The other day at a friends-of-the library, used-book sale, I picked up a copy of Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids. The author recounts a month’s worth of experience in Maine, doing time as a substitute teacher with a range of grades and subjects. It brought to mind a video clip from a North Carolina school, and, then, memories of my own stint in this role on the North Shore of Chicago. 

The sub is pacing as she argues with a student when another scholar tells her to “sit down somewhere.” This straw breaks the camel’s back, so she gathers her things to leave. The disputant chimes in sarcastically, “Oh, well. [expletive deleted] Hurt my feelings.” Amidst laughter, the adult heads for the door, saying, “Yeah, I’m gonna go. I don’t even care if I don’t get paid today. I’m just a stupid old white lady. That’s all.” (READ MORE: Vouchers Do Pose Dangers to Private Schools)

Chances are, she could have really used that money. I certainly did when I signed up for the job at Evanston Township High and New Trier High, up in Winnetka. I’d come to Evanston to plant a church, and most of our attendees were Northwestern University students, not much able to contribute financially. (I recall one Sunday when we had about fifty in church and an offering of $38.) So, the Lord opened doors for us to cobble together income from several sources, but things were tight, and that extra $100 a day counted substantially. 

At the time, we were living in Wilmette, just south of Kenilworth and Winnetka, just north of Evanston. Our apartment was about a mile inland from the Baha’i Temple and a block south of the Home Alone church (Trinity United Methodist) where “Kevin” hid from “Harry” and “Marv” in the Nativity scene, and where he met the scary old neighbor (“Marley”) at the Christmas Eve service. Indeed, we found ourselves on something of a film set (thanks in large measure to John Hughes), a short walk or drive from locations used in Uncle Buck, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Road to Perdition, Risky Business, The Weather Man, Contagion, Sixteen Candles, Ordinary People, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. 

Alums from the two high schools I served were no strangers to the silver screen (the Cusacks, Michael Madsen, and Jeremy Piven from ETHS; Charlton Heston, Ann-Margret, and Bruce Dern from New Trier) or the small screen, especially New Trier (Rainn Wilson as “Dwight” on The Office and William Christopher as “Father Mulcahy” on M*A*S*H). And it wasn’t all entertainers; Donald Rumsfeld went to New Trier. 

I had no idea what I was getting into when I enlisted, but I supposed I wouldn’t be facing a Blackboard Jungle. Immediately adjacent to Chicago, Evanston was a cool place to live. But it was grittier than tony Winnetka. As they told us newcomers in the six-week, Community Police Academy course, four gangs had a presence in town (Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, and Black P. Stone Nation) and security officers made sure they didn’t “represent” in the high school. Yes, the “progressive” cast of the “Peoples’ Republic of Evanston” promised a bit of smug nuttiness: Back when the Boy Scouts drew the line against gay scoutmasters, the local United Way threw them out of the system; ours was the first Chicagoland community to hand out racial reparations; and, of course, they were pleased to welcome cannabis dispensaries to town. But, hey, it was the affluent North Shore, so I expected propriety in good measure. Alas, subbing was a grimmer experience than I’d imagined. My college-teaching and ministerial credentials didn’t count for boo with a bunch of these kids, for the program of busy-work without professorial authority or student accountability was a recipe for debacle.

To my mind, the setup was a test of student character, not unlike the moral challenge that Plato’s Gyges faced (Book II, Republic) when he came upon a ring that could make him invisible. It allowed him to steal, kill, or invade privacy at will. The question then is what we’d do if we could escape detection and the normal ramifications of our misdeeds — and, specifically in the classroom, to enjoy a season of misbehavior without consequences. How would you show yourself? Well, a fair number showed themselves poorly. For example,

1. In one class, I handed out a worksheet, and a girl exclaimed, “We’ve already done that.” Just as quickly, another answered back, “No we haven’t,” at which point Girl #1 scratched her head, albeit with her middle finger extended. I said, to her surprise, that that was nasty, and then the class grudgingly got to work on the assignment.
2. In another, we were set to discuss J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and, along the way, I asked why Holden Caulfield had such a bad attitude, counting most everything around him “lousy,” “boring,” “crap,” “bull,” or “goddam” — quite the cynical narcissist he. A few ventured answers touching on his familial, scholastic, societal, or hormonal situation. Then I asked something along the lines of, “Do you think he needs God in his life?” Instantly, a hand on the back row shot up, and an adolescent jurist declared, “You can’t say that!” By this he meant that church-state separation proscribed commending God to wards of a government school. I quickly assured him that I could, indeed, ask such a question.
3. In another English class centered on this novel, a group adjourned to the back of the classroom, plopped down in a circle to play cards as their classmates hung with the discussion to some extent. And, as I recall, one girl busied herself in braiding her neighbor’s hair. In this case, I didn’t bother to object. What was the use?

Look, through the years, I’d assigned or presented a bunch of culturally dismissive or hostile material to my philosophy students. We’ve tackled Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Rousseau’s Confessions, Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones, Benedict’s The Case for Moral Relativism, Voltaire’s Candide, Sartre’s Nausea, and Henley’s Invictus. “Game on!” But they were balanced by work friendly to Judeo-Christian, Western civilization. We’d read from Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Augustine’s Confessions, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Butler’s Fifteen Sermons, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and Thomas’s Summa. But I didn’t see such fairness in the public schools. (READ MORE: Parents Face Off Against Extremely Gay Curriculum)

In my humble but correct opinion, Salinger serves up a way for the teachers to pander to teenaged waywardness and to enhance their standing with kids inclined to dismiss them as old fools. To those curricular ingratiators, I say, “Okay, knock yourself out. Sure, Salinger’s style is arresting, fluent in the patois of the disaffected, alluring to those trying out rival value systems. But would you dare introduce them to C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Elizabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor, George McDonald’s Phantastes, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno, or Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur”?

1. When the school summons you at 6:00 a.m., there’s no telling what subjects you’ll serve. The batch of folders may call on you to show a film on the Michelson-Morley Experiment in physics, lead special-ed students through some math problems, and work with Swahili (yes, Swahili) students on vocabulary. Not surprisingly, you’ll come off as dense here and there, and that’s when some kids get haughty. I recall a computer animation class, where I made my rounds of their work stations as they tweaked their video projects. I asked dumb questions and expressed admiration for their savvy, and some would happily fill me in. But others would react with impatient disdain and, perhaps, offer a curt, patronizing response. “Well, excuuuse me.” 

That being said, I have some good memories of thoughtful kids and lessons learned. 

1. I’d read a book on the origin of surnames — location (Hill), occupation (Smith), parentage (Johnson), and physical feature (Armstrong) — and I worked my way through the class roll suggesting linkages. (Yes, I offered a disclaimer over slave-master provenance, as in George W. Carver and Jesse Jackson.) They were intrigued and pleased with this practice, and I’d hear myself called out as “The Name Man” as I passed them in the hall. I soon learned that bringing outside stuff to their attention could add teaching to what often amounted to babysitting hostiles.
2. Similarly, in a theater class, I taught them military movements they might be called upon to effect on screen down the line — how to salute, to do an about face, to stand at ease. So often, prior-service personnel cringe when they see how Hollywood presents the troops and their equipment, whether through non-regulation haircuts or absurd fireball explosions, as if every round and target (bamboo and thatch watchtowers included) were filled with gasoline.
3. It was fun to quote some Torah in Hebrew class. They were surprised that a goy knew “Bereshit bara elohim et ha’ shamayim ve’et ha’aaretz” (Genesis 1:1). But we Southern Baptists learn the original, biblical languages in seminary, the other being Koine Greek.
4. To my great surprise, special-ed classes were my favorites. The students were amiable, and adult aides accompanied them from class to class as facilitators and mentors. Those sessions were pedagogical oases.

In sum, I wouldn’t go looking for more opportunities to sub, though I’m grateful for the chances that came along. And they fed my conviction that, for writers, there are no bad experiences; just more material. Though I didn’t enjoy many classroom achievements, there were epistemic gains as I came to see that the students’ reaction to subs said a lot about their upbringing. With a relic like me making the rounds with stuff of only-occasional interest to the class on what some call “play day,” it takes a particularly gracious student to make the sub feel human. 

As far as I’m concerned, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is one of the most execrable characters on the American scene. She brings disgrace to what should be an honorable profession, not only by her behavior (especially under cover of COVID hysteria) but also for the perennially-exalted position she enjoys thanks to the “educators” who fund her reign. I’m convinced that, in aggregate, they’re doing great harm to our children and youth as they parrot and enforce the specious, woke deliverances of our cultural elites. But, in subbing, I’ve developed some sympathy for those teachers, having seen what they must work with — the offspring of parents and churches who should have fostered the virtues of empathy, friendly cooperation with legitimate authority, and courage in the face of peer pressure on the downgrade — ripples from the Golden Rule. (READ MORE: Rehabbing Teachers Unions)

Back in the ’70s, I saw the Pink Floyd film, The Wall, featuring some beleaguered British school kids in blazered uniforms, wearing blank masks, marching to the refrain, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone.” On that model, I offer a version sympathetic to substitute teachers:

She don’t need no snide derision,
She don’t need punks on parole,
No flip insults in the classroom…
Hey, Kiddoes, leave Old Teach alone.