Vernon Mortensen
Copyright 2001 ©
Synopsis: A stream of consciousness novella about an underground secret society of substitute teachers in Los Angeles who are hell bent on taking over the world.
The Sub Culture
ONE
There are 889,030 students in the Los Angeles Unified School district. There are 35,874 teachers teaching at 932 schools and learning centers spread out across the Greater Los Angeles area. If you add all of it together it comes out to 704 square miles of district owned property.
Of the nearly 900,000 students currently enrolled in the LAUSD, 0.1% are Pacific Islander, 1.9% are Filipino. 0.3% are Indian. 13.2% are black and 69.9% are Hispanic.
10.1% are White.
The times, oh they are a changing.
In 1999 there were 287 Assaults with Deadly Weapons on LAUSD property. 742 cases of Assault, 601 Weapon Possessions, 370 Robberies, 108 Sex Offenses, 1551 Illegal Substance Abuse cases and 16 Destructive Devices were seized.
That means bombs for those of you who haven't figured out that last one yet.
For the teachers who are there every day, these numbers represent just a fraction of the actual crimes committed.
We are Dutchmen with our fingers in the dike praying for the waters to recede.
This is a war.
In 1996 a young woman named Rose Hernandez sued the LAUSD because she made it all the way through the entire school system without ever learning to read beyond the second grade level. She graduated from high school and entered the work force and she couldn't read.
She won a huge cash settlement and they even named one of the district buildings after her.
Makes me wonder why I didn't just sue the district and then retire.
But even after all of this, things haven't changed much.
Kids can't read.
They can't process information.
The California State University system discovered that the freshmen they admitted to their schools couldn't perform those tasks expected of someone who has a high school diploma. They couldn't write essays. They didn't know basic math. They couldn't understand basic instructions.
They just couldn't cut it.
There are 5,652 Substitute Teachers employed in the LAUSD. Every year 2,500 of them quit. By the next year 90% of the remaining Subs move on as well, leaving roughly 500 career Substitute Teachers that are the backbone of the force.
The pay is excellent, 30 bucks an hour. You only work six hours a day and you are always home by three thirty or four. You only work when you want to, and most subs tend to get most everything else in their lives done while they're in class, leaving them free for the rest of their day.
The LAUSD subs are the only subs in the country to be a part of their local teachers union, the United Teachers of LA. This of course means they have strong representation when negotiating for contracts and grievances.
We have full medical, dental and vision benefits.
We get low interest, no down-payment home loans.
We get free movie tickets.
But it's not that easy to be a Sub.
When you walk into a classroom as a substitute teacher, the first thing you hear is "yeah, we've got a sub!"
Since kindergarten, every kid in the world has been trained to believe that having a sub means, "having the day off".
Not in my class.
This job is on the front line of the war.
This job is so stressful that half our work force quits every year. Not everyone was meant to be a substitute teacher.
Not everyone can handle 40 screaming kids.
Not everyone is like me.
TWO
My name is Carl.
For the purposes of this story it is not necessary to tell you my full name.
My lawyer has advised me against doing so.
I have been a sub in the LAUSD for 13 years now. I have seen the murders, the rapes, and the drug-induced zombies that are spawned from this place.
I am part of the sub-culture.
I know the truth of what goes on here. Myself and a handful of others see the future. We see it so clearly that we may be the only hope for this new generation.
Take a walk down the halls of these "institutions of learning" and you will see what I see. Each of these students represents the future murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, whores and porn stars on our streets.
They are all born to it.
They have no choice.
Some will escape to college only to realize that in the real world, we are all just murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, whores and porn stars in one form or another.
Ah, yes the real world.
Someone once told me, "A substitute teacher can't make a difference in just one day. You can't change someone's life in six hours."
I say to them, we are the only teachers making a difference at all. We are the only teachers giving these students the practical skills for the coming new world.
Case in point:
I come to class in the morning, smelling of booze, my nose red from the coke, and find a test left behind by the absent teacher.
A note asks me to please administer this test to her students and thanks me for covering for her. She's sick or has a meeting or whatever.
I don't normally do what the teachers ask me to do in their classes, but I love giving tests. Tests are the perfect "slice of life" lesson for any class.
I often make them up on the spot just to torture students.
Surviving torture is an important lesson to learn.
Today, however, the regular teacher has left me one ball buster of a test, a worthless assessment of mathematical skills.
So of course I'm gonna administer it today.
It should be fun.
But what is different about this, you ask? How is administering this test going to impact their lives in any meaningful way?
It's not the test necessarily, but how you give it.
Most students in the LAUSD have learned to cheat. It's how they manage to score just high enough to be passed on to the next grade.
They're good at it. Not just good, but amazingly good at it.
Cheating is a valuable life skill to have.
What makes my lesson so important today is the extra knowledge I offer, besides the cheating.
It's more than just giving the test, it's how I give the test.
The bell rings and the students take their time getting to their seats and generally decide to take the day off.
I inform them of the test and I hear nothing but protests.
"That's bullshit!"
"Man, fuck this!"
"Ms. Mitchell doesn't make us take tests."
I pick three people from the class. It is important to pick the right three people or the lesson isn't as powerful.
Pick a big guy. He's wearing a letterman's jacket and probably plays sports. He can't afford to fail.
Pick a smart person. You can always tell who they are. Quiet, their book already out and open to the last lesson.
Pick a white kid! They always make good villains.
Then you tell the three of them that they have already failed the test. There's no point in even holding a pencil in their hands.
You fail.
They cry and whine and the rest of the class watches in stunned silence.
Now I tell them, for every person they catch cheating during the test, I will raise their letter grades, one step up from an "F."
The whole class is in the shit!
People protest, but the three kids I've chosen quickly agree. All they have to do is catch four people and they have an "A."
Good, they figured out its four people to get an "A." That's a math skill, right?
It doesn't matter that some of the four people they each catch cheating aren't really cheating.
It's not about that.
It's not about letter grades.
It's about the experiences that shape our lives... learning through terror.
Three of their peers have the power to dramatically affect their lives.
Like a judge, a cop, a murderer.
The learning curve is practically vertical.
THREE
In the real world the good guys don't win.
It doesn't pay to be nice.
The meek do not inherit the earth.
O.J. Simpson cuts his wife and the guys she's fucking to pieces, and he walks away… scott free.
The Senator fucks his secretary's three-year-old daughter and manages to convince everyone it was an accident.
"I just slipped and my dick got stuck in her."
Sure it did… and then we forget.
The President lies.
We are all slaves to corporate America.
The war on drugs is a joke because everybody wants drugs; as much as they can ingest.
The need to escape is evident everywhere; movies, TV, books, radio, church, sports, music, it's all so we don't have to face the "real world."
Why should you learn to read? Is the newspaper going to make you happy?
Don't "read the book," "watch the movie," it's better anyway.
An escape, from an escape.
If you can rob a bank and get away with it, what do you need an education for?
If you can make $5,000 a day selling crack to whomever, why waste your time in college chasing an MBA?
If the politicians and businessmen get caught with their pants down or their hands in the till, what makes them so different from the guy serving 10 to 20 for the same thing?
The color of his skin?
Money?
Education?
Nope.
We are all criminals.
We are all born to it.
A good substitute teacher knows this.
A good substitute teacher prepares their students to exist in this world.
We are Gods of the new world.
FOUR
The Machine calls me.
It's 5:45am and the Machine calls me.
The Machine tells me where to go, what time to be there, what I'm teaching.
The Machine is a Godsend.
When the school district decided to start using the Sub Finder Computerized Calling System it didn't realize it at the time, but the power of the substitute teacher became absolute.
From now on schools no longer had the power to choose or exclude any one substitute teacher from their campus.
The Machine works on seniority.
The people at the top of the list get called first, the people at the bottom suck shit. The longer you are a sub, the higher on the list you climb.
The 500 or so full time subs that have been working at their jobs for years are guaranteed their choice of assignments everyday.
The school cannot say no.
I myself get at least five calls a day.
The Machine calls me and I don't like teaching "Honors French". I speak fluent Spanish, a survival necessity in a school district made up of 69.9% Hispanics. I do not speak French.
French is for assholes.
I pass.
I roll over and sleep until the next call at 5:55am.
Wood Shop.
Ok, I like teaching Wood Shop.
I accept.
The Machine will not call again until tomorrow.
FIVE
When I arrive at the school, class has already started.
Technically I'm late.
If the Office Manager wants to, she can dock your pay for the time, but it won't happen to me.
Every good sub worth his salt knows that the only person you have to take good care of is the Office Manager.
She takes care of your pay slip for the day.
She calls in the Sub requests in the morning.
She can give you the best assignments, switch you around with some other asshole sub so that he gets the shitty class and you get the angels.
If the Principal of the school himself was on fire and the Office Manager standing next to him was carrying a heavy book, I'd carry the book before I'd even piss on the Principal.
I always bring something for the Office Manager.
Today I bring donuts.
Mary, the Office Manager, is pleased to see me.
"You're late."
I lost my keys.
My car wouldn't start.
Traffic was a bitch.
Select any of the above.
She sees the donuts.
Catastrophe averted.
I stroll down the hallway, taking my time, heading towards the wood shop.
Wait.
Theodore Pepper is teaching Science today.
He's a great sub!
I love to watch him work.
I stand in the doorway as he begins his lecture, his back to the class, writing on the board.
N B C, he writes.
"Nuclear, Biological and Chemical", he booms as he turns around to face the class.
Ted was in the military too. He was a Sergeant with Marine Force Recon, so we call him Sergeant Pepper.
"Can anyone tell me which are the two largest cities in the United States?"
Hands slowly rise.
Someone answers, "New York and LA."
"Yes", Ted says, "and since we have the second largest concentration of people in the country…"
He pauses for effect.
Man this guy is great.
"… we most definitely will be attacked by one or all three of these methods of terrorism."
Look at their faces.
It's priceless.
Ted passes out a collection of photographs taken on the Iranian, Iraqi border during a mustard gas attack.
These kids are fucked!
They don't even stand a chance.
"This is probably going to be you or some member of your family." Ted smiles.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
A soldier, grasping at his neck as he slowly dies.
A small child lies croaking in the mud, blisters forming all over it's little body.
It's all so horrible.
In the back of the room, someone throws up.
This guy has got the stuff I tell you.
I wave at him, he smiles and I move on.
Someday I'm gonna use that lesson; toughen the little shits up a bit.
These are dark times ahead and we need dark minds to cope.
Ted is a good teacher because he can turn some stupid, useless science class onto a real learning experience, something to shape their little fucking minds.
Terror is the best teacher.
War is hell.
When I get to the Wood Shop class, I find the Dean sitting with the students, waiting for me to finally show.
I walk through the door; he looks at his watch and shakes his head.
Yeah, well fuck you.
What are you going to do about it?
The Dean leaves.
That's what I thought, not a damn thing!
Administrators are the real enemy of education.
They get paid huge salaries to sit around and look at their watches. They shake their heads and do a lot of yelling but never really get anything done.
Look around.
This school needs decent shop equipment.
Someone will probably lose a finger in my class today and then, finally, someone will buy the school some new shop equipment.
I know how to get stuff done.
SIX
Another day, a different school.
Same old shit.
English class is special when the students write their own obituaries.
It's good practice.
Brings the world into perspective and teaches correct punctuation and spelling.
You know, the meaningless shit on the surface.
Underneath it all, lies the real lesson.
How will I die?
How do I want to die?
What's the easiest way to die?
This is all part of the scaring... more on that later.
The bell rings.
The bell rings because it's "nutrition" and before the kids are even aware of my absence I'm halfway down the hallway, headed for the teachers' lounge.
Nutrition is the cute name the district has given to "breakfast time." It makes it sound more official and easier to defend when the accountants start bitching about how much it costs to feed 1 million kids everyday.
My head's still swimming from all the coke I did last night, but I think I'm gonna make it.
I'm headed for the substitute teachers' lounge across the campus. Every school has a special designated lounge just for subs.
But not every sub gets to use this lounge.
Oh no.
You have to earn this privilege.
You have to be one of the 500 full time subs who are at the top of the Sub Finders calling list.
I round the corner, tunnel vision setting in now and I focus on the door knob.
I arrive.
I test the knob... locked of course.
Knock, knock.
The door cracks open and someone recognizes me right away.
I step through quickly and the door slams behind me.
It's time for my medicine, the glorious "Ocean."
Half Aquanet hairspray, half cranberry juice.
Without it, how can I be expected to make it 'til lunch time?
As more subs file in the drinks are mixed and passed around.
The drinking of Ocean has become a ritual for us now.
As we swallow this bitter sweet concoction we say goodbye to the real world for a few fleeting moments and walk with the spirits.
Sergeant Pepper discovered the drink, Ocean, a few years ago on an Indian reservation in New Mexico where alcohol had been outlawed. The locals, being the sly redskins they are, quickly adapted and raided their local markets for Aquanet hairspray.
Its 32% alcohol you know.
Those indians didn't miss a beat.
One day the law is passed banning alcohol, and that very night they're all shitfaced and sporting great hairdos.
Sergeant Pepper substituted the original mixer, water, for the more palatable cranberry juice and voila!
Anything good enough for Native Americans is good enough for me.
Before you know it, we've all drifted out of the room and are dancing along some far off sand dune with Oliver Stone and a naked Indian.
The bell rings again.
Nutrition is only fifteen minutes long.
The bell rings and we all snap out of our trances, bright eyed, bushy tailed and ready to educate the masses.
Native Americans believe that in order to pass into adulthood the elders must give a scar to the young prospects.
This scar is a gift that helps them see the path of life more clearly.
No I'm serious, you can look it up.
Lots of primitive cultures believe in scarification as a spiritual component to the rite of passage.
I hold up my empty glass to the light and smile.
Yes, I smile now.
I feel ready for the day, ready to scar some young prospects and show them the path.
A really big smile flashes across my face.
Welcome to the bright shining path.
Off to class I go.
SEVEN
I moved up the ranks rather quickly.
I was a substitute teacher for about three months when I was bumped up to the top 500 list.
In order to move up the list so quickly you have to really do something special.
Something so special and good for the rest of the subs at the top of the list that wheels are greased, and exceptions are made, and the Sub Finder is reprogrammed for my benefit.
What did I do that was so wonderful you ask?
It was an accident really.
I show up at some high school in the Valley for a math teaching assignment. I hate math, but I'm new and desperate to get work, so there I am at 7:30am sharp, ready to work.
The people in the office look at me.
Then at each other.
Who the hell am I they wonder?
After they figure out who I am and why I'm there they check the sick math teacher's mail box, and sure enough, there's no math assignment left for me. A mistake has been made.
The great thing about being in the Teachers Union is that we have great representation at contract negotiation time.
As a sub, $25 bucks a month, that's $300.00 dollars a year, go to the Union as dues.
$10 of that goes to the subs' own law firm, Finkle, Hammerstien and Johnson, who then, throw their weight around and get amazing shit done.
So that's $10 a month from each of the 5,000 subs in LAUSD.
That's $50,000 dollars a month to Mr.'s Finkle, Hammerstein and Johnson.
You bet they work their asses off for us!
So anyway, my contract says, "if I'm called into work, they have to pay me."
So naturally the school wants to use me for something, anything rather than just send me home.
They asked me if I wouldn't mind filing some papers for them… and again, that violates my contract.
I can only do "teacher" type stuff.
But I'm new and naive, and a good thing too, or I might have just gone home happy.
The Office Manager leads me down the hallway and into a tiny room full of boxes... oh yeah, and a copy machine.
Here's the kicker.
The entire senior class has to pass the Stanford Nine Assessment Test in order to graduate and the Office Manager asks if I wouldn't mind putting the test booklets with each student's answer sheets... alphabetically, of course.
It didn't take me very long to figure out I was doing something that no substitute teacher had ever done before.
And then she left me alone!
Now there are about eight different versions of the test, to throw off any cheaters, but with a little effort I was able to find all eight and then...
I copied them.
In one day the LAUSD Subs gained control of the entire state education system.
We could sell copies of the test to seniors for a handsome profit.
Test scores started rising and tons of federal money started pouring in.
Politicians, educators, parents, everyone was so happy they just didn't think to ask questions.
We didn't flood the market, mind you.
That would be stupid.
If an entire senior class suddenly scored off the charts someone would have to ask questions.
No, we sold just enough every year to ensure our handsome profit kept rolling in.
My royalties from the sale of the Stanford Nine amounts to $25,000 a year.
That doesn't sound like much, but multiply that amount by the 500 subs who also get royalties and you'll see what I mean by "handsome profit".
And of course, I was suddenly one of the top dogs.
Amen.
Hallelujah!
READ THE WHOLE NOVELLA. SEND A REQUEST BY E-MAIL.