Substitute Teacher: A Victim No More

I just finished watching a rarely released interview by Bill Maher with then Israeli conservative leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prime minister commanded a great deal of respect with the HBO comedian, a bitter man to some commentators who just assume not to take him seriously. Yet Mr. Netanyahu knows who he is, and he knows the enemies that he is dealing with. This is a matter which many Americans, including liberal like Bill Maher, simply do not understand.

Netanyahu commented that the world is not at ease with the "Jew" winning. Netanyahu explained very cogently that for a thousand years, the Jews had no homeland, no state apparatus for redress, nowhere to run for help. As a perennial minority in foreign countries, they were an easy target for persecution.

The worst pogrom, the "last straw", was the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were decimated and incinerated as part of the evil "Final Solution" of Hitler and his Nazi thugs.

Yet where sin abounds, grace does more abound (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10), and while Hitler wanted to wipe out all Jewry, he inadvertently assisted in the establishment of their own nation! God takes the evil of this world and makes it good.

I could not help be read a parallel into their experience and my own as a substitute teacher.

Like Jewish people or other minorities on societies' past, substitute teachers are looked upon as second-class citizens.

I will never forget the calm reply that one student made to me: "You're just a sub. I don't have to listen to you." She said it as a matter of fact, with no real tinge of range or recrimination. Like "2  + 2 = 4", she had equated "substitute teacher" with "I do not have to listen to you," or worse "I do not have to respect you."

For a long time, I tried to overcome this issue, as if there was something more that I could do to make it better. If I just prepared the right lesson, say, or if I told the students a really good story, then I could expect good things to happen.

But that was the problem. There was nothing that I could "do" --- it was who I was. I was a substitute teacher, and there was nothing I could do to change who I was, as far as those students were concerned.

Even when most students tried to pull a prank of give me a hard time,
I am glad for one security guard -- Sugar Bear at Leuzinger High School -- He had no problem storming into a class and threatening to write tickets, citations with a mandatory court appearance, if students did not shape up. He told me up front, "You're a sub, so they are going to try to mess with you. Don't take it personal." He also told me never to worry about calling for help if I needed it. That took all the stress away for me.

I will never forget the encouragement I received from another students, a senior named Michael Perry: "You are a good sub." My claim to fame? That I was writing referrals whereas most substitutes just put with students' disrespect or laziness.