EDITOR’S NOTE: For the third time in the last month, I am resurrecting a column from the past because of the timeliness of the issue. I brought back Matt Stafford and the Curse of Bobby Layne and raised from the dead the “liberal media” oxymoron.
Now comes the news that Hopkins, Wayland and other school districts are sweetening the pot for substitute teachers because there’s a shortage. This column appeared more than two years ago.
I hear tell Wayland schools and
the other districts in the Allegan Educational Services Agency (AAESA) no longer will hire substitute teachers through Professional Education Services Group of Caledonia.
I shed no tears for the demise of PESG, a private firm I have criticized in this space before because of my personal experience. However, I don’t really think everything’s gonna be hunky-dory from here on out with the new private provider that outbid PESG.
Public school systems are having trouble getting subs in the classrooms, and sometimes it gets so bad that regular teachers have to pinch hit for one another during their so-called “free periods.” This problem will not go away because it has not been properly addressed, and I doubt it ever will be.
Substitute teachers are treated about as well as aides, custodians and support staff. Staff and administrators disrespect them as bottom feeders, low lifes who weren’t good enough to get full-time teaching jobs.
Meanwhile, subs are greeted with glee by students who believe they’ve been given a free day to goof off because the subs usually don’t know their names and they are guaranteed discipline problems. Subs who become frustrated and react to this situation with anger or desperate attempts to control the kiddies and avoid anarchy often are regarded as incompetent and not invited back.
I survived my more than three years of subbing by overdoing my penchant for entertaining students with phony foreign accents or comedy routines. Too often I wasn’t an educator, I was a comedian and entertainer carefully designed to keep the children from revolting and to just get through the day.
PESG certainly made the job even worse.
After my unceremonious discharge at J-Ad Graphics in September 2007, I collected unemployment while training to be a substitute teacher by PESG and I started work in March 2008. I also took a part-time job as a writer for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Though I had two part-time positions, I still was declared eligible in the fall of 2008 for much smaller unemployment payments, according to the State of Michigan, to supplement the pittance I was getting.
The unemployment office the following June told me I owed PESG money for not working certain days during the recently completed academic year. I had routinely declined offers to work at elementary jobs because I was hoping for a secondary post that might be available later that morning and because I never had any training at the elementary level. My old teaching certificate was for grades 6-12. I felt woefully inadequate in grades K through five.
PESG insisted I repay the company for days I did not work in elementaries and the unemployment office concurred. I had to write PESG a check.
A year later, PESG filed another complaint about me because I did not do any work as a sub for about three months — because I was working for the U.S. Census Bureau, and I appropriately blacked out the days to let PESG know what days I wouldn’t be available. PESG maintained I could have worked, but willfully did not.
I had to defend myself again, but this time I was found innocent. I then complained to the unemployment office that I had to suffer a penalty the year before, so I insisted PESG should be penalized for lying about my performance. At one point PESG tried to avoid paying my unemployment by insisting to the MESC I didn’t work for the firm at all.
Substitute teaching was horrible when I had to get up at 5 a.m. every day and scour the Internet for anything available. Sometimes, there was nothing or I just wasn’t fast enough to claim a job that somebody else got. It reminded me of a scene from the movie “On the Waterfront,” in which a group of jobless men gather outside the loading docks and the straw boss comes out and throws job tickets for that day all over the lawn. He watches and laughs at the men as they wrestle desperately in the mud for the tickets.
Day in and day out, you don’t know if you’re going to work or not. You can’t make any plans. And if you fail to find a job that day, you won’t make any money.
There are much easier jobs out there. When times are hard, there will be many subs. But if temporary or part-time jobs are more plentiful, many will opt for other low paying jobs because they’re less stressful.
I resigned my job with PESG in November 2011 because I had had enough of being treated like a low-life indentured servant. And PESG did not treat me with respect, instead treating me like a bottom feeder in its quest to maximize profits on the backs of the hired hands. Just like a corporation that cares only about money and not a whit about people.
