Black Friday Shopping – the Best Training Grounds

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition, on Fri. 3/30/2012

I’ve never been to a Black Friday Sale the day after Thanksgiving, but I think I know how those shoppers feel.  In lieu of conducting interviews and doing background reading, I’m going to base my understanding of said shoppers’ psychology on myths, legends, and sensationalized media reports.  For a column like this, that’s practically the same as conducting interviews and doing research.

We’ve all read about shoppers stampeding for discount electronics and people emerging from the fray with the last $ 15 DVD player clutched as tightly as if it were the Golden Goose herself.  The victorious shopper might end up wearing the imprint of the less successful bargain shopper’s shoe stamped on their backside, but who cares?  Shopper Superior has got that DVD player at what amounts to a steal, so if a little violence was involved, that’s to be expected.

Of course, you’ve read those stories about those kinds of shoppers.  Admit it.  Reading about someone’s egregious or bizarre behavior usually takes precedence over reading about the advances in medical research, developments in the Middle East Peace Process, or the latest blip in the economy, like watching for vital signs in a patient who has been comatose for years.

Let’s examine the characteristics of these shoppers: They line up at ungodly hours; they tend to pounce on any bargain that isn’t moving; they tend to pounce on any bargain that might be moving, too.  Sometimes, unfortunately, getting to the bargain requires that they step over, or possibly even on, other shoppers who might be slower and less efficient.  They are a little desperate.

As a bona fide substitute teacher for Fauquier County, you can have the experience of being a Black Friday shopper every time you try to land a position.  The system works like this: all the substitutes have access to a website where “jobs” are posted whenever a teacher posts his or her expected absence.  Since this is web-based, it can happen at any time.  Access to this website is restricted to those who have submitted an application, completed the training, had their backgrounds checked and their fingerprints cleared, and submitted transcripts and reference letters.

At last count, there were 770 substitutes for the 898 teachers employed by the school system.  This means that you, along with 769 other people, might be viewing this webpage all at once, waiting for that sole vacancy to be posted.  If you click on the job first, and immediately pounce on the button that says “Accept,” you get to be that teacher’s substitute.  After you accept, you can bother with the minor details of which school, what day, and what time to report.  Also, very helpfully, the teacher’s name, the subjects taught, and any other notes are posted.  According to more heavy-duty research conducted for this column, the average time that elapses between a teacher posting a vacancy and it being nabbed by a substitute is eight minutes.  Eight minutes. 

But that was back in the days of the Pony Express, I believe.  That data was announced in the fall, and it had to have come from last year.  I would love to get updated data, because I have watched that Aesop website off and on, and there has only been one job that sat there longer than three minutes.

Once, when I was young and innocent to the Aesop system, I was looking at the details of a job.  I turned momentarily to ask my husband whether he thought this sounded like a good idea.  By the time I turned my head to click “Accept” the job was gone!

If you are the careful and considerate sort of person who is going to contemplate whether or not you truly feel qualified to serve as a substitute for a language class in which you have neither expertise nor experience, you can forget it.  Someone else will have clobbered the job first.

Most of the times, the “Search for Jobs” page of the website is blank except for a message in red:  All qualifying jobs are currently filled. However, please review this web site periodically for new job listings.

The wording here should be revamped to: “Sorry, Slowpoke, someone else beat you to it again.  Why don’t you keep hitting refresh, and work on improving your hand-eye coordination in the meantime?”

So watching this page is imperative.  It is also vital that you have nothing else to do , like actual work, that could interfere with your latest work of watching this page like a hawk, or like a vulture.  When a job is posted, the whitespace will be filled with glorious data announcing details of the vacancy.  It’s like seeing a shooting star!

At this point, you have five seconds to jump on it.  Let’s hope your fingers and your internet connection are fast.  And woe to you if you have never been a Black Friday shopper.

Vineeta’s “Adventures in Vulture-land”

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on 3/23/12

Last year, I was teaching five different subjects a day.  Now, I am on a self-inflicted sabbatical.

Last semester, I was writing three to four scholarly papers per week with references and in-text citations in order to obtain a teaching license. Now, I am only writing this weekly column.  The only references I need to make here are snide ones.

Since I am neither teaching nor doing the onerous research-based writing, you might be wondering what I am doing with all of this extra time.  Sometimes, I wonder that myself.

I now have the Virginia Department of Education’s teaching license in hand, so I am supposed to be job hunting.  This column is my leisure activity, and therefore cannot be counted as real work.

I am preparing to take another Praxis II Exam next month to add to my current endorsements for Middle School Math and Middle School English.  Phase II of the Career Switcher program, which requires “only” three papers a month, additional training and classes, and establishing our own teacher’s website, will kick back in this May.  (It will probably give me a kick in the backside right about then too.)  I’ve been helping with a seminar on electronics that my eldest son is leading at Mountain Vista Governor’s School.  I’ve also served on the Middle School Math Textbook Adoption Committee with middle school teachers and other parents under the County’s Instructional Supervisor for Math, Kim Raines, who is a National Board Certified Teacher with years of experience.

Yes, I still have children, a household, dirty dishes, and mountains of de-junking.  Writing this column and padding my teaching portfolio are all just elaborate schemes to avoid this sort of domestic drudgery.  Fortunately, I have one of those academic, intellectual sorts of husbands who values learning over an immaculate house.  He’s thrilled when I can discuss the latest reading that I’ve done in electronics and doesn’t seem to notice that the house may cave in on us at any moment. 

Once, when he was in his microscopy stage, he came in off the front porch absolutely thrilled.  The two big planters that flank the door had been devoid of any decorative plants for quite some time.  They were filled with stagnant water.  “My gosh, Vin, this is great!” he gushed as he rushed to grab a Petrie dish to collect a sample.  “We’ll probably see some larvae in here.”  He asked me not to disturb the planters.  It’s pretty tough keeping up with such domestic demands, but I try.  Or don’t.  It works – so far.

I have found another way to keep abreast of teaching while avoiding housework: I am now on the substitute teachers’ roster for Fauquier County Schools. 

Years ago, I had been a substitute teacher, but fell off the roster.  Two years of inactivity as a public school substitute while I worked full time in private schools was just enough to do the trick.  You know that saying, “I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up?”  Once you fall off the roster, you have to go through the entire process of registering, attending the day-long training, having your background checked, and getting your fingerprints cleared all over again.

And that’s not a bad thing.  I doubt anyone would complain about those who spend time with our county’s school children being scrutinized as carefully as possible.  Sometimes, even that has not been enough.  No man knows the heart of another.  We can check and be checked as much and as carefully as possible.  And that’s a good thing. 

The screening may not be quite perfect, because guess who might have been in your child’s classroom recently?  Yes, you’re looking at her.

So far, I have subbed at Mountain Vista Governor’s School, Kettle Run High School, Warrenton Middle, and P.B. Smith Elementary School.  It’s a great way to interact with our best and brightest, even if they’re not acting their best and their brightest. 

Sometimes, students confuse the teacher’s day out of the classroom as their day off.  Sometimes, students confuse the substitute for a warm body with a pulse.  I realize that basic physiological functions help qualify me to be in the classroom, but it needs more than that.  Much more.  We are valued and needed professionals, absolutely vital, or so we are told.

Yet being a substitute makes me feel something like a vulture.  It’s not just for the bird’s appealing looks, or its claim to elegance.  It’s the bird’s remarkable ability to polish off leftovers of questionable freshness.  It’s that waiting for something to fall.

I don’t want your child’s teacher to be sick, or have a sick child, or to be hauled in for jury duty, or professional development, necessarily, but that’s how I can get into their classroom. Somebody needs to be out. 

According to the FCPS website, “Fast Facts 2011-2012 School Year,” our schools had 11,205 students enrolled last year, taught by 887 full-time teachers.  Guess how many substitute teachers are on the rosters right now?  770. 

So not only do you have to be a vulture, you have to be a quick vulture – or a well-liked vulture – one who is specifically requested.  More next week.