The COVID substitute

When coronavirus comes to a small school.

To be sure, I didn’t sign up for the pay, but I also didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into when I obtained my substitute teaching credentials about the same time the Coronavirus pandemic was taking hold across the country.

Less than a year later I found myself standing in for the science teacher at our small combined school here in Westcliffe, Colorado. Her classes include 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders. I’m a familiar face to most of the students. In addition to substitute teaching my son Harrison, who is on the autism spectrum, goes to school there, and I coach cross-country and track runners. Even some kids I don’t coach call me “Coach Hal.”

Of course my contribution as a sub, while important to the function of the school, is minor compared to the work and the risks full-time teachers take every day, and especially during this pandemic.

I’d originally agreed to sub for Joy, for two half-days, Monday and Tuesday, and a full day on Wednesday two weeks before the end of the fall semester. She is also the school’s athletic director and had several meetings to attend. However, as she was getting ready for her meetings that Monday, and I was prepping to take over her morning classes, she learned that she had been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and needed to go into quarantine immediately. She asked if I could stay for the entire day and I agreed. Since I was just a “contact of a contact” (her) I was still deemed safe.

I had Joy’s lesson plans for the morning, but nothing for the afternoon. So we asked the IT staff to help set up a system to beam her in for the afternoon classes. She could then teach from home with me assisting the students in the classroom. Since I had not planned to stay for the day, I had not brought a lunch. Word was there were burritos in the cafeteria for teachers, so I went down there and quickly ate.

The afternoon passed by with just a few technical glitches. Clearly it was easier to keep the kids’ attention with Joy online. The principal stopped by to inquire about my availability for the next two weeks. I’d not had time to even think about it.

The following morning I came in for the half-day as planned, then handed off to another sub for the afternoon. I had some of my own work that could not wait, especially since I would be subbing the entire day on Wednesday.

And that’s when things got weird. In the first class of the day I noted a girl who’d been there the previous two mornings was absent and a couple of her 6th grade classmates offered up, with no concern at all for HIPAA rules, that she had gone in for a COVID test. 

Halfway through the next hour, the principal’s voice came onto the overhead speakers, saying that there had been a problem in the cafeteria, and that all students were to remain in the classroom until further notice. After a couple more announcements, it was clear the school was shutting down and going to remote learning for the remainder of the year. Elementary students’ parents had been notified to pick them up. High school students who drive to school were dismissed. Lunch for those who remained would be delivered to the classroom. Moreover, I’d be locked up with masked 9th graders for the rest of the day, or until their parents could fetch them from school.

We were in for the long haul. Joy was able to get her Netflix to play from home on the classroom screen. The kids chose “The Grinch,” which I thought was somewhat appropriate, and some of them started a card game. I was startled to find they were paying with real money but when I objected they assured me they were just using one kid’s wallet cash as tokens. I suddenly had on my hands the strange combination of the last day before Christmas break and the end of the world as we know it. The inmates were taking over the asylum, and we’d not even gotten to the board games yet.

Out in the hallway it was chaos as staff scrambled to get some students sent home with parents, and to discuss activities to keep the rest of them occupied. Maybe they would open the gym. Or maybe not. A couple of the boys were granted permission to toss a football outside for a while. I got a visit from the school counselor who watched the class while I talked things through with my son, a junior in high school who was melting down amid the confusion and disruption of routine.

The teacher from across the hall walked over and deadpanned, “I guess we won’t be needing . . . subs anymore. Ha. Ha.” She was not laughing, but just turned and walked away.

At one point I was dealing with someone at the classroom door and when I turned around found two boys playfully “sword-fighting” with yardsticks. I yelled at them to knock it off and hand over the rules. As they gave them to me I added that I had taken fencing in college and actually know how it’s done. They seemed taken a bit off-guard by this.

The yardsticks felt vaguely authoritative in my hands, but truthfully I’d grown quite weary of yelling: “PLEASE KEEP YOUR MASKS ON!”

The card game continued, the board games came out and another holiday movie played as one by one the students were released to parents. Near the end another teacher came in and invited the last half-dozen or so very bored kids down to her room for a game of spoons with her few remaining pupils.

I was at last free. I packed my backpack like some ghostly soldier of fortune, watered Joy’s aloe plant with the remains of my water bottle and took a picture of her miniature Christmas tree with its oversized “SCIENCE” ornament as I closed down her classroom for 2020.

Then I fled the school, retrieving my own kid from the resource room on the way out the door. In the following days I would learn that a member of the cafeteria staff where I got the burrito the first day had tested positive, as had my son’s aide, a 6th grader and one of the 9th grade kids I’d been isolated with in the class that final day. Joy tested negative.

I’m now done with my quarantine. I feel fine, though some question my sanity for substituting during this time. I’d do it all over again. Like I said, I didn’t sign up for the pay.

Download my free ebook, “American Flats” by clicking here.