How I Lost my Job

Before I started working as a substitute teacher with the Davis School District, I had posted a series of videos on YouTube. Most of these videos were of me sharing jokes, telling funny stories, or singing silly songs. I mainly just made them to entertain my friends. After I became a substitute, I found out to my surprise that one of the students at my old high school had seen my videos and was a big fan. That student spread word of my videos to his friends. Before I knew it, word had spread to other schools in the Bountiful area. Any time a student would bring up my videos in class, I reminded them that school was a place for learning and encouraged them to focus on their studies.

After a year of trying to ignore obsessed fans, things started getting worse. I got a call from the District telling me that I had gotten several complaints from parents for encouraging students to look at my YouTube videos. I explained that the students found the videos on their own and that I was trying my best to keep the students on task. Then I promised to try even harder to avoid the subject when students brought it up. Not long after this, I got an email saying that a particular school would no longer accept me as a substitute because of reports that I fell asleep in class. I don’t know where they got that idea because I never fell asleep while teaching. However, I was glad to be rid of that school because it had a lot of frustrating students.

Unfortunately, word of my videos started spreading to schools up in Farmington and Kaysville as well. I kept my promise and avoided talking about YouTube, but more students than ever insisted on talking about my videos. Junior high kids were giving me a lot more trouble than high school kids, but hardly any high schools in the area seemed to need substitutes. Eventually, the District told me that they were still getting complaints from parents about me and decided to fire me. I tried to appeal by writing a letter explaining the whole situation and mentioning that I had now deleted my YouTube channel after all the grief it caused me. The District wrote back saying that they still hadn’t changed their minds.

While I was working as a substitute, I had been taking some classes that would have helped me become licensed as a regular teacher. This particular licensure program was only for people who were currently employed by a school district. After I lost my substitute job, I was basically kicked out of the program and taken off of the class rolls in the middle of the semester. As much as this disappointed me, these classes had reminded me of a number of problems with the education system. If those problems weren’t enough, incorrigible students and overly judgmental parents had cost me my job. All this made me realize that being a teacher would have made me unhappy anyway.