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Three months ago I realized I would need to head off to sub once again.  At that time I made a decision to not re-sign on with a district that only rarely called me last year and was still on the slowly fading sub caller system (that is, not online) this year so more of the same was expected.  Ironically, in that district last year I learned that another district I had worked in for about a year and a half moved their sub system online when I found out their former sub caller now had a job in that district, so I decided to go ahead and sign up.  So, a little over 2½ months ago I received my sub packet from them by email.  It took them over a week to get it to me; little did I realize this would be a foreshadowing of things to come.  I finally made it in for fingerprinting in early September, at which time they accepted my paperwork.  I was told then that there was one person inputting the subs, in order, one at a time and that it would take a couple of weeks before my paperwork was confirmed and I was entered into their system.  Two months and a couple of phone calls later I logged into the system for one of the districts I’m already in to look for future jobs (particularly for this Friday- I signed up for one school a couple weeks ago and the grade was not listed so I figured, why not?  It’s a K-8 school so my chances of a grade that I wanted was pretty good, so of course when I went there Monday for another job I found out she was Kindergarten- a grade I oh, so don’t want to teach if I can avoid it, though I will if I have to).  Now understand that the new district uses the same system as this one that I’m already in.  So, I logged in and something showed up on the screen that I had never seen.  It turned out to be asking me for a pin number for a multi-district login now that I am in two districts on that system.  Yes!  Finally!

An hour later, I now have a confirmed job in said district for next week.     A 7:40 start time for 3rd grade.  Hmm.  A little early for elementary.  I think I had better look up a newspaper article too.  I remember reading that third grade at one of their schools has overloaded classes (30+ students).  If it’s this school I may just have another first for this district- first canceled job. Maybe.  I am now keeping an eye out for a certain school in a certain grade where I know a couple of church kids of mine attend…

Subbing has traditionally been a waiting game, waiting for that call to come inviting you to take over someone’s classroom for a day or sometimes more. There is one district that for some reason last fall seems to have just stopped calling me altogether. Actually, that is not strictly true- the sub for the sub caller (yes, even they have ’em!) actually called me a couple of weeks ago, but the regular caller hasn’t called for over two months now. Well, at least I am blessed to work in an age where I can grab jobs off the internet (by the way, I refuse to capitalize this as if “internet” is the name of a town or country). Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work so I am left waiting until the morning of for some district to call (yes even the computer systems call) or for a last-minute bout before the day starts to at least find a half-day position on the online systems.

Well, this morning I indeed received a call from one of the districts. Enter password, this middle-school resource teacher needs a sub, yada-yada. However, when it got to the end and I selected “yes” for the job, the system said, “sorry, we are unable to assign to job- goodbye.” Nice- why did you call me then? Another district’s system locks the job when calling someone so someone can’t select the job on the online system when it is offering it to someone by phone; I guess this one doesn’t. Either that or the teacher canceled while I was listening to the instructions. Since I was then awake, I sat down at the computer and looked for a job. Fortunately I found one right away- and one I wouldn’t need to be at until after 8:30, so back to bed I went for another hour. As usual, I slept for only half that- I don’t know what it it, but I can’t get good sleep lately. I constantly wake up and fall back asleep throughout the night, sometimes laying awake or half-awake for a while before going to sleep. It seems I have picked up this problem from one of my parents…