I used to be a teacher. It's been so long since I have had a truly great day in the classroom I forget if I used to be a good teacher. I suppose I was, because I remember certain students thanking me for teaching them. Saying to me they enjoyed being in my classroom. Even the other day, when I was dealing with five atrocious 10 year old boys, one of the girls in the class thanked me, and said it was nice to meet me. There are still moments that are fun, but it has been a very long time since I actually enjoyed teaching.
Supply teaching, occasional teaching, substitute teaching, whatever you want to call it, is extremely challenging. It is especially difficult with the younger grades because you still have to teach them, but you are only there for one day. The teacher can leave a detailed lesson plan, but odds are a few students were not there the day before, and are behind on work. Or, they do not have the work at all, and the spare sheets are no where to be found. Or, they left the work at home. Or... Flexibility is key, but if you do not have resources, you are SOL.
You are dealing with various levels of attitude. Many students are down right rude to subs, and we often have very little recourse. The kids are unlikely to see you again, and even if they do, no discipline was administered after you left. You have no power, no authority. If you have never been in the school before, you probably do not know how administration deals with behaviour issues.
Your day starts off being stressful because you likely received the phone call first thing in the morning. If you have children, this throws off the morning routine. If you are single, maybe you wake up, and are ready to go every morning. Even if you are not prepared, it is easy to get yourself ready to work. I remember the days before I had children, and it was a snap to clean myself up, get to school on time, and work the day. After children, it is a whole different story.
Getting two other people ready, and out the door on time puts added stress on your day. Hopefully your children are accommodating, but that is not always the case. I have had to drop my son off in pjs with a change of clothes. I have had to put cereal in a container for him to eat at the babysitter. I have had to strap a struggling, screaming three year old into the van to get to a school on time. On top of a stressful morning, the change of routine makes for a stressful afternoon, often filled with tantrums and fights between siblings. It does not help that my job consists of diffusing tantrumy, defiant students most of the day. I am seriously reconsidering whether or not the occasional work day is worth the added stress.
Now, the government of Ontario has created an amendment to the Education Act with regards to hiring practices. I suppose they were trying to come up with a fair way of hiring teachers that could be applied to all school boards. Some school boards had a seniority list for their occasional teachers, while others did not. Brand new teachers were often hired for contract positions and permanent jobs over teachers who have been working "occasionally" for years.
At first glance, you might think Regulation 274/12 is a great idea. All boards have to have a seniority list for occasional teachers. If the board wants to hire a teacher for a permanent position, or even a long term contract position, they have to pick the top five qualified candidates from a special subset of the occasional teachers list. Here's where government regulations fail to deal with reality. How do you get on this specialized roster? Well, you interview, of course. However, the government came up with some criteria the boards must use to select the teachers who would be interviewed.
Here is how the government has determined who can be interviewed for the specialized roster. These will be the teachers who will be hired for long term occasional contracts with the board.
Long-term occasional teachers list
4. (1) Every board shall establish and maintain a long-term occasional teachers list. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 4 (1).
(2) An occasional teacher may apply to the board to be placed on the list and the board may grant the teacher an interview if,
(a) the teacher has been on the board’s roster of occasional teachers for at least 10 months; and
(b) the teacher has taught as an occasional teacher in one or more schools of the board for at least 20 full days during the 10-month period immediately preceding the day the application is submitted. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 4 (2).
(3) If the person or panel that conducts the interview recommends that the board place the teacher on the list, the board shall do so. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 4 (3).
(4) The board shall post the list on its website and shall ensure that the list is updated regularly. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 4 (4).
When I first read this, I was stressed out because the 10 month period included the summer, and teachers do not usually work during the summer. I feared I did not have enough days worked in the 2011/2012 school year. It was a slow year, plus, I was home with my son, and I had turned down a few days. I had missed out on some secondary work because we went to Ottawa one week. I only ended up working 28 days that school year, but I had no way of knowing this regulation was coming.
The board said they would use teaching months, but the application was in October, so they dated the experience back to the previous October. I had not worked in September, so I thought it had worked out well for me. The 2010/2011 school year, I had two contracts and had been employed for about six months, but that did not matter for the purposes of this new regulation. What if you had been off on maternity leave? That is a human rights violation. Apparently, these women were given an extra year. I applied to be on the specialized roster because I had worked 28 days with the English Public board. I waited to hear from them about an interview time.
We were eventually informed the interviews would take place at the end of February. I started to worry when the date was less than a week away, and I had not heard from anyone. When I called the board to find out why, it turns out they decided to divide the experience between the elementary and secondary panels. I had only worked 9 elementary day the 2011/2012 school year, and therefore I was not eligible for an interview. It turned out I only had 19 days for secondary, so no interview for that panel either. Sorry, too bad, nothing you can do about it.
If I had applied to a Catholic or French board I would have had enough days because they only have one union, but English Public has separate unions for elementary and secondary. I need 40 days of work, properly allocated, to applied to both panels. This not only penalizes teachers who are not called frequently, through no fault of their own, but also teachers who work year long contracts with one of the panels. Who cares what your previous years of experience may be, we are starting from 2011/2012. Oh, you worked all year in high school last year. You are not eligible to interview for the elementary panel, or vice versa.
On top of this arbitrary cut off, the board here does not have an objective way of giving work to occasional teachers. Last year, I only worked 28 days. This school year, I have worked about five, and I only turned down or missed two other days. For secondary schools, the vice principals make the calls, and there are teachers getting work every day, and others who are not being called at all. Last year, I met a teacher who brought doughnuts to all the high schools to get his face known.
I did go around one year, when we first moved back from Chapleau, but I did not go around last August. VPs who called me last year have not called me once this year. I will not have enough work days this school year to get an interview next year. I will not be eligible for any contract positions until I complete a successful interview, but I am not even getting enough work days to get an interview.
If you are succesful, and get onto this new "short" list, the regulation has another idiotic criterium for hiring permanent positions.
Assignments or appointments to permanent positions
7. (1) If a board is a party to a written agreement with a bargaining unit, including a collective agreement, that governs the process of offering teaching positions to supernumerary teachers with the board or teachers whose positions with the board have been declared redundant, the board shall not interview or make an offer to any other person to fill a permanent position before completing that process. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 7 (1).
(2) If a permanent position is not filled under the process referred to in subsection (1), the board shall not interview or make an offer to any other person to fill the position unless an offer has been made to each teacher interviewed in accordance with subsections (3) and (4) and none of them have accepted it. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 7 (2).
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2), the board shall interview the five teachers from the long-term occasional teachers list who,
(a) have completed a long-term assignment in a school of the board that was at least four months long and in respect of which the teacher has not received an unsatisfactory evaluation;
(b) have the required qualifications for the position;
(c) have the highest ranking under section 2; and
(d) have agreed to be interviewed. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 7 (3).
(4) If fewer than five teachers on the list satisfy the criteria set out in clauses (3) (a) (b) and (d), the board is required under subsection (3) to interview only those teachers. O. Reg. 274/12, s. 7 (4).
Most of the LTO contracts I worked in the past few years with the board have only been two or three months long. I have one contract that was a semester long. So, once again, an arbitrary number is going to exclude good teachers from being eligible for work.
I had resigned myself a few years ago to the fact that I would probably be an occasional teacher for the rest of my career. However, I had always had hope I could get a contract once in a while, and have my own class for a few weeks or months, once in a while. Now, it is looking more and more as though I will only be doing occasional teaching on a daily basis. I am not sure if I want to continue with this. Daily subbing is often not a fun job. I am tired of having to jump through hoops every year to get work. I am tired at not being valued as an employee by a board who does not care. I am 9th on the secondary seniority list, which means everyone else either got hired or gave up on teaching.
You wonder why I question my ability to be a good teacher. I have so few opportunities to prove myself. Most days, I am trying to keep the kids from becoming an uncontrolable mob. Next time you want to bash the teaching profession, think about how you would fare, thrown into a classroom of unruly, disrespectful students. You know how parents cannot wait for their kids to be back in school because they are going crazy at home? We teachers are dealing with your children on a daily basis, and many of us have our own kids as well. We are the ones spending time with your kids when you just want them out of your hair. On top of that, we are trying to teach them.
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