Slash Something

When you’re a freelance writer, you generally need to start out doing something else at the same time to sustain your living. For example, I am a Freelence Writer slash Substitute Teacher. I am also a Freelance writer slash Events Assistant. Actually I’m all three. There’s a lot of slash in my life. (Insert obvious joke here.)

I’m actually almost at the point where I could write full-time. Almost. But here’s the thing: I really love substitute teaching. And no one is more surprised at that last statement than me. Yesterday, I made pancakes with a bunch of Grade 5 classes as part of a science lab (don’t ask me about the specific learning outcomes and curricular links—I just show up.) In the past, spending the day with 50 or so 10-year-olds gathered round trying to flip their very first pancake would have been my idea of torture. But I had a blast. And no one is more surprised at that last statement than me.

As an aside, I realized something important about life yesterday: it’s not about the pancakes. It’s really all about the syrup. Pancakes are just the vessel for the liquid sugar. Because it’s deemed socially inappropriate to simply pour maple syrup straight in your mouth. Except in Quebec where they harden it on banks of snow and call it a snack, we Anglophones have had to invent something as a means to get it into our bodies. (The same with bran muffins and corn on the cob for that matter: they’re really just a way to eat melted butter.)

But here’s the best thing about substitute teaching: when I’m not making pancakes, playing soccer or facilitating a visit from the Weather guy—all of which I’ve done in the past three months---I’m writing. I’ll let you in on a little secret: Substitute Teachers are Glorified Babysitters. Most of substitute teaching involves being a warm body/talking head (see, there’s the slash again.) I went to University for 4 years and taught in my own classroom for 6 so I could sit in the back of someone else’s classroom and make sure that your child stays alive and unharmed until the end of the day. Ensuring that he doesn’t accidentally impale or otherwise harm himself or another person is the major component of my job.


I get some flak for this. Some people are truly indignant that their tax dollars are going towards paying me to sit there and write, sit there and read or sit there and do nothing. And I won’t get on a soapbox or go on a tirade about how substitute teachers are important cogs in the wheel (I don’t care that much) but they are.

Ironically, I often get more writing done at school than at home. But there are just as many days when I don’t write one single word. Which means I have to come home and do it; it means I have to work weekends and cram in assignments sideways and backwards. It means I’ve conducted interviews and had client meetings during my lunch hour or in my car.

That’s life in the Slash Lane.