In the waning days of my stint as a wine importer in Georgia (2001-2002), I was having trouble making rent on the tiny warehouse for the wine I wasn't selling. My mom was working for the Dekalb County School District at the time and told me that the district was so large, they had need of subs everyday, commitment-free. Just get qualified and dial a 1-800 number the morning you wanted to go in and you'd make somewhere around $100 for the day. Perfect for me - if I didn't have any sales calls or just needed the dough, I could call in the morning of and get a gig somewhere in the county.
To become qualified you had to submit some paperwork, undergo a background check and attend a couple of supervised visits to some area classrooms. So I walked to the local elementary school and they sent me to a few different classrooms. One very friendly kindergarten teacher asked me if I wanted to read to the kiddos. I said sure and the excitement and friendliness of the kids as they circled around was overwhelming. They asked me lots of questions and came right into my space and it was a moving, surprisingly personal experience. The teacher said part of it was that there were so few male teachers at the elementary schools that we get to be rock stars to those kids.
The next day I went to the local high school and they sent me to all their upper level classes to show off to an outsider. I was sitting in the back of an AP Chem class and really digging the vibe when, at one point, a smart kid asked a tough question about batteries and the teachers totally messed it up. I was shocked sitting in the back of the room and considered saying something, but wisely kept my mouth shut.
Over the course of subbing for the next few months off and on, I eliminated all middle school jobs after a couple of traumatic experiences. Then, one day, I was just place-holding at an area high school for a sick chemistry teacher who had left some worksheets for her classes. Usually, the kids knew these sub assignments were jokes and didn't work too hard on them. But when her AP Chem class came in, those kids actually worked hard on their assignment. I was endeared by them and started working on the sheet too, just for fun. (my own high school AP Chem class was, I always tell my students, my gateway drug to Physics)
There was clearly this one kid that all the others thought was the smartest and they kept coming to him to get help and he gladly helped them out and explained things pretty well. He was seated near me so I could follow what we was doing pretty closely. At one point he had to admit he didn't know how to do number six ("Sorry, I didn't understand that one when she was explaining it either.") I saw an opportunity and I discretely went up to him and said that maybe I could help him out and I talked him through how I thought about those type of problems. The look he gave me! He was so surprised that a sub could do these problems and then he said "You just explained that better than my regular teacher! How'd you do that?" and he happily worked out the problem and began to explain it to the other kids.
Now, I'm 31 at the time and have had many different types of jobs by then and was well positioned to realize that the kind of personal validation I had just received is not something you get very often at work. I remembered how much I enjoyed being a Teaching Assistant in grad school and how much I enjoyed being in school myself and the classroom environment in general. Since I knew I was moving to the Boston area to join Irene up in MA, that spring I registered on some kind of online platform for MA teacher jobs and sent my resume to a couple of metro west high schools. I only got one call and it was from the retiring department head (who was a physics teacher) in Swampscott, MA. He basically asked me if I was for real, applying for a teaching job from GA with no experience except for importing wine. So I told him I was moving to the area to get married and, yessir, was serious about trying my hand at teaching. He was intrigued and said "Well, I don't know if I'd give you the job, but I sure like to meet you." So I interviewed with him the next time I was up visiting Irene. I charmed him and his principal so hard, they offered me the job! Although I assumed there simply must not have been another qualified candidate, much later I was told that I actually did beat out a highly qualified candidate.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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