BY STEVE NUZUM
Thanks for signing up for our Virtual Learning E-Platform (VLEP)!
As an independent contractor who told us you had teaching experience (and you have certainly been very naughty if you misled us!), you fill a vital support role within the lifecycle of each Learning Unit (or, if you prefer, human child).
While we are unwilling to offer you benefits or adequate pay at this time, we do want to take this opportunity to reward you with the life-changing responsibility of filling in the gaps in a system that has not adequately funded its teaching workforce. Although we realize this same opportunity was offered to the millions of former teachers, who subsequently left full-time teaching for obscure and probably completely personal reasons, we hope that the added pressure of doing everything through an internet platform for even less pay will see you through where others have failed.
As we laid out in the three hours of required and unskippable videos-- each accompanied by an endlessly looping two-chord piano riff-- it’s very important that you follow our Fourfold Path to Learning Success when dealing with each Learning Unit on the VLEP:
ABC- Always Be Curriculuming. As you were told at least twelve times in the required videos, the VLEP includes AI-assisted Chatbox Learning Modules. We urge you to try these on Learning Units any time they have a question you can’t answer. If that fails, try turning your camera on and being enthusiastic. Maybe learn some dance routines to share!
Keep Calm and Don’t Forget to Log Out. At times, your Learning Unit may become unresponsive or upset. It’s possible they are at home alone, or sitting in a classroom that has no permanent adult in charge, due to labor shortages or budget cuts. At these times, it is important that you quickly log out to avoid being compensated for non-instructional time.
Make Learning Profitable. The VLEP will offer a list of subjects from which students can choose each day. Based on incoming metrics, we may discontinue subjects at any time if demand falls below supply. It’s important that you use your time with your Learning Units to make your subject and the Chatbox Learning Modules seem fun. For example, you could try making a TikTok related to a concept like differential equations, and give us credit for that if the kids like it.
Be the Valued Employee You Would Be, If You Were an Employee. While you are an independent contractor, bound by our Labor and Dispute Arbitration Agreement (see videos 3-4), it’s also important to remember that you are very much like a member of our family (of multinational publishing and educational project firms) and you are the public-facing representative of our business entity. Please make us proud, don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, and remember that if you make any mistakes we can fire you without cause and disavow that you ever worked for us.
These are trying times. As the pandemic demonstrated, public schools are just awful, and failed students in every conceivable way. This is so self-evidently obvious that although we could offer plenty of evidence, we’ll just leave it there.
The solution is YOU! Using the VLEP, and our suite of Modules, you can reclaim education from the public sector (and from pesky teacher’s unions and associations that keep complaining about “working conditions” and “air conditioning that doesn’t work” and “budget cuts that don’t allow us to buy books” and “political attacks from corporate interests that profit off of the destruction of public schools” and “a lack of meaningful action on gun safety” and blah blah blah) and be the change that you want to see in the world, while making history and transforming culture.
While many of your students are trapped in moribund physical buildings and sad little physical lives, when you enter the VLEP we encourage you to see yourself as an Invisible Eyeball, a mind floating in a sea of Pure Thought, using the Technology of the Future to reach each Learning Unit.
Transcend. Coalesce. Dissolve!
Within the VLEP, we are all the same. All Hail the VLEP.
Please direct any questions or concerns to our Tech Department. Their email can be found buried deep within the website somewhere.
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