Life as a sub

I spend a good deal of time staring at my cell phone. And no, I'm not pathetically waiting for a boy to call. Although you could liken my teaching board to a boy in that you never know when "he's" going to call or IF he's going to call on any given day.

Well, I finally got activated on my board of education's list of substitute teachers and was available to start teaching as of Wednesday. I didn't get called in that day (leading to much anxiety and worry about whether I'd get ANY work at all) but worked the next two. For those of you unfamiliar with the substitute teaching world, it works like this: when a teacher can't make it to work and didn't have enough notice to book a sub in advance they call into the phone system which in turn calls out at random to the subs on the list. We can receive calls as early as 6am. So pretty much we work whenever there is an opportunity, there's no guarantee and we can get called for any grade level. It's a great, relaxing way for me to live. Me being the type to sit and anxiously wring her hands, hoping the phone goes off. Unfortunately, blogs can't record my sarcastic tone of voice.

I woke up on Thursday at 6 (I worked myself up too much to sleep again) and sleepily read a book until around 7 when I started half falling asleep again. Just as I was nodding off my phone buzzed prompting a flurry of activity on my part. (ie, dropping pens and paper everywhere as I scrambled for my daytimer) Let me tell you, those recordings go too fast. I sat desperately trying to write down the school name, teacher, job number and hours in the span of 10 seconds. I must've made the message repeat itself 10 times. Then I scoured the city map to figure out where I needed to be. Once I'd mapped it out, I dressed in record time and was out the door about an hour after the call.

That day was fine, it was a grade 1/2 class. The next day, not so much. It was prebooked so no flustered rushing but it was for a junior high school. I'm trained for elementary with no desire to teach anything higher. In addition to that it was for home economics grades 7-9. Oh yeah, perfect, I know all there is to know about sewing and cooking (hear sarcastic tone). Basically a sub's job is to keep kids from crawling up the walls which I think I did. Grade 9's were not a party. I'm cynical and sarcastic enough, I don't need more of it from kids half my age. I didn't have a nervous breakdown so I consider that the day was a great success.

I went home mentally drained and flopped onto my bed where I dozed for half an hour. Luckily there were no dreams, I've lately been dreaming of strange things like the minions of hell chasing me or army people chasing my family to participate in a war. I guess I like to run. Just ask my ex's, it's a known fact.

Here's to another week of staring at my phone. Wish me luck.