More Than a Sub: The Story of Mr. Michael

Everyone knows Mr. Michael, the well beloved substitute teacher, coach, and mentor to many students in Cashmere. Kids can be heard cheering under their breath when they find out he’s their sub for the day. While many people know of him, they may not know his journey and how he ended up in Cashmere.

Larry Michael was born in Wenatchee, Washington and spent his whole childhood going through the East Wenatchee school system. During his time at Eastmont Highschool, he went into football and ended up being pretty good at it. During his senior year, he was contacted by the University of Washington.

The University of Washington, UW, said they were going to be offering him a football scholarship. He, of course excited by the offer, took it, and started his college experience playing football for UW. Around that same time, he also started playing guitar on his own, with his friends, and even formed a few bands. To this day, he still gets together with some of his old bandmates and plays from time to time.

He had known for a little while that he wanted to go to college to become a writer and saw the UW offer as the perfect way to make that happen. However, shortly after he started his schooling at the university he discovered that it definitely wasn’t for him. He persevered and graduated after his four years at the university with a Bachelor’s Degree.

Once he got out of college and had discovered writing wasn’t for him, he started to look for something else to do. He remembered part of his childhood in which he worked in orchards and decided he’d give that a try. Afterall, he’d done it before. So, that’s where he went: to begin his work in an apple orchard. He found it very peaceful but also quite lonely out in the orchard all by himself all the time, so after about three years he decided he needed a complete fresh start and moved to Sun Valley, Idaho.

Upon arriving in Sun Valley, he got a job at a ski and bike shop that he found quite nice. He started working there because he’d always loved skiing, and especially biking. In fact, he still loves biking so much that when the weather’s nice, one can often find Mr. Michael biking to Cashmere from his house in East Wenatchee.

Although his fresh start worked very well and he was happy with his status in Sun Valley, he started to feel a bit homesick and eventually, after much consideration, ended up moving back to East Wenatchee. Because of his experience in Idaho, he opened “The Second Wind”, his very own bike and ski shop.

While he loved his time at The Second Wind, he still felt like something was missing. He thought about it for a while and remembered back to his days of football in high school. From there he made a few phone calls and did a little work, and eventually started coaching football in the Eastmont School District where he would run offense for six years. From there he would start to branch out more and began to coach basketball, becoming the freshman team coach in no time.

The longer he worked helping at the school, the more he liked working with and helping kids. He felt more and more like he wanted to help younger generations and do more. “Doing all that stuff, I’d always thought about becoming a teacher and probably never would have done it, but then the economy like, 2008, the economy went really bad and had a couple of bad years there, and I finally was just like, you know what? Just the time to do it,” shares Michael.

The economy affected his business badly in 2008. He stuck it out for a few years but inevitably felt like he had no choice but to sell his store and go back to school for education. 

After getting his degree, he went into student teaching and subbing at Cashmere in 2018. Shortly after, in 2019, he was off guard when he was asked to substitute teach an 8th grade science class for what he thought would only be a few days but turned into an entire year! Not only was it his first time teaching practically fulltime, but he was also thrown into it while online schooling was still going, which no one really knew how to do at the time.

Since then, Mr. Michael has been a full time substitute teacher and coach in the Cashmere School District. To this day, he continues to bring his kindness and joy to any field or class he enters.

He leaves this advice for students: “Learn good habits as much as anything else you learn at school. Everybody always goes, especially in science, ‘I’m never going to use this. Why do I need to know this?’ It’s not the stuff you’re learning so much. It’s getting in good habits, and getting stuff done. Train your brain.”