I suppose, before I go any further, I should clarify that the drug testing was for the sake of the tots. No children were harmed, I mean tested, in the making of this blog.
Today I attended an orientation for certificated substitute teachers in the Alvord Unified School District. I received my invitation to said orientation almost two weeks ago by email, and was informed that if I did not RSVP by December 5th, no materials would be prepared for me. Not wanting such a calamity to occur (by not occurring), I replied to the email immediately. When I arrived at 8:15 this morning, I was pleased to see that no materials had in fact been prepared for me.
The oversight was quickly corrected, and soon, after climbing over a pair of particularly pointy pair of stilettos, I found myself tucked snugly into a third-row seat in a sea of prospective subs. I then proceeded to wait for the program to begin...
In the meantime (that is one work I really don't understand. How could time conceivably be considered mean? Apparently few other people have ever wondered this, because I just searched it every way I know how, and came up with nothing other that that the term originates from the 14th century. Also, Greenwich Mean Time is a time zone (?) in Europe. Or something like that.)I filled out an application, a fingerprint order form, and a packet of other forms, read through the entire "Certificated Substitute Teacher Handbook", and texted everyone in my phone who I knew would respond in a timely manner. Around 9:40, a woman came in with two boxes: one filled with red booklets and the other with cleaning supplies (comet, windex, etc.). The woman was introduced as the risk manager for the district, and after asking us to read several pages from the booklet, she told us not to do stupid things (like stand on chairs with wheels, especially in heels), then showed us a video about blood-borne pathogens.
For those of you who don't know what those are, they are diseases communicable only through blood or genital fluids. That's right, we were getting a lecture on how not to contract AIDS from our students. The film, made circa 1990 (I'm guessing because a doctor in one segment alluded to the 80s as a bygone era of medical insecurity, but the clothing could not possibly be any newer than '91.), advised us that, because it is impossible to tell who has a disease and who does not, we should assume that everyone is carrying a communicable disease of some kind and thus, we should keep our distance at all times. If a child begins to bleed, for whatever reason, we are admonished to stay far away, throw the child a towel, and run for our lives.
Next, we sat. For a long time. While we waited to be fingerprinted. The video could not have been more than 20 minutes long, and maybe the "risk manager" talked for about as long, so that's about 40 minutes worth of "productive meeting time. The remainder of my 5 hour stay at the office was spent texting everyone I knew who would possibly respond to me in the mid-morning/early afternoon.
After that, I finally got to go to the Occupational Medicine center for my free drug screening. There, after being warned about the potential hazards children posed on my health, all of my belongings were taken from me and locked in a small white box, as I was lead into a sinkless bathroom, in which the toilet tank had been sealed shut, and handed a little plastic container and told, "I'll need about half a cup," as if I could simply tell my body how much urine was necessary and it would oblige...
When I'd been given back my things and allowed to wash my hands, I decided that the world is a menace to itself. No one is safe. If you don't already have Tuberculosis, Hepatitis, or HIV, and are not under the influence of some illicit substance, the world is poised, ready to infect you at any moment. So do yourself a favor, and take the path of Universal Precaution, because you never know when a child is around the corner waiting to bleed on you or stick you with a needle.
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