So, I work as a substitute teacher in a county which has decided to hire a firm to handle their substitute teachers. This means I don’t even get the meager protections of a teachers union that I would if I worked for the county directly, I don’t get many benefits or bonuses, and I make barely above minimum wage. Thus, I work two jobs to try and make ends meet.
This company is insufferable, however. For one, there’s little to no training. I had a day of training before I was hired on last year and I don’t receive any kind of instruction on how the company expects me to operate. What happens if a fight breaks out? How do I report suspected abuse? How do I handle mentally handicapped children? Fuck if I know! They just said “write a referral if a kid is acting up, then, tell them you’ll destroy it if they behave themselves.” All well and good… except no school I’ve been to lets me write referrals. In fact, if there’s a classroom disturbance, they want me to call the dean.
It’s especially saddening when I’m expected to fill in gaps for social workers who deal with children on the autism spectrum. My degree is in history, not child psychology. I don’t have the expertise to give these kids the help they so desperately need to survive, but the company is more than willing to throw me into the fray in order to secure their contracts with the county. I do my best but I feel sick knowing this. Social workers are already stretched thin, and it breaks my heart to know that the best replacement the county can provide is some schmuck fresh out of college with a history degree like me.
But if you thought the disrespect ends there, it gets worse. We all know there’s a substitute shortage, and working in the field for almost a year I can see why. I get paid per diem, basically per day. Hourly it comes out to about 13 bucks give or take (they had to increase it from like 10 bucks earlier this year because my state’s constitution mandated it). But that only accounts for the actual school day from 7:15 to 2. They want me at school from 6:50 to 2:25, basically an extra half hour of work for nothing. The excuse is that I need time to prepare for the day and go over the lesson plans, which, for the record, are either non-existent or consist of “hand out this worksheet and look on teams”. Not much prep there. Obviously, I try to get there as close to the time as possible, but recently I got into trouble for doing this. It’s not even the students complaining, it’s one principal’s secretary who will report me to the company if I’m not 10 minutes early. More on that later.
This past weekend I had quite the heated exchange with HR. Now, need I remind you, I have no idea who my direct supervisor is. I have no idea who my HR rep is. I don’t even know who my coworkers are. I just pick up shifts in an app and go to the school it tells me. I have more of a relationship with the actual school admins than the company I work for, but the company controls my life. But, after I was late to work on Friday after quite literally being stranded in Dallas for a week because of the storms, I get not one but two identical emails from HR saying I needed to sign a “final warning notice”. Basically they said I was “chronically late to my assignments which caused unfair stress on the schools.” I looked back on my records. I hadn’t been reported late since September. I hadn’t been late period since December. Moreover the email claimed that this was “just to make sure you understand that another infraction may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.” But the document actually said another infraction would lead to IMMEDIATE termination. Obviously, I refused to sign the document and asked why I was being forced to do this. They said they had received a couple of reports in the last 6 months of incidents that occurred. I looked into it and half of them were bullshit.
One claimed I had no call/no showed. At that time I was being considered for a permanent sub position at another school, and their administration had canceled my assignment for that day. The other school didn’t get the memo, and called me asking where I was. Confused, I answered that I was at the other school, and that they should’ve cancelled it. They found someone to cover and all was fine, right? That was considered a no/call no show. I explained this to HR. No response.
Another time I had a planning period last period. Normally during planning periods the school will have me cover a class if they’re aren’t enough subs available. That’s fine, it’s in my
Job description. So during my planning period I went to the front office and asked if they needed me for anything. They said not at the moment, but stick around for half an hour and to see if something came up. I did that. Nothing came up. I asked if I could leave. They said yes. This was considered leaving early because the principal’s secretary didn’t think I could do that when the other administrators gave me the all clear. I was never even notified this happened until I was contacted on Friday about the last warning thing.
So now I’m frustrated, being threatened by HR for complete bullshit, and am just so done with all of this. The bureaucracy makes it so much harder than it needs to be. I love working with the kids, the kids like me. They consider me the “cool sub”. I’ve been recognized at one of the schools I teach as being a good worker and reliable. In fact that school practically begs me to sub there. It’s just this one secretary at this other school that keeps causing problems and getting the shitty company I work for on my ass.
I have no clue if I’m just overreacting or if this is actually insane as I think it is. My parents said that it’s mostly my fault, which might be true but I have no frame of reference for this sort of thing. I work hard and I don’t want to be seen as lazy, but this whole debacle has me doubting if I’m working hard enough. I do have issues being late sometimes but I’ve really worked on that and improved myself this past year. Now I’m wondering if it was ever really enough.
I think the cruelest part about all of this mess is I’ve started doubting myself more. My anxiety is back, and it’s getting harder and harder to operate sometimes. I’m going to fight this, but honestly it’s taxing on my mental health.
TL;DR privatization sucks, principal’s secretaries are the worst, I just wanna work and teach, I’m trying not to be late for work