In the state of California, the clearance to work as a substitute teacher requires only a fingerprint/background check intended to winnow out convicted pedophiles and passage of the CBEST, a standardized test unable to stump lobotomized sea monkeys.
You, Madam, should have your clearance rescinded, torn up, set on fire, and flushed down the nearest excrement encrusted toiled. You may be a credentialed librarian, but the campus supervisors should be equipped with cattle prods to keep you away from the school.
I should have realized when my students warned me that you were “weird”. They’re smart kids and know when an adult’s mental Dewey Decimal doesn’t quite make it to the 100s. The bail job you pulled on me might have saved the Titanic, but it caused me the better part of six hours’ headache. To call you a flake, cretin, would be an insult too all the little clumps of dead skin cells being shed by the world’s scalps.
Was I not clear on the phone that the job was for two days? Most kindergarteners are clear on the concept of two. It would appear that you need some remedial instruction. Promising to work two days and then only working one day would get you fired from a real job, but then substitute teaching is usually the realm of those who can tie their shoes, but are incapable of simple addition.
And your reason? Your laughable, incoherent reason for failing to come the second day? My students were too GOOD? Let me get this straight: my students were polite, helpful, hard working, and followed directions for the entire four hours of Thursday’s summer school session, and this was so appalling, so confoundedly unexpected that you find yourself incapable of returning for more? Because they might lose respect for you?
Madam Librarian, whatever you’re smoking, they need to include it in the DARE lectures given in health class.
Your second reason, while not quite as flabbergasting, is still a piece of work. You didn’t have anything to do on Friday. Now, if you had actually seen the lesson plan and made that statement, I might have been willing to credit you with possession of a prefrontal lobe. However, as you hadn’t seen Friday’s lesson plan and didn’t ask me about the activities, I am forced to draw the conclusion that your cerebral assets end with your brain stem. I can only assume the brain stem because you do draw breath on a regular basis.
I feel the need to explain a few points to you: my students were threatened with messy death and then asked as a favor to me to treat you with respect and courtesy. That’s why they behaved so well. Even the problem child knew that one toe out of line would earn him a call home and a very unsatisfactory citizenship grade. That didn’t end with just one day. They knew the deal going in - two full days. The fact that your workload was light is completely attributable to my preperation efforts. Silly me, I thought that as you were so kind as to agree to the job, I would do as much as possible beforehand, so that you would have an easy day. The fact that you didn’t have to yell and scream at them or wave your arms in an attempt to get them to work means that I have done my job as a teacher, and they have done their jobs as students. Would that you had come close to doing your job as a substitute.
Here’s another point: I actually checked with those that you talked to. The English teacher who helped cover what you left exposed said that you explained to her you weren’t coming back because you were bored. The students said you talked all day long about how I “needed” to be there, and that you wouldn’t be back. So, if you’re laboring under the delusion that I bought your half-witted pack of lies, labor no more.
Given that the concept of “professional responsiblity and courtesy” is completely foreign to you, let me illuminate:
If you agree to take a substitution job, you need to fulfill it. If there is some reason to rescind your commitment, such as students misbehaving (which they didn’t) or poor teacher preparation (which it wasn’t), you need to let the teacher know. Emergencies are excusable. Finding a replacement for a job you know longer wish to finish is acceptable. Leaving a note for the teacher that says only “I can’t come back tomorrow” is not.
In the grand scheme of things teacher-related, bailing on a teacher - whose school district has paid for her attendance at a workshop - with no warning, no reasonable explanation, and no replacement substitute arranged should earn you a beating with all three volumes of The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. Thanks, however, to school politics and tenure, not even a harshly worded letter of complaint to the principal will grant me any vengeance.
That being the case, I heartily wish that during your next visit to the library, you unbalanced, quill-sharpening, periodical-shelving ribbon clerk, the reference stack topples over directly onto your head and your body is not found until it has become carrion, Madam Librarian.