They Don’t Want Me to Be Great

It could all be so simple...

When I wrote this a week ago, I wanted to appeal to one district in hopes that there would be a conversation somewhere with someone influential that helps the kids. I called out the district I struggled with that morning and then got nervous because stifling myself is a constant battle these days. I want to thank those that read it in advance. 

My thought after leaving the secondary classroom full time was always to serve the students and teachers by substitute teaching. In the last month, I’ve applied to every metro district and I find it weird and inefficient how long the process is. Everyone has a different system and everyone wants their own training. I have a couple of big picture gripes: 

1) Technology does not make things significantly more efficient for those outside of the office. I imagine that before all applications were online only, administrative assistants struggled to keep track of all the paperwork. Yet, websites still malfunction every single day. The internet glitches, the power goes out, the printer jams, the computer must update RIGHT this second. I’m not casting us back into the stone ages. I’m typing this quippy short essay from an overpriced laptop that I have decorated with a glitter case. I just wonder how much thought “offices” give to the time and energy suck of technology. I’m 36, and my smartphone screentime is average 7 hours a day. I’m on TikTok and I can edit video and there are people just 5 and 10 years older than me who get really happy about me organizing their Google documents into outlines. But if there were a channel where I could choose low-tech everything, I would. My brain would just feeeeeeel better. 

2) There is no state standard, and if there’s a national standard Oklahoma doesn’t want it (or is a barrier to it). There is no standard of training for substitute teachers. Maybe I’m crazy, but just like I went through the state’s long multi-step process in order to get my highly qualified teaching certificate, there could be a series of shorter processes for substitutes based on their qualifications. 

I’ll not bury the lead here. A certified teacher (whose certificate is not expired, duh) should not need to do ANYTHING except a renewed background check (with the state, for the entire state) approximately once a year and an interview. 

I’m not joking. Paperwork for what? Applications? COVER LETTER? Matta fact, when the system triggers the renewed background check and the certified teacher fills out a maximum-5-question Google form that asks their name, email address, resume,their last placement, and how often they want to sub, someone should call them before close of the next business day to ask them why they aren’t in the classroom full-time. 

In Oklahoma, the land of emergency certificates, and plainly uncertified people making full salaries, signing up to sub is hard. This is so dystopian, I can’t even. 

I’m not even gon’ hold you. I don’t care what elaborate processes the state wants to use for non-certified substitute teacher candidates. That’s not my niche of advocacy here. And we need to avoid having harmful adults around kids. I just think there should be nothing hard about the process through which a certified teacher can be underpaid to continue the learning of students while their underpaid full-time teachers handle off-campus business. 

3) An advocate for the devil would say that the districts want to control their culture. Fine! Good! That’s what the interview phase is for. As I alluded to in the part about technology, I am biiiig on the human element. Once the state handles the safety training and mandatory reporting and bloodborne pathogens and child safeguarding (because it should be standardized), then candidates can report to the district for the pep rally. I think they should! That’s just a separate process from all the other pieces (that should be streamlined for certified teachers). 

If you want to be done reading: the state should sponsor substitute training and make it available like clockwork (ex: every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 10am and every Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm, first Saturday of every month). I could actually project manage this to completion, but I don’t work for free. 

If you would like to stick around for story time about why I almost called out one specific metro district, read on.

This morning, I was signed up for a two hour session called “Sub Training.” 

Let me get this out the way: I be late to stuff. I have improved but not alllllllll the way. If the only thing that occurred this morning was my tardiness, I would not be sitting before my laptop writing a blog post on this topic. 

There were emails and texts about what papers to bring to training. The reason I was late was because I spent too long trying to log back into the system to see the list of papers. I do have a home printer, but I also sometimes try to pretend like I’m going to be eco-friendly by not making too many unnecessary copies. I saw something about forms of ID but when I tried to advance screens, the password and two-factor authentication didn’t work. I thought I was going to print the documents but then could not verify which documents. I looked around my office a little for my teaching certificate and my birth certificate (I found 5 copies of my daughter’s and none of mine). And then I gave up and decided to just go there and ask them. 

A main street near the building the training is in is under construction for about a mile. Obviously construction slows things down. This is why people with a lot of self-discipline and low sleep and food needs and no kids say to always give yourself 15 minutes extra at the minimum. 

I almost left the house having eaten no foods. 

I almost left the house having drunk no water. 

I almost stayed up later last night to print documents. 

I almost got up earlier this morning to get ready. 

Instead I gave my body priority over linear time and it cost me exactly 3 minutes. 

The training started at 10:30. I walked in at 10:33 and the door was locked. 

Again, if it were JUST this, I’d not be blogging about it. I have lost the linear time battle. 

But the failed log-in system. 

So I called this number to see about getting logged in and scheduling another training. Homeboy said, “I’ll have to transfer you to another department to get you logged in. And… it looks like trainings are booked up for the rest of the month.”

I know you f***in’ lyin’. I’m sorry; I did try not to cuss in this writing, but THE REST OF THE MONTH and that day was the FIFTH?!

He asked if I wanted to try and schedule in October, and I said, “You know what? I’m good. Y’all don’t seem to need me.”

So, I wanted the superintendent and those in the district office to know who to reach out to if this was an unfortunate series of events that does not reflect the way their district does business. But then I left them out of it. 

I’m sorry I was late. I just want to show up when the regular English teacher is sick and teach high school students about authentic writing voice and why they can’t cuss until they are adults and even then why it’s a gamble. I just want to show them excerpts of my master’s thesis and the album I collaborated on so that they know language arts are cool. I just want to have a sentence diagramming competition and show the students of color that we can master things. 

These loopholes don’t want me to be great. 

I had to download Microsoft Teams in order to attend an info session for a second district that afternoon, and I received an email from a third district on Wednesday to register for and complete trainings with OPSRC online before Tuesday. The fourth district (the most recent district I taught in) sent an email scheduler later Thursday.

It should be simpler. What am I missing?