Substitute Teacher, Not Wanted

Going one hundred miles an hour in a tiny town upsets the apple cart.

I’ve written about my realization that I am, for most people including my family, a peripheral character. Knowing a thing about your place in the collective and finding genuine proof of it is a slight shift.

This past week, I began substitute teaching for the first time in over a decade. It’s a simple gig, I don’t have to wear a uniform, there is a staggeringly low bar for performance. It gets me out of the house which is something I recognize is necessary in my recovery of emotional destruction. I was a public school teacher in the nineties, was really quite good at it, but left after a decade for other things.

As someone who lives his life out loud, I have a standing rule with my sister. I do not get to write about her. She has had some tough life experiences and, as a result, developed an extremely private life. She wants no one to know her business. I respect that and, as I do, reveal very little about her on almost any writing I do. So. No names. No details.

With that said…

Substitute teaching is a weird beast of a gig. You dress appropriately (in accordance to the standards of practice of the district), bring a water bottle, load up a few snacks, a laptop and your official badge. The badge serves as a way to alert other staff that you are legit and not necessarily a child predator roaming the halls and as a magnetic swipe card for either the outside doors, the sign in process, or both.

The office assigns you a room or series of rooms. You wander around the building for about ten minutes trying to find the first room, maybe ask another staff member for directions with some sort of small talk version of “I’m a fucking idiot but I’m all you got!” You find your room and survey where you can hang your jacket, put your water bottle, look for the lesson plans for the day, and marvel in horror at the role sheet filled with unpronounceable names that you will surely mangle at the emotional peril of the underdeveloped, doughy recipients of your stumbling inability to read names from Poland to Mexico to Dubai.

The bar for performance is remarkably low. The job description should read “Must be able to hand out papers, sit bored out of your skull, make sure the lunatics don’t take over the asylum with no authority, no hope for respect from the inmates, and no real idea if they are lying to you when they tell you that their regular class work involves smartphones and flaming hot covered salt lick snacks.”

I immediately recognize that, as opposed to the hardened criminal class of Chicago’s freshman students, these Kansas kids are more dully laconic and don’t even bother to take a beat to notice me or make eye contact. No intent to rebel, these folks are like people sitting on the train hoping you don’t sit down next to them and if they pretend to be on the phone you won’t try to speak. Imagine a blind date with thirty women who saw you at the door and knew instantly this was not the date she hoped for.

I’m a sucker for a challenge so I wade in. The class for this maiden voyage is a Film Appreciation class (the drama teacher has quit the job a few weeks prior because of a poorly executed active shooter situation that left him to restart therapy and ultimately decide this was not working for him) so I leap right in with questions about what movies they like. Christ, I love movies and even have a movie podcast so I’m certain I can engage this room of stinky zombies.

Kung Fu Panda.

Among the students willing to hold their cement-filled heads above neckline, it seems the only movie any of them can remember seeing is Kung Fu-fucking-Panda.

We talk about why they like it, what other movies they might say is in the same genre, and then the Eureka moment. An overly tall white kid with long, unkempt hair and glasses looks up and asks “What do you think of A Clockwork Orange?”

“The 1971 film based on the Anthony Burgess novel? Droogies? Alec and ‘Singing in the Rain’?”

I nail that one. We are off. He and I start a mini-discussion of the themes of the film and how the experiment of forcing a kid to watch the horrors of the world on repeat to pacify him has been effectively performed on his contemporaries as they are flooded with images on their smartphones twenty-four hours a day and was the experiment from the film successful? The groupmind of the numb, Cheeto-infused monkeys notices one of their own being taken seriously by the monster adult and they start to wake up.

“Did you like Titanic?”
“Which is better—Get Out or Nope?”
“Have you seen Akira?”

The ninety-minute class flies by. By the time the bell rings, half the kids are still asking me questions and act almost as if they are fully functioning humans. Then I’m off to Room A313. The Special Education class. Six hours of two and three kids at a time with worksheets and dicking around and boredom. The wifi in the school is shit due to a billion smartphones sucking the juice for Tik Tok so I can barely access even Apple News. I’m exhausted by the end of the day but not the good kind of worn out. The exhaustion of the static.

The secretary in the office asks me if I can come back the next day and the day after that. This is the substitute teacher sweet spot. It isn’t difficult to get work but the perks of being known by the staff and students come with repeat visits. I’m in.

“You know Ms. XXXX? She’s my sister.”
“Oh! Ms. XXXX is the best!”

The next day, the secretary puts me in the drama room for the full day. She tells me the word is out, that the kids in the film class had spread the word that I was cool and interesting (an anomoly in the ranks of substitute teachers).

The first group is the Advanced Rep gang. These are the bona fide theater geeks. They have a project that stinks of busy work (pick a monologue and analyze it for theme and structure). No performance of the monologue. No grade because they don’t have a real teacher. So we talk about writing their own monologues. Where to find the material. War stories from my days in Chicago theater. The time flies by.

The second class is StageCraft. Also students interested in the work. More busy work so instead, I give them stagecraft challenges I encountered in the many years in Chicago. Actual challenges we encountered and let them work in groups to solve the issues. They were way into it.

Third class is Intro to Theater. Definitely not theater geeks. Freshman shoved into a class that was like English but wasn’t. We talk about stories and storytelling and then I give them half the time to fuck around.

Lunch Duty. Then another Intro to Theater group. Then Hall Monitoring. Then home. I’m so tired from being actually engaged for most of the day I grab a beer and practically pass out on the couch. This is the good kind of pooped. The type of exhaustion that comes at the end of a productive feeling. I’m finding my stride.

The next morning, the secretary introduces me to the Principal. She tells me the students seem to be buzzing about me. She needs a full-time drama teacher and understands that I’m locked into working Tuesdays through Thursdays because Mondays and Fridays are the days I take care of my dad and his dialysis. She offers a permanent Tues-Thurs gig if I can also provide lesson plans for the days I’m off. I tell her I need to think about it. My hesitation has to do with my sister. This is her sandbox. She hated high school because my shadow was long and she was always in it. She is a spectacular teacher but she and I haven’t spent this much time in tandem since the 80’s and I wonder how she’ll feel about it.

The third day, I’m on my game. All the things I remembered from being a teacher in Chicago, the decade when I had my own classroom and own rules, came back in force. I discard the work sheets and we have active discussions about theater, art, music, writing and the perils involved in doing anything truly creative in a society that rewards mediocrity and conformism over originality. In every class at least one student asks me if I’ll be their permanent drama teacher. I’m new and I’m different. I’m not from ‘round these parts and the New Age Hippie teacher I was in the 1990’s fascinates these idiots. I have a ball. After being lied to and discarded by my soulmate I start to regain the idea that I am worth something, that I do bring some value to the world.

I go home and relish the feeling.

Then I get a text from my sister.

She is proud of me but asks that I no longer substitute at her school. Students found out she was my sister, looked up my online presence, read a few of my articles, and came to her. “Your brother is so cool!” does not work for her. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings but she doesn’t want me in her sandbox.

I get it. She has spent sixteen years building her fortress. She is known for being a great teacher but keeps her personal life completely walled off from both the students and the staff. Unlike her brother who lives out loud in almost every way, she likes—she needs that anonymity. My presence and my tendency to go big in everything I do threatens that security. She doesn’t say it but I’m certain the residue of her feelings in high school are right there, too. If only I could be… less. I get it.

For seven and a half years I put up with and embraced being told by my wife to be less. Less loud. Less talkative. Less enthusiastic. Less obvious. Less obnoxious. Less generous. Less. I’m not going to accept that anymore. From anyone. If I die homeless in a ditch, penniless and wearing the same clothes for a year, I will not be less than who I am. I could substitute teach like the expectations dictate but I’d be so bored, so beaten down, I’d be like my dad who has simply accepted that he is just going to eat, sleep, and shit until he finally croaks from kidney failure and multiple cancers.

I’ll let the Principal know that I’m not interested in the position. I’ll sub at other locations. The whole thing cements in my mind that this time in Wichita is temporary. My presence here is an unasked for disruption of my family’s carefully constructed life and it simply isn’t fair for me to come rolling in and breaking china like the proverbial bull.

I’m a substitute brother and the bar is pretty low.