FISHING WASN'T ALWAYS THIS EASY

Back in the day, our prison school hired substitute teachers to fill-in during the summer months. Vacations meant returning to complete chaos, to stolen supplies, and destroyed books. One sub in particular, God rest his soul, knew how to go through the motions; he’d sit at the teacher’s desk for eight hours, let the class assignments pile up, and take shoddy attendance records on scrap sheets of paper. When confronted about it—“I showed you how to do the attendance and log scores on the computer”—he’d act as if he needed more training on the intricacies of running a prison classroom.

The man had taught high school history and government classes for thirty-some years (only updating his classroom lesson plans after major elections) and he collected his paychecks from the Michigan Department of Corrections for thirteen summers straight. He seemed skittish around the inmates, yet risked life and limb to rustle up some grub from the prison chow hall. My guess: he was too lazy to pack his own lunch or he actually liked the food. Also, he never married, his public school salary was larger than my prison salary, and he had his supplemental incomes (prison job and rental properties). Shortly after retiring from the public school system and declining a permanent job in the prison system, his name appeared in the obituary section of the local paper. His day in the sun was over.

The MDOC no longer hires substitute teachers, and from my observations, it’s probably just as well. I’ve always thought we should get a student teacher from Wayne State or Oakland University. Something to break-up the monotony. We need a guppy or two, so we can watch them swim in the fish bowl, so we can be entertained.