Want to Know Why There is a Shortage of Substitute Teachers?

I mean, besides the obvious fact that there is a teacher shortage in general.

Legit, this just happened to me this evening. I’ve been living in my new city for a year, working as a Stay-at-Home Mom. It’s been great, but I feel the time has come to return to the classroom. I miss it for the big reason I’ve always loved school: community.

So I go to the Human Resources page of our local school district and see that I’m to apply through an outside service. Fine. I go find that website and begin my application. I get partway into the application and it directs me to a survey-test that will assess my ability to serve as a substitute teacher. I roll my eyes and settle in to answer the questions.

The first part is easy, just a bunch of questions that are occasionally reworded and asked again, just to test for consistency. The last portion of the survey is a legit math test. Like, I pulled out my calculator and everything. Thank goodness for Mathnet and Square One TV.

Guys. I teach language arts and social studies. These questions were totally irrelevant. And several of them had to do with extreme student safety and monitoring measures, which as we all know from my last post, are unhealthy for our schools anyway. A bandaid on a deeper disease of mental health and distraction. I digress.

Anyway, so I get 93 percent of the way through this assessment, hit continue to the next page. And get directed to a [insert expletive here] proxy server fail. It kicks me out.

I should add that even if I had been able to finish the assessment, I still had miles to go in the original application, not to mention the mountain of harassment/child-protection classes I was going to have to sit through (that I could practically teach based on the number I have sat through in my ten years of substitute teaching), on top of the hoops I would have to jump through to deal with my out-of-state teaching license. I was going to have to procure my undergraduate transcripts. From 2007.

For the love. Can I please just walk into the district office, tell them I would love to serve in their district as a sub, present my perfectly valid Oregon teaching license, and a list of teachers and districts I have worked in over the last ten years? Ten years, folks. Some of that time included full-time teaching. But basically, I am killing it as a sub. My very first day of subbing ever, the supervising teacher told me, “Wow, you were made for this.” I think that speaks for itself.

I realize I’m perhaps in the minority, but districts might want to think about chilling out on teachers who have subbed extensively, or teachers who have valid out-of-state licenses (College transcripts? What in the AF?) if they want to fill their vacancies more efficiently.