find work. You consider doing unthinkable things to make money, performing necessary but gruesome tasks, all to make a quick buck to pay your student loans or buy that trench coat you saw at Banana Republic that everyone says makes you look like Inspector Gadget. They are obviously mistaken because you aren’t wearing a hat, your dog’s name is not “Brain” and you are not the sole guardian of your niece “Penny”, who’s parents are obviously deadbeat alcoholics because why else would she be hanging out at your place all the time! Some of these jobs include: sanitation worker, pest control specialist, Charlie Sheen’s publicist… the list goes on and on, but there is one profession that I dread more than any other…substitute teacher. 

You first begin to realize that substitute teaching sucks when you are a student. In elementary school, you have a tough time realizing that your teachers are, in fact, humans and that sometimes, they get sick, or use their personal days to go to go out and buy 30 Rock: Season 4, a box of Entenmann’s Chocolate Covered Donuts, and a gallon of milk so they can hunker down in the nest of blankets they made in their living room and escape from having to sing John Jacob Jingleheimer Smitt on more time. You begin to discover that the blackboard (or Smartboard nowadays) does NOT fold down to reveal a bed, much like the ones you see in prison movies, with the chain supports coming out of the wall and a thin uncomfortable mat for them to sleep on. You become offended that they are doing something else and they left you with this STRANGER!!! Did they not pay attention in the “stranger danger” assembly you had last week? 

If you were a good student in elementary school, this doesn’t really phase you and you spend the entire day making the substitute fall in love with you by answering the questions or offering to help them, or sitting right next to them during the movie they are sure to play. You’re lucky if you have 2 or 3 of these kids in a class, and while you’d rather be texting during “Land Before Time XXXXVII: We’re Still Not Dead Yet!”, you appreciate their thoughtfulness and hunker down, trying not to think of the fact that you paid for 4 years of college and are sitting in a 3rd grade room making $70 for a whole days work. Not all of your students are so inviting. Most are indifferent and are happy to be watching a movie instead of struggling with fractions or mourning the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet and trying the shake the feeling that they’ve been lied to. Then, there are the usual trouble makers who view this as a field day of trouble without consequences. If the teacher you’re in for is not an asshole, they usually tell you who to keep an eye out for. They tell you which kids are not allowed to sit together, which students will eat the paste, that sort of thing. Then, there are the teachers who have obviously never subbed a day in their life, so they don’t bother to tell you if you give Aiden scissors he is going to try and cut his neighbor’s hair, or that Annie’s favorite pastime is kicking other students when you’re not looking. It’s these teachers that you hate and don’t for a second regret hiding their last dry erase marker and using the change in their top drawer to buy a soda in the faculty lounge. Thankfully, I am 6’3”, so kids don’t usually mess with me, or with each other when I am in the room. If they do, I have the intimidation factor on my side. I make them come to my desk while I am filling out the sub report so that they can watch me write down that they misbehaved. One of my teachers in college told me that kids need to be told what they did wrong and see that there are consequences to poor behavior. This is how I accomplish that. Most of the time they are horrified that I am telling their regular teacher and visions of losing recess, having to sit in the time out chair, or their teacher holding them in a choke hold flash through their heads and they are not a problem after that. 

Subbing at the middle school level is torture. Come to think of it, everything at the middle school level is torture. I subbed for 8 weeks at the Junior High level and have never filled out so many referrals in my life. The administrators must have hated me, but when a student tells says “bite me” in front of 30 of their peers and you’re not allowed to actually bite them, you have to call in the big guns. Middle schoolers think that they are the shit, instead of smelling like it, because at that point, they are still blissfully unaware of anti-per spirant and deodorant. In addition to thinking they are the coolest thing since Disney’s Camp Rock, they also think that they’re smarter than you. You catch them in lies and they keep insisting they are telling the truth, despite the irrefutable evidence you’ve gathered that suggests otherwise. And of course, there is the “drama factor.” Subbing consistently in a middle school is like being popped into a real live version of “Days of our Lives”, only there is no one famous, no one is in a coma, and little old ladies aren’t sitting there watching you. There is deception, cheating, gossip, and hidden agendas. Middle school students are manipulative, especially the girls. And all middle school students operate under the assumption that you can’t hear them, so they talk about Gavin dumping Taylor and kissing Maddie at an inappropriately loud volume. When you tell them that Gavin can wait and that they should be filling out their sheet on New Orleans Jazz Musicians, they look at you with the look of utmost betrayal and anger and, when they think you can’t hear them, begin talking about how much they hate you and how there is no such thing as “Dress Crocs”, even though your shoes OBVIOUSLY have suede on the top!

High school students are the best to sub for, because they naturally want to do nothing, so when you announce that they are watching a movie, you are instantly their hero! That is, unless you make them do work. Some teachers decide that their being out is no reason for class not to continue as normal. They leave you a lesson to teach and an assessment to give. They are under the assumption that you are knowledgeable in their course subject, which is pretty bold of them because these assholes usually teach something like “Contemporary Russian Literature” or “Aboriginal History and Culture”. Once, I proctored for an Honors Chemistry Final for a high school and the students were having a great deal of trouble. If you have ever been in this situation, you know what it feels like. Naturally, they raised their hands and pleaded for you to help them, knowing that their entire future rests on the successful completion of this exam. And there you, fresh out of college, where you skipped any class that nothing to do with music, managed to fulfill your science credit by having a friend sign your name on the list in Ancient Life, and frantically prayed you could pass the tests on the days when you absolutely had to show up. Then, you have to look that poor knowledge starved kid right in the eye and admit that you was dumber than he/she is. Yeah, we all took chemistry in high school, but we haven’t used it since. I don’t have the periodic table app on my Droid and I am certainly not concerned with the chemical make-up of my large Caramel Iced Latte from Dunkin’ Donuts. We all know Chem is important, but really, I spent my days teaching days playing piano, reading “Opera News”, and practicing the Curwin Solfege Handsigns. Yes, it is true, I have no marketable life skills. I could probably tell you more about the information about the current Met season than I could about the Israel Palestine conflict and I realize that that is pathetic, but no one really wants to hear about the Arab Peace Initiative in Music Theory from their teacher that gets most of his news from The Soup and Conan O’Brien. 

There you sit, at the front of the class, as the students who now know that they’re smarter than you lament your pathetic existence and make a mental note to not throw away their lives like you obviously have. When their normal teacher finally enters the room to answer the questions that you could not, you slip out of the room to the faculty bathroom where you splash water on your face to cool you down after that savage ego beating and let a few soft sobs escape your now chapped lips before you shuffle back to the scene of the crime. You now look at the clock more than the kids do and cope with the fact that students only raise their hands to ask to use the restroom, which is the only thing you are qualified for anyway. You then have to flag down some poor hall monitor to escort the kids to the bathroom because, as we all know, kids have to pee under direct supervision because they might have written the atomic number of Rubidium on the elastic of their underwear. The exam ends and they actually trust you to collect it as the students leave, avoiding you like they do the kids who get to school early to play Magic: The Gathering. 

At the end of the day, you turn in your badge, your evaluations of the class, which include Bobby rubbing a booger on Suzie’s overalls, leave the school, and go home to lick your wounds, wait for your dignity to return, and do it all again the next day when you get the call at 5:30am and are asked to teach Arabic and hope that it is similar to those 2 semesters of French you had in college.