and the show must go on...

I'm a key rack and a WalMart greeter, carrying a cellphone in each pocket and a radio on my hip. I have to be able to recognize parents, siblings, and assorted aunties, uncles and grandparents picking up nearly 150 children at the end of a long day. It's a challenge. I have to figure out which students are missing and make phone calls home to find out why.

I'm the primary contact for many parents with the school, and unfortunately I'm the one they complain to about today's citation or school work. Most parents are patient, but some have bad days or issues of their own that get acted out. A few are at their wits end with a child, and have to be calmed and supported.

I handle all behavior problems, missing homework, bloody noses and asthma attacks and wet pants. I clean up blood and pee and vomit. There's no health aid or custodian or office manager on duty during our program. If there's a problem, I have to drop what I'm doing and try to take care of it.

This job provides 70% of my pay, the other 30% I have to make up by subbing. Subs are supposed to be called in order of seniority, since we're laid-off permanent employees. One of the cell phones I carry is so that I can receive calls from SEMS (substitute employee management system) that begin at 4 pm each day. Cell reception is spotty inside the school, so I miss some jobs that way. The SEMS computer doesn't wait a moment while I'm putting on a band-aid or talking to a parent, so I miss other jobs that way.

But my school site prefers to use student teachers or other subs not on the seniority list. I shouldn't take this personally, because they haven't used the teacher whose class was closed at the beginning of the year as much as they could have either. The staff would rather do what they want than follow state education code. During a sixth grade math review time, one student teacher forgot a common method to find a missing numerator or denominator in a proportion. I privately reminded her how to cross multiply and divide, and she thanked me. Eight years of service brings a facility with basic curriculum that the staff at my school just doesn't appreciate.

On the rare occasion that I get to sub at Citrus, I find I know more than half the students by name, because they're either in the After School Program or have been at some point during the year. It's fun to get to know the students better, and I notice if their behavior matches what we see at the end of the day. I get more familiar with school policies and how things are done at Citrus so that I can learn to seamlessly integrate the After School Program into the school day. As I explain to my first graders, we're still at school and we follow all the same rules.

The other option is to sub at schools that still honor the seniority lists of laid off teachers, and that's a really nice experience. I have to learn a whole new class of students, but I get to see a lot of wonderful things too. How one reading specialist so effectively runs interventions at her school was awesome. Whatever grade I'm eventually assigned I have teachers in mind whose classrooms are exceptional. I hope to ask for guidance when that wonderful day comes, when I have a classroom again.

Subbing at other schools often requires so much new learning (faces, names, locations) that when I arrive at the After School Program I'm don't have as much capacity left for making new connections. But I'm only human, and my family must come first.