The Substitute!

There was a movie that came out in 1996 called "The Substitute." I haven't seen the whole movie, but I've seen clips on YouTube. I always criticize movies about education because they often exaggerate or leave out certain aspects of the profession. This one used to fit into that category, until last year.

My mentor, Rafe Esquith, would often say movie producers wanted to make a movie about him and his role as an educator teaching at an inner-city school in Los Angeles. He always turned them down because he never wanted to give the wrong impression about teaching. 

Odds are students won't be standing on a desk reciting poetry as you are being led out of the classroom for disobeying the headmaster of a private school. 

Odds are you aren't going to save an entire group of inner-city youths by having them write in a journal. 

Odds are you aren't going to walk into a school in Harlem as a teacher is quitting and then immediately take over the class where you learn more from the students than they learn from you. 

However, the movie after which I've titled this post after, was more correct than I wanted it to be. 

This last year, our state had a shortage of substitute teachers. It was so bad that the governor asked for state employees to take leave in order to substitute teach. In fact, the state would give us additional time off so we didn't have to use our personal leave. I don't know how many people took him up on this offer, but I do know the governor made time to substitute teach at a middle school long enough to get a few photos for the newspaper. (see below)

I thought this idea was awesome and I had even been talking about it with my colleagues at the state board of education. I know this sounds crazy, but I thought it was important for those of us working in education and making rules for educators, to dip our toe into the classroom occasionally in order to get a feel of what teaching is like in our schools. I stopped teaching in 2016 and I know our schools and students have changed drastically since then. 

I was lucky to find several opportunities to work in a number of school settings as a substitute. I worked at some jr. highs, high schools, and even an elementary school. I thought it would be just like riding a bike and I was somewhat correct. That is if the bike had two flat tires and no handlebars. 

It was a miserable experience. I know having your own classroom is a very different thing than being a substitute teacher, but I used to substitute teach back in 2009 and I felt like it was much easier back then. Almost every school had the same problem and it made me realize why we were having a substitute teacher shortage in the first place. 

The last substitute job I took was at an elementary school teaching 4th grade. This is the grade I used to teach and I was looking forward to it because I was a good 4th grade teacher. Sure, I had problem kids in my teaching days, but the classroom as a whole was good. Students got along and we had a good class culture. I thought I would be able to bring that same energy to this new classroom. I knew that might have been a bigger task than I expected as the principal continued to drop in throughout the morning. It was still early, but the principal had already come in twice to check in on me and the class. I soon realized why. 

After an hour or so, the first problem happened. Two students were starting to argue about something and then they started telling each other to eff off. This didn't sit well with me, so I sent them to the office. As I was watching them walk down the hall, some noise was coming from inside the classroom. It turns out one of the students, who was larger than most kids his age and bound to a wheelchair, was being teased by other students. I soon found that this was very common and he would often fight back and only make the teasing worse. 

As I went back inside to handle this fire, the school's counselor and learning coach came down to ask what the other two students had done. I told them that they were telling each other to eff off and the learning coach sighed and said, "When they use language like that we just remind them to use professional language." I could tell she knew that this was something that never worked in their school, but that is how they were taught to handle these types of situations. 

The only ray of light about this day was that they were being released early, so I only had to be there until 12:30. If it had been a full day, I would've left at lunch because it was that bad. There are many awful events that took place that day, but nothing worse than the email I got from the agency that was in charge of placing substitutes. 

I was told that MY behavior was unprofessional that day because a student had told a parent or teacher that I had said the class was awful (which they absolutely were). I was reprimanded for saying this. However, the context of me saying that to the class was it was AWFUL how they were treating that poor student in the wheelchair and they should stop bullying him. I wrote the company back and told them they didn't have to worry about me because I was never going to substitute teach for that school or district ever again. 

I left that school with a lot of feelings, none of them good. It made me really angry because this was a profession I loved, but it only took one day...ONE DAY!!! to make me so disheartened and bitter about it that I decided I'd probably never teach in the classroom again. I could talk about some of the other experiences I had during my short stint as a substitute teacher, but this is the one that stuck with me and impacted me the most. 

If you've ever substitute taught, my hat is off to you. If you're a teacher, please make that day as easy as possible for the substitute. Simple things like a seating chart or a class leader to help the substitute can make their day 100% better. 

Pro Tip: FERPA allows you to leave notes about specific students if you think it is applicable to their job for the day. Take advantage of this. 

So We Beat On, Boats Against the Current...Into the Past.

Why am I doing this? It's been over seven years since I've last written a blog post. I don't even know if blogs are still a thing anymore, but I've been wanting to get some of my thoughts down. I don't have a personal journal, so what better place to jot my memories than the internet for all to see. I think this first post needs to be a quick update and recap of the last few years. I'll break it down by career changes. 

2016-2017 Kyte Learning

I quit my job teaching at Ellis on August 1, 2016. The superintendent decided to move our principal to another school and I did not have a good feeling about the new one, so I wanted to jump ship. Luckily, a company I had been making videos for was looking to hire someone. They called me, asked if I was looking for a job, and I said yes. I started working for Kyte Learning that year and I loved it. I think a fear that most teachers have about leaving the classroom is that they will get bored sitting in a chair all day and not having the summers off. Well, let me assuage your fears, it was the best job I could've ever had at that time. Kyte is a small start-up that specializes in creating and curating ed tech videos for teachers in order to learn how to use technology in the classroom. I got to make some fun videos and make some great friends along the way. Unfortunately, my anxiety couldn't handle the idea of losing my job at any given moment if we lost our funding, so I decided to look for another job. 

2017-2020 USBE Student Data Privacy 

I interviewed for a student data privacy specialist position at the Utah State Board of Education. Originally, I only wanted to receive an offer so I could negotiate for a higher salary at Kyte Learning, but that anxiety of losing my job kicked in, so I begrudgingly accepted the offer from USBE. I went from playing Spike Ball twice a day at Kyte to sitting in a cubicle with little to no interaction with any of my coworkers at USBE. I thought I had made a huge mistake. Fortunately, my boss was good to me and we eventually hired someone within the agency that would eventually show me how to read law and policy. He also ended up being a really good on-screen personality, which was helpful because my main job was to create a series of training videos to help educators across the state understand student data privacy law. 

We made a lot of videos and I can honestly say that I had a blast making them. We traveled across the state to film in different locations and we received a lot of positive feedback on them. We were a new department and we had a small team, but that's what I loved about it. We were able to think outside of the government-mandated box and we did things differently. After three years, I felt like I had accomplished everything I set out to do with that job so I was becoming very bored. 

I decided in 2019 that I wanted to earn my school leadership license and become an administrator. There aren't many pathways in education that lead to more money, so I made this step thinking it was the most logical thing to do. I'm glad I went through this program because it made me realize that I'm not quite ready to become an administrator. I learned a lot and had some great experiences during my internships, but by the end of the program, I had become burned out and thought this would not be a good direction for me. 

2020-2023 USBE Licensing

I was already bored with my data privacy job, but I became miserable when COVID hit. I felt like I had nothing to do all day and I needed to change things up. Several jobs had opened up at USBE and I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring. After an interview, I was offered a job working in the licensing department where I would work with out-of-state applications and university educator preparation programs. I had never done any type of clerical work, but I thought it would give me a steady supply of work to do so that I wouldn't be bored anymore. Well, I underestimated the workload and soon became filled with stress and anxiety. It didn't help that most of the department was new and that COVID had fundamentally changed our work environment. On top of all of this, I was seriously dating someone and planning a proposal. Also, we were in the process of looking for a house in the middle of the housing boom. 

Needless to say, that first year was very hard, but I learned a lot along the way. I felt pretty comfortable in my role and am able to work with some great people. I've helped transition our department from physical to digital applications and have issued hundreds of licenses to educators across Utah. It's a good feeling to help someone with a license so they can apply for a job and start a new life in the state. 

Present Day

I ended up getting married in May of 2021. We moved into our house in June of 2021. Life is still marching forward and I'm happy where I'm at...for now. I'm not sure how long I'll be in my current position, but I often think back to my days teaching in the classroom. My wife makes fun of the fact that I have several large totes filled with materials from my time in the classroom. I'm not sure if other people who have left education have this feeling, but I'll occasionally long for my teaching days. It's a tough job, which is probably why I haven't decided to go back to the classroom. It is, however, a job that sticks with you and occasionally calls you back because you know you could've done a better job and you feel like you still got something left in the tank to give. I feel like Nick, talking about Gatsby and the green light at the end of the dock in "The Great Gatsby" 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly, into the past."