By Tom

This is Teacher Appreciation Week, which means the coffee cart guy will pull up outside our school on Monday and we’ll all get a free espresso drink, courtesy of the PTA. And then on Friday, those same wonderful people will provide us with a delicious sandwich buffet. And between the coffee and the sandwiches we’ll get cute little notes and pictures from our students and maybe an apple-themed mug or two. It‘ll be a great week.

But while we’re being appreciated, I’d like to raise a glass to the teachers who won’t be getting the free coffee and the free lunch; the unsung heroes of the education world: the subs. The folks who take over when we’re sick in bed with the flu or attending a reading workshop in Yakima. The people who let us get our wisdom teeth pulled on a Thursday in November, and let us take our own kids to the doctor on a Monday in March. Or the teacher who takes our class on a field trip across Puget Sound to Blake Island with two hours notice while we were in the Emergency Room having an appendix removed. (Thanks Ms Nelson!)

Subbing is hard work. As Ned, a guy who used to sub a lot in my building put it, “I wanted to be a teacher in the worst way, and now I really am a teacher…in the worst way!”

I should know. I was there. Back in 1984, fresh out of college with the worst interviewing skills in America, I started my career with a phone by my bed in my old room at my parents’ house, waiting for those early-morning calls; telling me to teach second grade in Kent on Monday and high school math in Everett on Tuesday. There were some good experiences and a lot of bad ones. And a few nightmares.

But I’ll never forget the gerbil incident.

It was one of my first assignments; subbing for a science teacher at Edmonds High School. Things had gone fairly well all day. The lesson plans were straightforward and the students were well-behaved. It was the homestretch; sixth period, and I had just given them their assignment. “I can do this,” I thought. “I can really be a teacher. Look at them. They’re doing exactly what I’ve told them to do. I’m magic.”

Then it all went south. A girl in the front freaked out. “Hey sub!” she shrieked, “That gerbil is eating its baby!” This got everyone’s attention. And sure enough, there it sat, looking at me with malice in its beady little eyes and a pink, half-eaten baby in its grip, just daring me to do something. Like a fool, I sensed a teachable moment.

“That’s their way,” I explained, “A male gerbil, when it feels threatened by…”

The class erupted. “Make it stop!” “Get it out of there!” “Save those babies!” (I think someone even called me an idiot, but I’m not sure.) It was clear that Plan A wasn’t working. Spotting an empty fish tank near the gerbil cage, I announced that if everyone would just calm down, I would remove the male gerbil and put it into a separate container.

“Just hurry!” they shouted. The gerbil was looking for seconds.

I reached into the cage to grab the animal. I’m not sure if it regarded me as food or foe, but its reaction was swift and painful. I suddenly had two ounces of anger clamped onto my thumb. I did what anyone would do. I screamed like a little girl and whipped my hand out of that cage like it was on fire. Unfortunately for the gerbil, it didn’t let go in time.

In a slow, graceful arc, it sailed slowly across the room, front to back, landing squarely in one of those deep science sinks that you only see in high school science rooms.

At first, silence. Then they all ran back there. “It’s dead! You just killed our gerbil!” They were turning on me. Me! The hero who had just saved (most of) a litter of baby gerbils from their own sadistic father, and who was now suffering with a thumb that was literally spouting blood. I tried to convince them that the animal wasn’t dead (it was) but was merely unconscious, going so far as to claiming to have seen it move. I carefully carried it back to its new home; tenderly covering it with gerbil bedding.

But they weren’t buying. As far as they were concerned, I had come in off the street, replaced their beloved teacher, allowed their pet to eat its young, and then killed it. I was the sub.

Thank God for the bell. As the last grumbling student left the scene, I began the task of writing “the sub letter.”

“Things went pretty well,” I explained, “Your plans were very clear and your students were well-behaved. There was a bit of a problem, though, in sixth period, when I apparently killed your gerbil…”

So substitute teachers, we salute you. We appreciate you. We couldn’t do our jobs without you. Please keep those phones next to your beds, try to follow the plans we leave and remember to pull the shades before you go home.

And try not to kill our gerbils.