guest teacher...

i am a babysitter for the clark county school district.


a few years ago the school board decided to change the title of my position from "substitute" to "guest teacher." the motivating notion behind the switch was that the new designation would garner a greater amount of respect and compliance from high school students accustomed to treating the a fore mentioned with as much deference as you might provide an unwanted house guest. but for all their noble intention and in their infinite wisdom, the school board forgot one very important thing: to tell the kids about the change. so the uninformed students remain ignorant to the fact that i'm supposed to be treated as an honored visitor in their classroom, instead of playing the substitute's usual role: stand-in without a clue.


call me an optimist, but i'm sure that if someone told them i wasn't just a piñata for their verbal assaults and that instead i was to be offered a seat and cup of tea with biscuits upon my arrival, the students would be more than willing to indulge me. they would study dutifully and do their work diligently, grasping for my every word during lecture because my time with them would be brief and they knew they may never get another chance to taste of my brilliance.


of course i'd indulge the little underlings and regale them with tales of my travels and experiences since high school, all which seem insatiably desirable to fifteen and sixteen year olds held captive by nevada’s public school system. i'd teach them about the history of the world and the literary cannon in such a way that they would stay hours after school to listen to my musings. they’d ask me to teach supplemental classes at the neighborhood starbucks and give them an additional reading list filled with the literature i felt necessary for their most profound character development…books by david sedaris, vladamir nabokov, and hubert selby jr.

but i get no respect. i’m lucky if the kids remember my name, forget the literary cannon and the personal enrichment I might afford them, instead i get nothing but grief. all this because I’m the substitute…