From the highs of a surprise job opportunity to the lows of a last-minute job cancellation, the unpredictable nature of substitute teaching has shaped my approach to this profession. Imagine getting that early morning call, accepting a job, and halfway through your drive to the school, it gets canceled - a situation that's all too common and one that we'll discuss in detail. As a Type-A personality, I've experienced how our perfectionist tendencies can be both a boon and a bane, especially when navigating the world of last-minute jobs.
Whether you're a seasoned substitute teacher, a newbie, or a Type-A personality trying to juggle the demands of last-minute jobs, this episode has got you covered.
From the highs of a surprise job opportunity to the lows of a last-minute job cancellation, the unpredictable nature of substitute teaching has shaped my approach to this profession. Imagine getting that early morning call, accepting a job, and halfway through your drive to the school, it gets canceled - a situation that's all too common and one that we'll discuss in detail. As a Type-A personality, I've experienced how our perfectionist tendencies can be both a boon and a bane, especially when navigating the world of last-minute jobs.
Whether you're a seasoned substitute teacher, a newbie, or a Type-A personality trying to juggle the demands of last-minute jobs, this episode has got you covered.
Man, don't you hate those nights? We stay up late, maybe, and you still don't have a substitute job yet you go to sleep. You don't know what your status will be in the morning. You wake up still no job, but then that last minute job comes in. What do you do at that point? Also, we're going to talk about those crazy type A personalities like myself. What one has to do with the other? This is Greg Collins substitute teacher's lounge. It's November 7th, 2023, election Day, and it's time for us to make some decisions.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, let me just tell you I apologize for this rough sounding voice again Just when I've gotten over a cold, I got both my flu shot and my COVID shot. I'm having a few ramifications, everything from nose problems to back aches and all that kind of stuff, but I haven't gotten really sick. My wife did get sick once from a COVID shot, so I was hoping I wasn't going there and it's not going to be that bad. It's now over a week old, but we'll see how this goes. I've got a history with last minute jobs and how I've handled them and how I've changed how I felt about them over the years.
Speaker 1:I'm entering my six year, or this is beginning of my six year of substitute teaching and I'm also a very strong type A personality. Some people call it anal retinive and that's not. It's not really as derogatory as some people make it sound. That is an actual phrase for people that have a. You know, it's really the type A people. Their biggest I guess the best way to say it is their biggest benefit is also their biggest weakness. Their strength is also their weakness. Everything's got to be perfect time, perfect within us, perfect schedule, everything lined up exactly.
Speaker 1:My head softball coach. I was telling her a story once and I was talking about how organized a teacher was that I said for it. She said you mean, she's more organized than you. So that's the way people think about me. You need type A's and type B's, both. I don't have a creative bone in my body, so I have no type A. If you've ever taken those personality tests, I'm like a 90% type A strong math person. I shouldn't say type A. That's probably more a left brain and right brain comparison, but that goes along with it.
Speaker 1:My type A-ness has contributed to how I have approached last minute jobs. Now let me give you my history in accepting the last minute jobs because I haven't done it that often in my early days of substitution when I was playing what I bought you know what we call the substitute teacher roulette game where you back then, before I knew about sub alert, that's what I use. Now Some of you still just use the frontline app to give you notifications of new absences. This comes up all the time in our Facebook group. I mean all the time. I know from the data I have analyzed for weeks and weeks in my area, central Kentucky, I know that sub alert gives me a quicker notification by about 30 seconds than frontline does and that has to be at least I would say it's got to be at least 95 percent of the time is probably higher than that. Very rarely Will front line give me their notification first, even though that's the program that the teacher Enters their you know, enters their absence into. Keep in mind that none of these, I think, are really automated. I mean it's not instantaneous. I think the way they both work is refresh maybe every 15 seconds, every 30 seconds, I don't know. In that case sometimes you would think one would be earlier half the time, one would be earlier the other half the time. And again from the facebook group. There are some people out there that thinks front line is faster. I think subalerts faster, even though you have to pay for it. But you get An annual. You can pay for an annual years worth of subalert with a half a day of substitute teaching, so to me that's not an issue.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you the early Not early the late job game that I used to play and how I play it now. I would play that roulette back that days before subalert. What I would do Is actually hit my refresh button. Now. The night before I was probably hitting it every every minute To see if anything new had popped up. In the morning I was probably hitting it every 15 seconds.
Speaker 1:Now here's where my type anus comes in. Okay, I would. If I wanted a job really, really bad, and I did back then, and I do still today, for that matter, but I'll get into that here in just a moment I would still put my clothes out. I would still take my shower. I'm a 5am person. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. I'm a 5am person. That makes it a little bit different. I think that's part of my type, a personality too. So I would get up my type a person, personality tells me to get up, take my shower, get my clothes on, be ready to go at the last second in case Something pops up. Of course, now, if you've got a reputation now, a good reputation, you're probably going to get more of your jobs through a phone call perhaps. But to be honest, I've been long term, a long, long time. Now that I've come back to maybe a day at a time, I'm picking up more, you know, off of the roulette wheel, so to speak, and it's working out fine. I'm working every day that I want to work. So here's what I did back then.
Speaker 1:I remember one job specifically. It was probably Maybe 7, 15. School starts at 8. I had already taken my shower, I was ready to go. I see the absence, I accept it. I take off the school. I subbed there quite often, but I hadn't at that point. The school is about a 25 minute drive, which to some of you is probably nothing. In our area it's a little bit longer than people want to go because we're in a rural area and there's closer schools. So I take off, I'm halfway there and I get another beep and it's a tone and I look down and it says your job has been canceled. Well, guess what? I don't get mad, but I was mad. I had driven halfway down there and she canceled the job on me.
Speaker 1:I found out later it was the secretary that canceled it. She canceled the job and I'm sure put somebody else that she knew she didn't know me, put somebody else in that job. Now I can't complain too much about that. I will complain. You shouldn't do that after someone else has accepted at the last minute. As you know, they're on the way. So I kinda said, yeah, I'm not sure I wanna sub at that school.
Speaker 1:Well, probably two weeks later one of the teachers of that school came up to me, said Greg, I'm gonna be absent on Tuesday. Can you teach my class? I said sure, and that was Sunday morning, as a matter of fact. So I accepted the job. When she loaded it Sunday afternoon it got canceled. And I'm thinking, why would my friend just cancel that? And we were close enough that I thought I would call her and see what in the world is going on. So I called her and she said Greg, she said I thought you canceled it. I just saw that you dropped off of my job and I just assumed you canceled it.
Speaker 1:Well, it turns out again, the secretary canceled that job and put somebody else in that she hires more often. Now here's what happened. At this point that lady my friend, calls the secretary directly. In fact, now that I think about it I realized that was a half days job and she gave her my number. She texts me and said I'm so sorry, mr Collins, I'll give you Emily's job if you want it, but there's actually a full day opening now. Can I put you there instead? Of course I said sure, so went from a last minute job that I thought I'd never go back to that school. Not only did I go to that school, I've been to that school other than the COVID year. Let's leave that out, because that was a different situation. I've substituted that school more often than any. That secretary that was doing all the canceling. She's one of my best friends. She just retired. I was definitely at the top of her preferred list.
Speaker 1:They you know I've told you before that there was two and a half years of my subbing, that I was longterm all the time at three different schools. Well, for almost eight months I was longterm at this school for three different teachers. So it worked out okay. It started out as being frustrated about a last minute job, and I described how what I do to stay current as for kids, that I'm a type a personality you're I'm gonna get some majority of you don't want to get up anyway. You don't want to shower and clothes yourself anyway if you may not have a job. So you got a decision to make. I, as a type a personality, do that.
Speaker 1:Now I tell you I've changed though. Now, since I'm back to doing one day at a time, you know, I kind of like a day off here and there. I have figured out I gave up a lot of referring this year and I knew if I went back to four days of subbing a week that they would basically offset that. So that's what I've tried to do. And but one thing I've changed I don't get up and shower anymore most of the time if I don't have a job. Before I go to sleep one night I just say you know, tomorrow is going to be my day off this week, because I don't want to get ready at the last minute. I don't want to get up, even though I'm gonna probably wake up at five anyway. I want to just get up, relax and unless a close I won't even say close friend, unless a close teacher friend text me directly and says greg, my kids sick, I'm gonna have to stay home. Can you take my class today? Well then, obviously I would do it then. In fact, most of the time the secretary called me, I would do the same thing more times than not. But, to be honest, I sub enough that I don't have that many days off and especially during volleyball season I didn't have that many evenings off either. So I would have things to do on that day off.
Speaker 1:But I would recommend for you guys, last minute jobs put you in a uncomfortable situation. I know hopefully you've learned how to research the teachers that you're going to sub for. You learn that on this podcast. You've learned how to try to find out what grade you're teaching, what age subject you're teaching, all that before you go in. And you can't do that with last minute jobs. You're kind of going in blindly. You don't have the time to research it. You know what you like to teach.
Speaker 1:Those last minute jobs could be very well something you don't like to teach and if you're a free spirit, if you're a non type, a personality, go for it. You probably don't care with me. It bothers me. You know they say about type a personalities I talked about. You know it's a strength that you're that organized but cut. But it's also weakness because sometimes you have less tolerance for those that aren't as organized as you. I joke around with my preacher all the time because we do a podcast together and we have a set time and I joke with him that I'm the kind of guy that if I show up to our schedule time five minutes early I think I'm late, and if he shows up five minutes late he thinks he's early. But that's just the difference in personalities. I everything has to be in order for me. The the volleyball coach like me because she knew I would keep all of our paperwork organized, our score sheets, anything she gave me to do she, she knew I would keep it organized and that's one of the reasons she added me to the coaching staff. But last minute jobs now for me I don't take anymore. They're not worth it to me.
Speaker 1:If you're one that likes to take it, you just have to decide how you're going to be prepared for that. You know there's some times that I'll see a substitute teacher absence posted like at 8.30. And school started at 8.00. And I'm thinking, whoa, if I hadn't prepared myself for that day and they call me? What am I going to do? Do I put a cap on so that they can't see my hair? What do I do? What if I don't have any clothes clean? All that kind of stuff would enter into your mind. But you've got to be prepared for that.
Speaker 1:Think about what you want your personal situation to be. If you have a last-minute job, if you're like me and you like to get up early anyway, you're going to take a shower sometime during the day anyway. Take a shower, get your clothes on, be ready to head out that door in five minutes If you're needed. You cannot believe how much credibility that will add to your job for that school. If you drop everything you're doing and you can go take that job, they are going to love you. You're going to get a lot more job to their school. You'll probably move closer to the top of their list because their other subs were probably already subbing somewhere. They had to find somebody else to sub for them and by doing it you're going to be one of their favorites all of a sudden. So, type a personality or not, you have to decide how late you're going to accept a job. Maybe you're just one of those like me now that when I go to bed I don't have a job. I'm not doing anything. Tomorrow Maybe you, you want to get the job regardless.
Speaker 1:I remember back in the day usually I turned my phone off not off off, but turned the sound off Because I don't want to hear anything. It's got a little feature on it now my watch as well that I can put it in night mode, and even the little roll up messages I get they won't even pop up on the screen. Back then, when I wanted any job I could find, well, I would leave all that on, and if somebody posted job at 2am in the morning I would hear it, probably hear it, although I've slept through fire truck noise across the street before, so I'm not sure I would hear it. But if I heard it in the middle of the night I would look at it and if it's something I'd like I would say that's great, I got a job. Now I go back to sleep and go from there.
Speaker 1:So last minute jobs you're going to decide. You have to decide what you want to do with them. Different days might be different. Sometimes you want to take them, sometimes you're not. But they're kind of a peculiar job in that you didn't get to plan for them. So just be ready for that, and if you're a type, a personality, bless your heart. We'll all get through this together. Hopefully, we'll all get all the jobs we need from now on Not at the last minute, but the day before.