In case you need an obscure blogger on the internet to remind you, Oklahoma public schools are having hell navigating the school year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forget PPE. Schools have a whole new shortage on their hands.
Via KFOR…
OKLAHOMA (KFOR) – Many school districts are facing substitute teacher shortages because of COVID-19.
In El Reno, 400 students are starting the year virtually after an employee tested positive at one of the district’s schools.
“We’re going to have a normal first day of school for them. It’s just going to be a couple of weeks,” said Craig McVay, superintendent of El Reno Public Schools.
Twenty other staff members may have been exposed.
“Our sub pool’s very limited,” McVay said.
Only about a third of El Reno’s substitute teaching positions have been filled.
But El Reno is not alone. The article goes on to list the struggles faced by Edmond and Oklahoma City Public Schools in securing substitute teachers. While some school districts are reaching out to community members, retirees, and law enforcement to fill the teacher gap, I think there are better options for our classrooms. In fact, here are 7 people we volunteer to be substitute teachers for Oklahoma’s public schools!
The AV Cart
The minimum qualification for substitute teachers in my high school was the ability to navigate the auxiliary cords of a VCR. Nowadays, kids are technologically savvy enough to route Netflix past the school’s firewall onto the classroom’s projector, so they don’t need anything but the AV cart to keep them entertained for the whole of English period.
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Kelly Ogle
Hear me out on this one. The kids need adult supervision of some sort and Kelly Ogle loves getting paid to talk at people. We don’t need to worry about Kelly O. tainting the minds of the youth with his backasswards political rants, because middle schoolers don’t listen to anyone over the age of 19 unless they have a TikTok account.
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The Night Trips Ladies
COVID-19 has hit the service industry hard as well. But, if these ladies can handle a caravan of F250 enthusiasts drunk on life and Citrus Mules on any given Saturday, I’m sure they can handle a classroom of 22 ninth graders. A job’s a job.
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COVID-19 Contact Tracers
It would be highly efficient to have a Health Department COVID-19 contact tracer as a substitute teacher. Instead of making phone calls to 25 parents a week after an exposure, they could just safety pin a note on the students’ backpacks as they head home for the day.
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The Hall Monitor
The “Hall Monitor” AKA the “School Snitch” AKA the “Parentified Kid with Anxiety” would be more than happy to hold the role of “substitute teacher for the day.” Plus in lieu of shelling out 120 bucks to pay an adult substitute, schools could get away with paying in extra credit.
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Governor Kevin Stitt
Being our esteemed governor seems to have not been doing his job of implementing COVID-19 recommendations from the White House Coronavirus Task Force and apparently thinks he’s immune from contracting the virus a second time, we might as well volunteer him to be a substitute teacher to keep him busy. His teaching could also double for a type of “scared straight” intervention that will show the kids what they’ll grow up to be if they don’t pay attention in science class.
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A TLO Contributor
Word on the street is that OKCPS is paying about $120 a day to be a substitute teacher. Let's face it; TLO contributors have done a lot worse for a lot less. So hire a TLO contributor today to keep an eye on the classroom and teach your students life lessons, such as the importance of using an incognito tab when browsing the internet and where to buy funnel cakes year-round.
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Hayley was a hall monitor. Follow her on twitter @squirrellygeek
