Tootsie Rolls and substitute teaching… Meet Mr. McKay

There is no substitute for quality… that is, unless your substitute happens to be Ernie McKay.

It’s springtime and the year is 2007 and it’s about 15 minutes before Mrs. Miller’s fourth period senior English class is about to go to lunch at Kellogg High School.

Only, it isn’t Mrs. Miller instructing the students that day.

“Who wrote the Canterbury Tales?” asks the substitute teacher.

I quickly blurt out, “Geoffrey Chaucer.”

“Next time please raise your hand and wait for me to call on you,” said the substitute, “But you are correct. CATCH!”

Instinctively I raise my hand to catch one of Mr. McKay’s trademark Tootsie Roll’s as it flies across the room full of other seniors.

Fast forward almost 10 years to the day.

Ernie McKay has been a sub (we will refer to substitute teachers as subs for the rest of the story) for 15 years and in that time, he has taught just about every subject imaginable at the local junior high and high schools.

Earlier this year when Wallace High School principal Don Almquist had some health issues that forced him to take time off, WHS teacher Chris Lund was named interim principal and Mr. McKay was called in to cover Lund’s classes.

What separates Mr. McKay from a lot of the other subs in the area is that he always seems to find himself being asked to jump into long term openings that happen throughout the school year.

“I think I get a lot of these assignments simply because I have the time, and I can make the commitment,” McKay said.

Despite that coy reasoning, the local schools are excited anytime they can score Mr. McKay to help within their respective schools when the need arises and in light of the big time commitment he has made over the past few months in Wallace, he has earned even more praise from the teacher he is covering for.

“Ernie does a great job within the classroom,” Lund said. “I am thankful for all that he does inside and outside the classroom. It has been a smooth transition for me because I can count on Ernie to give a great lesson.”

Mr. McKay is a very private man by nature, but as a sub he finds joy in doing one of the things he enjoys the most in life.

“I love the interaction with the kids,” McKay said. “Like I said before, I don’t think what I do is overly special, it’s simply because I can so I do.”

Again, McKay displays his humility, but there is something to be said for a man who, as a sub, has been asked to give the graduation address at two different local graduation ceremonies, including Kellogg High School’s graduation last year.

Mr. McKay would never turn a child away in need, but he doesn’t sub for anything lower than junior high level.

“I feel like I connect better with the older kids,” McKay said. “They are capable of understanding on a higher level and I tend to have more fun with them.”

But that guideline has helped him create a quasi-rule for the longevity of his career as a sub.

“I always told myself I would start moving away from subbing when I started teaching the kids of kids I had subbed for in the past,” McKay said.

In a fun bit of personal irony, Mr. McKay has subbed for my seventh grade son.

Above all though, Mr. McKay has brought a legitimacy to substitute teachers in the Silver Valley that you don't often see in smaller rural areas and believes that the position of substitute teacher is a noble cause.

“I’m no better than any other sub, I just have more time on my hands,” McKay said. “All of the subs here in the area are tremendous and they deserve just as much credit as I do.”

Anyone who has had the privilege of graduating from Wallace or Kellogg over the last decade and a half definitely has a memory of Mr. McKay or at the very least has been on the receiving end of a Tootsie Roll.

All these years later I still remember the first one I ever caught.

"I still send them by airmail," McKay said with a chuckle.

I'm willing to bet that most of us still think of him every time we see one.