I have not played Las  Vegas so I  have never waited for that call and I am not in the clergy so I have not gotten that call, but we subs daily do get the call. It comes in  my town via a phone line where a computer voice tells us in no  uncertain terms, where to go.

It calls us 6PM to 10PM every night and it is relentless, not caring if we are eating, driving, sleeping, watching TV or, alas, batheing.  It just calls. It also does not wait. There is no option to go answering machine and if you delay over just a few seconds to pick up, it will cancel the call and mark you down as having declined. A record of having declined a lot is a bad record employment wise.  Besides if you miss calls for jobs you’d find pleasant, and easy to get to, you may then get called for one half a city away.

It was not always so apparently. I am told by senior subs that originally a little lady from downtown did the callout and she was very convincing and you just felt you should take the job to help her out.  Computers have replaced her.  Sometimes I talk back to the automated voice. “Stop calling  me here!”.  “Can’t you see I’m busy?” “What, you again?” “Stop bothering me”  The computer like the tides of the ocean, just goes on.

And yes, I have jumped sopping out of the bathtub to take that call, only to just miss it. I have pulled over to the side of the road to take that call, or sometimes, blush, taken it while driving. I have taken that call that seems to chase me even when I am out of town, ironically where it can even track me down three provinces away.  And I have heard the ringing, opened the cell phone and on several occasions find it was not my phone that was ringing.

The call tells the school, date, hours and name of teacher, subjects to be taught and then gives you options of whether to accept or decline.  It’s all about pressing buttons and to accept you press one but to decline there are several options – no car, too short of notice, illness, previous job not booked by the teacher, inappropriate assignment, distance too great, weather prohibits.  In my excitement I have more than once pressed the wrong button, trying to press one and by accident hanging up. A lost call is irretrievable, by the way. I learned that.

Usually we are given a call at least the night before, sometimes several nights before but it is possible and does happen that a call will come anytime during the day, to rush over that very day. One day I was called at 9AM to come to a school that started at 8.  I’ve been called by the computer to go to a morning school that ends at 12:20 and then to a different afternoon school that starts at 12:30. You see computers have no clue about distance. They may assume we fly. Obviously the last minute calls are more likely to be real emergencies and I always feel kind of good accepting them. I feel needed, like Lancelot rushing in to save the day, Superman flying in to rescue the children in distress.

But really I guess we are all just call girls and boys, or as the lawyer Rumpole says, hacks for hire.

The call has its own amusements of course. The voice is female but very strained, possibly a computer robot that did  not eat enough fibre.  She may tell me a ‘strong male presence’ is required though I am not sure why. There is a part of the tape where the actual teacher can add a few words about the assignment too, a kind of sweetener enticement like “It should be a good day for  you’ or the more ominous ‘Please phone me at home for details”. Sometimes I can barely understand the teacher’s hoarse voice but I know she’s not well and that’s reason enough I should appear.

Getting mobilized

Most schools in my city start between 7:30 AM and 9AM, the little kids going in later.  Since subs by regulation have to arrive at least 15 minutes before start time, and it takes about half an hour to get to most schools on average, that backs up my leaving time to about an hour before the start.  I have to have by that point already gotten up, dressed, walked the dogs, read the paper, had breakfast and prepared for the day. So this means that if I have to leave at 6:30 I have to get up at about 5:30. Every day.  In fact the sub desk starts calling at 6AM if  I was not booked the night before, so I may as well be up for that anyway. 

Getting up at 5:30 means my evenings are not the exciting social whirl one might have dreamed of as an adult. In fact when the students in French or Spanish class are learning times of day and asked when they got up today, they often got up at 7 or 8.  Lucky.

I am within walking distance of about 8 schools if I am willing to walk about an hour each way.  This however means I have to get up even earlier.

One might thing I’d walk on the nice summery days of spring or autumn and yet that’s not when I do. Those days I want to get home fast and have a bike ride or something.  But the days I do feel tempted to hoof it are the ones of deep freeze winter, when the roads are very snowy and icy and it just may be safer to bundle up than to drive.

Of course for the schools farther away I have to drive. I know of subs who drive in from out of town each day actually and their commute time is usually an hour, by car.

My car is my friend and we face the unknown together, me cheering it along as we try to get up a slippery hill in January.  But as an emergency worker, called in in crisis, I am particularly sad when I’m in crisis. Like when my garage door would not open and I couild not get out. Or when I put the locks had frozen shut and I had to go back in the house and heat up the key on a burner so it would melt the lock> One particular humiliation was when I had washed the salty snow off the car so the metal would not rush and then, like an idiot, had not thought to dry it carefully so the next morning all the doors were frozen shut.  I tried all four of them and finally was able to yank open the driver’s side door and get in.  But then it would not click closed. I had to drive to the school one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding the door closed. 

Finding the school

In our city there are several schools whose names sound very similar. We have West View, Western, Westgate, West Dover, and West Dalhousie.  We have  Valley View and Valley Creek, Vista Heights and Varsity Acres, William Reid and William Aberhart, Hidden Valley, Harvest Hills and Hawkwood.   We have Mount View and Mount Royal. For a time we had both Glendale and Glenbrook and for some reason I can often remember the name of  school starts with King but I get mixed up which school is which king. There’s  King Edward which is now closed, and King George which is remarkably similar in appearance. It is not bad enough that we have a lot of schools that start with Sir but it is misleading because teachers and kids rarely mention that title when they refer to their school.  A kid says he goes to Franklin but that’s “Sir John Franklin’ in the address book and it’s under S not F.  A kid may go to Van Horne but that’s Sir William Van Horne High in the directory and not under W or V but under S. These are the people who teach alphabetization and they don’t even get the address book right.

We have also a phenomenon of the two schools in shared building. I have turned up a the right location, at the right time and even in the exact right building and been told I was not in the right place at all. The secretary rarely is sure about why I am there at all and only vaguely suggests maybe I mean I am to go to the native rights school, or the shared building tech school. One time a small elementary school flooded and the roof repairs took several months. All those kids and the entire school designation relocated to a half-empty other school and to get an assignment at the old one required also noticing the school has now moved.  Even today the call system will tell me happily via computer that the National Sports school is at Ernest Manning school and Wood’s Home has its classes at Parkdale Centre. William Roper Hull now meets at Valley View Elementary although of course they used to be quite far apart.

One time  I was called to a school in a northwest suburb and on my map it was on Scurfield Way. I get there, well at least to Scurfield Road, and my amp says it is just off this road but I go for maybe 5 more km and can’t find it. I retrace mysteps, carwise, and finally see the school, off in the park and I find a place to put my car on the stret and walk over.  I etner the school and luckily and still quite early. Few other teachers have arrived but as I am walking I see a giant wall poster “Doing God’s Work” . I actually believe in doing God’s work but because I am a public school teacher I realize that no public school would ever put up such a sign.  I ask a teacher if this is indeed the school I was seeking and learn it is not. I am not just in the wrong school, but in the wrong school system. The public school I want is just down the street. I run.

Two of the schools I sometimes go to are in Hidden Valley, another northwest suburb.  But whoever planned the district had some kind of phobia of streets on a grid.  There is one main street that winds it slow leisurely way around a huge arc, kilometers and kilometers long and there is no other option but this road to reach any side street at all. I sometimes wonder if I could even just stop at the entrance of the district and leap straight across a field if that would not get me to the schools way faster than this circuitous, school zone laden, drive in the dark, my life is passing before my eyes, tour of the city.

.We subs are given a little address book that tells us where each school is but to use it you need to know the school’s real name, the one nobody uses. Once you know that you can also waste a good deal of time thinking that your address book works like the billions of others around the world, in order of last name. Oh no, life should be so easy. This directory is  written in some weird version of alphabetical order by first name or title even. High schools kids say they go to Churchilll or Scarlett but even if you know the first name of the person the school is named after, that’ s not even good enough. Sir Winston Churchill is under S.. Dr. E. P. Scarlett is under D.  

So there I am, early in the morning, in the dark, trying to find the school address in my book to head out there. It’s lucky I know the town, but not very lucky. It means I take it for granted I know and really I don’t.  I was called to Hillhurst school and I’ve lived near that district all my life. I  have often driven by the old sandstone school and noticed how cute it was and was looking forward to actually going. in. I go there early, before anyone else was even around except the staff in the before –school daycare and we visited and I wandered the halls, killing maybe twenty minutes or so and only then noticing to my horror that this school was called Sunnyside School. I was in the wrong building. The actual Hillhurst school, also old and famous, was about ten blocks away.

I have a visual memory and can recall what a school looks like from the street and sadly this is the way I sometimes plan to get there. Oh yes, the one on Northmount Drive. No problem.  And then I discover there are actually about 7 schools along Northmount Drive and none of them seems to look quite like the one I remember.

A street address would help and of course it is logical to use one. Except in Calgary suburbs the street name is only a tiny hint about location anyway. There are so many crescents and cul de sacs and similarly named roads that you can have some sort of out of body experience at 7:30 Am driving around in a panic trying to find where Hawkwood  Drive turns off to Hawkwood Close then Hawkwood Circle then Hawkwood Place.  Sometimes you just want give up and scream but no, that would not be mature.

In the dark, and let’s face it all morning school assignments in Calgary start in the ark, it’s hard to read names of schools on the building. They are there, somewhere, printed in big letters but not actually illuminated per se.  In addition the other school systems, including separate schools and private schools also often locate on the same main suburban roads that the public schools are on, so I have rejoiced to find, ah, yes, that building does look like a school not a community centre, and yes, I see where I can park there and then only discovered when very near it that is was not quite the school I  was called for. Close, very close sometimes, but  not the right one.

More than once I have entered the wrong school, wandered the halls even tried to sign in for the teacher only to discover a secretary staring at me surprised. There is no teacher here by that name to replace. I check my  notes. I check my cellphone message;. Aha, it is for the school next door.

One time I was called to a school that I taught at very very early in my career – Branton. Ah the memories of that time nearly 30 years ago. I decided, since it is only about 10 blocks away, albeit uphill, to walk there.  I allow plenty of time and arrive nice and early but to my surprise though the building is open, there is no one around. The office is not even open yet and I wander to the staff room and wait, and wait. I am there nearly half an hour and still the office is not open and now we’re getting pretty close to the start time of the school as the computer told me. I decide to check my cell phone to see if indeed I got it wrong. And I did. I was actually called to Bishop Pinkham school, also one of my very first schools, hence the associations, but I am in the wrong place. I rush to tell the sub desk downtown of my terrible error, phone the school I’m to go to to say I’m coming, run back home, flying all the way, jump in my car and drive the five miles to the real assignment. Well they both started with B. 

Another time the commute was a problem due to weather.  During a blizzard, in the dark, my car lights suddenly dimmed as I drove up hill and then the motor sputtered and died. Some saint behind me helped push my car off to the side but I was still about eight blocks from the school. I phoned the motor association for a tow, phoned the car service people to tell them my car was arriving, put my car key under the mat, put the flashers on, bundled up and started to run, through alleys, down streets, and arrived at the school, actually still on time.

When time is everything

I realize I am not a brain surgeon. There are not lives likely to be lost if my arrival is later than I had hoped. And yet I strong feel I owe kids not only being there when they come in, but being there around half an hour before so I can get the lay of the land. I can’t look organized unless I am and I owe them the best I can give.  Any delays to my arrival before the kids walk in massively frustrates  me because it sets back my whole day.

I need to find out where the classroom is, what subjects I am teaching, the timetable, and I need to find the supplies and texts I’ll need and I need to read through the entire lesson plan at least once. I can this fast but I am slightly south of superhuman. If my arrival at the school is slow, that may be my own fault but once I am there I really do hope to get at my job fast.  Delays then are maddening.

Parking

Subs are there to replace a teacher, theoretically one who is not using her parking stall so you can.  Dream on. I have often discovered that the teacher’ s absence was known and someone else has taken the spot, or that she is actually not even absent. She is at some meeting, doing interviews, attending in-services or otherwise engaged so she was allowed to call a sub but her parking stall is still hers.

It is possible at some schools, if you get there early enough, to park in the visitor lot, but you have to be pretty early.  You also if at some of the big schools in the northwest also have to realize that when the day is over, parent vehicles will absolutely jam the parking lot to pick up kids and your happy little visitor stall may have been easy to get into at 730 AM but you’ll have real trouble getting out of it at the end of the day.

Often I just park on the street and that is a great solution in the spring or fall, less good when the car is going to freeze up like an icicle and you really wish you could have plugged it in. Many schools do not actually allow street parking, something about a it being a school zone and all. Go figure. So often when I do park on the street it is on a street a few blocks away, even. By the time I walk to the school I’m practically a tourist from out of province. 

The big high schools, the ones with 1500 students, have very little free parking for teachers but there is that student lot we subs are allowed to park in, again if we get there early enough and have a parking pass clearly on the windshield. If you ever want to take your life in your hands, try parking near teenagers who just go their license, and more to the point, trying getting out of an icy parking lot with a ramp down exit, when two hundred restless and impatient teen drivers also want to get down that ramp.

The downtown schools pose a particular challenge for parking given that if the school is in the commercial core or on a trendy shopping street, or near a subway stop, police are only too keen to ticket anyone who stays over two hours. My morning calls are nearly all 3-4 hours and a full day call of course will last 7-8. At one winter assignment there was absolutely nowhere else to park except this two hour stall so I literally had to ask to move my car every two hours just to not get ticketed. 

 The downtown student parking lots also are very crammed and if you take an afternoon assignment to sub there, with no teacher stalls around, you have to try to find an empty student stall and good luck with that. Those stalls don’t open up till 12:05 and the kids dash off to a quick lunch and on bad weather days few do. I have circled and circled the student lot trying to find a place to park, having to phone the office on my cell to say ‘Well I’m here but  not yet”

At another school in the northeast there was a nice parking area near the concrete basketball court. I was early and was thrilled to have found a spot.  And yet after I got in the building and was teaching my first class a PA announcement came to have the driver of a Ford Escort please move your vehicle. I ignored this because frankly I knew it was my car but I was trying to take attendance for 30 kids and I had nobody to come take over the class. I could not leave them unsupervised. The PA called again, all across the school, angrier now and finally I said to the kids, OK it’s my car but I can’t go right now.  I phoned the office and had to wait till someone from there, came to watch my class.

There is one school that does issue subs with a parking pass. What they used to do is ask you to come into the building to get the pass, and then to go out and put it on your car. This sounds great in theory except that to find a place to park is hard enough and if it takes you 10 minutes and then you have to go back out to the car with the pass, you are taking up that precious time you need to be using to get to the classroom and get organized.

At another school  I had been told on the call tape that I could use the teacher’s parking spot number 17. It even told me it was at the front of the building. I found the building, the front of the building, north east corner and then noticed that the stall was only accessible if you also could get past this bar that descending like railway crossings. There I was frantically waiting for some car to go in ahead of me so I could sneak in while the bar was still up. I even thought of asking a student to hoist the bar up for me and hold it up so I could get in but that would look desperate and vaguely illegal and we teachers are not to appear to be either.

Walking the halls to find the office

Many schools were built in the same era and probably to save money, used the same floor plan. This is quite convenient for subs who in the grand scheme can easily tell that this U shaped building has an inner courtyard, that this three storey sandstone building has washrooms on the second floor. But that would be deceptive because over time each school has made its own cute little adjustments. Just where the office is in one there is a classroom in another. Just when you thought there is no ‘downstairs’ one school has put on an addition with steps going down. It is very easy to get turned around and what is a bit  more troubling, to feel a kind of deja-vu sci fi experience that you know this used to have a washroom right in this corner and now it’s gone!

The offices around the city differ widely.   Subs have to sign in to show they actually arrived and to make their time official, and paid.  But to find that sign in book when the secretary is not yet there is tricky.   And yet signing is is kind of fun. The pens some school use are not quite nailed down, though some are chained, but a new practice is to attach to the end of the pen a very large plastic flower so you simply can’t walk away with it by accident. 

I enjoy some of the secretaries too and this is one of the few chances I get to see them. Often they are the anchor to the school and they know a lot more than they let on.

Being a sub is then to enter this first level of privilege.  I am given a key.  For years I was a mother at home and nearly nobody in public trusted me with anything.  Now as a teacher again I am given a key to the classroom, sometimes to several classrooms and hopefully to the staff washroom.   I also get to go back to the staff room now and the mailbox area, that so few are allowed to enter. It is holy ground, OK not quite holy but a privilege.

And yet, I am just a sub. I am often given a large nametag or label to wear around my neck to indicate some version of my status, that I am a ‘guest teacher’ for instance.  But it is a label, like idiot mittens, like a large A on my forehead. I’m not from around here.  Pranksters take aim.  

No really, I know why they do it. It is a security thing so even though my face is unfamiliar, I am not a suspicious intruder. Hey I am even allowed  in the photocopy room.  In some professions they make you wear hats or shirts with logos. I wear a chain around my neck and I have to give it back at 4, like Cinderella’s slippers.  Strangely even when wearing my obvious “Don’t ask me, I’m clueless’ labeling, students still have asked me directions in the hallway and even more strangely, I often try to answer.

Walking the halls to find the classroom

Many schools hand the sub a folder including a map of the school.  This is purely for amusement. It’s accurate of course but often printed in 8 font size and north is a random thing, varying according to the location of the gym and parking lot.

I find room numbers amusing anyway.  In some schools the youngest kids are nearest the office, maybe because they have tummy aches and have to call home most often. But in others I have seen no particular pattern.  I do know that the big schools that have had additions over several decades have a whole array of misleading room numbers. One inner city high school, now one hundred years old, does number all its second floor rooms in the 200s, but what they don’t rush to mention is that the library is between them, albeit not technically on either level but some sort of mezzanine, and the two wings simply do not connect on the second floor. You can be looking for 208 and be what you think is pretty near at 257 but you are way way far from it and  there is no across way to get there. You literally have to go down to main and back up another staircase in another wing. But you aren’t told that right off. That would spoil the fun.

Finding your room is also only half the battle, sometimes only one third. It is not at all uncommon to be told in the plan that you also have to take the kids to the computer room period 3, or to the library period 5 or to the music or dance room, which you also should try to find. You may be told to get the video from the library workroom and find the VCR which the last teacher left in room 108. Again you have to do this all before class begins.

My big priority once I have found the room and supplies is also to locate the washroom.
It is not nearly as easy as a person might hope, given that when schools were built in the 1930s people apparently did not come equipped with bladders. Several of the old sandstone schools have washrooms only on one floor of the three floor structure, or little tiny alcoves like afterthoughts tucked in between two classrooms at the end of tiny dark hallway and next to odd bookcases and plumbing pipes.

In some schools the sub is not actually given a washroom key, though the doors are locked to the staff washroom. I am not sure what type of ethereal space age being they thing they hired here but we subs do occasionally use the facility and it’s pretty stressful and not cool to have this as an urgent thing on your mind when you’re in front of 30 kids.  In a few of the big high schools many teachers have told me to just use the student washroom, so I do.  It felt odd at first and I know the conversation ssems to stop suddenly or kids exit quickly when I do walk into a student washroom. But maybe it’s an Ok thing anyway. Some of what goes on in washrooms should be occasionally monitored anyway such as smoking

I also have happened in a cubicle to overhear some pretty concerning conversations between students who entered chatting. One I recall most vividly was saying to her girlfriend “ I don’t know why he was so mean to me. I mean he wasn’t even high that day”.

My favorite assignments have handy washrooms and once in a precious while I’ll be sent to a school where there is a workroom with washroom attached, right near where I am. It’s the little things.

But finding the room and opening it, minor skills really, often are the first setback. Several times the key I was given did not work and I had to traipse back to the office to get a new one. The secretary is very embarrassed and gets the new one but once it was my mistake – the key did work and I was just not turning it hard enough.

One time I was not given a key and was told the room was open.  It was not but a caretaker opened it for me but they left the door locked after I went in. This meant all day I had to prop the door with a wooden triangle and I sure kept my eye on  that triangle.

One of my least favorite assignments, being sent to the portable classroom, also has its perks. You do have to go through the cold and snow, outdoors to get to it and you do have to figure out a way to prop the door open between each class so kids aren’t forever  knocking on it. And you do have to rush through the weather back to the main building any time you need a washroom. But the good thing is you are kind of on your own out there, like in some prairie town with only limited access to the PA, bless its little noisy heart.  It can be quite calming.

I like empty hallways f old schools, the lockers with the wrapping paper on them to surprise someone for a birthday, the immaculate floors, polished to a high gloss, imminently of course to be rampaged by thousands of feet.  The lino used in the 50s in many of my city’s schools is still there, a mix of yellow, orange and brown spots and it just never seems to wear out.  It must be made of some unearthly material but most adtuls in my city probably still have nightmares featuring it, or seeing it again decades later immediately smell wet mittens, and fear.

There is no time to walk the halls touristically during the morning mad dash but sometimes over a noonhour I can briefly.  But it’s not as eerie as the early morning when I’m waiting for the office to open and the smiling faces of fifteen to seventeen year olds smile out at me, year after year, decade after decades and they’re all amazingly 15-17.  The faces smiling in 1919 just after a war, the ones optimistically smiling ironically in 1938, just before another world war. The faces of exuberant playful youth, the best and the brightest, athletes at their peak, all now seniors or even passed on. I see the Provincial championship shooting team of 1923, proudly holidng their rifles.  They had  a shooting gallery right in the basement of this school.

For many school is just the launch spot, the embarrassingly modest first step of accomplishment as they launch on to corporate, legal, medical or other prestige. But for many, most in fact, high school was the pinnacle. The biggest social world they would ever have, the biggest exposure to the news and science and math.  For many it is the last time they had girlish slimness, the last time the young men had a full crop of hair.  And nobody goes to high school untouched by its permanent imprint on the psyche. How high school treated you, you remember.  And I look at the faces and wonder how their lives were.  A thousand thousand stories.

getting to know the classroom

I feel like a detective. I enter the room and it is very dark and my first challenge is to find the light switch.  Usually it is near the door but I grope around blindly. Occasionally I can’t find it at all and have to weave my way down the wall to the other door to see if the switch is there.  One time the light switch was actually hidden under a poster.

The room suddenly is very bright and I have never felt very creepy about empty rooms, except twice.

Once was when as I sat at the teacher’s desk reading the instructions I heard squeaks and obvious noises of something alive right nearby. I nearly jumped out of my skin, only to discover a cage with a gerbil in it. The class gerbil.

Another time I was alone in the music room, a third floor room of an old old school and there was a kind of eerie whistling through the heating vent. I suspect and this is my story and I’m sticking to it, that it was the wind. Possibility two, which I later heard in the school folklore was that it was the ghost of an earlier school caretaker who haunts the building.

I like to walk around the room kind of like a spy scouts out the perimeter, looking for recent topics covered, location of the pencil sharpener and other key elements of the day. Including where they keep the bandaids.  I also like to get familiar with where the window opener is, how to close the blinds and where the thermostat is.. In fact I find that out pretty fast if I’m freezing.

One time trying to put down all the blinds so kids would not be fried later in the summer sun, I inadvertently knocked over books, a plant, various photos.  I also one time broke the blind itself and it came crashing down. One time trying to turn on the radio to hear the news while I waited, I pushed in the”ON” key and it fell deep into the recesses of the stereo.

I love classrooms. I love the tall windows of old schools and the windows at the top that you pull open using a pole with a hook on the end. When I was little I thought such windows were magical. I also loved it when the teachers pulled those long pulley chains to open windows.  I still love those airways above the entry doors, the ventilation that early builders knew was so crucial and I don’t like much at all those classroom with slats for windows with Venetian blinds between the indoor and outdoor panes adjusted by a knob, and no fresh air ever enters the room.

Visiting classrooms is also like traveling through history. There was the 1920s era of dark wood paneling, cupboards to the ceiling with big brass handles, and closets built in with shelves.  There was the 40s style school with workrooms between the classrooms, lovely private alcoves great for storage. There was the 60s style school with light wood drawers everywhere, so numerous you’d think they had one for every one of 50 students, and nowadays teachers don’t know what to do with them all . And then there is the 90s type school with aluminum frame windows, metal railings in the stairwells and slats of glass near every classroom so people can peek in.  I’ve been in a few new design schools for their era too, one that in particular looks like a war bunker, not only concrete exterior but actual metal spikes coming out the roof so kids won’t play on it.  It has only slats for windows and the hallway walls are all concrete with very sharp ridges all long. I am not sure what the builder was thinking but I recall a principal years ago saying that people from all over the world had come to see the unique design of the school and not one had ever copied it.

Some schools just ooze history.  There is one big high school in the north of our city that has tiny tiny stairwells winding up to a few of its classrooms like some attic setting.
The stairs are often very steep, much steeper than today’s stairs and I wonder what this says about fitness today versus yesterday, or what does it say about obesity?

One of the schools in the south has a blocked over fireplace in the languages workroom. It has obviously not been used as a fireplace for decades, but imagine – once it was!

Finding the instructions

I mean it’s not rocket science. The teacher asked me to come and left instructions. But it is not always that easy to find them. If the teacher had trouble in traffic or woke up with a fever of 101, the absence is not planned and the instructions will not really be there except in her own ‘note to self ‘shortha\nd. Often the instructions for such bookings come in by email, sometime hopefully before the students arrive. I have to keep checking with the secretary and while I wait I try to create my plan B, the backup all good subs pride themselves on creating.

But if this was a planned absence, and most are with medical and dental appointments, workshops, inservices, maternity breaks etc., there will be plans, somewhere.  My first look is at the teacher’s mailbox just to bring in whatever is urgent today. The plans are not usually there but vital stuff is. The best bet for where the plans are is on her desk, though I have made a complete idiot of myself several times looking at the desk and not finding anything, only to discover maybe 15 minutes later, a very comprehensive set of instructions over on some table.

One time I sat at the teacher’s desk not seeing any plans and trying to put together some sort of order as I noticed what recent work the kids had been doing. I was going to have to wing it but I could and yet I always feel badly for the kids that way. And then, lo and behold I happen to notice that there is another entire teacher’s desk over on the other side of the room. Nobody happened to mention this is a shared classroom and the teacher I’m here for is not at the desk I’m at. The other desk has the plans.

One time I even got so far as to start reading an entire novel, a la speed reading, so I could read with the kids the required chapter 10, when another teacher came to the room and told me I was actually even in the wrong classroom. There were two subs that day, I had been given the wrong keys and that novel reading was all for naught.

Occasionally the instructions are not to be found for some time and I have even wandered over to the other teacher who teaches that subject to see if she knows what this one was doing today. I have asked heads of departments.  But there is also a kind of art to it First of all I want to look competent as if, hey, if we can’t find the plans I am not going to have some sort of major meltdown in public. I can handle it whatever. And second, I need this job. We subs are independent operators so to speak, currently only paid if and when we get called and if any teacher wants to avoid calling  me that may cost me money.  So I admit I have not found the plans yet, but softly.