There has always been a sub shortage in our district, but this year it’s REALLY BAD. Every day we are asked to cover a colleague’s class because there is no sub to cover for them.
Covering a class really sucks. Not only do you lose your prep time, and your one break that is over 30 minutes long, but you also have to go into another classroom and teach a lesson you are not familiar with to kids you may not even know. It is no bueno.
I’ve haven’t been stepping up to take classes because my prep is the only thing making bedtime before midnight a possiblity. I especially hate taking an extra class on Fridays because I don’t get a prep on Thursdays (it’s the odd-period block day and my prep is on an even period), so I’m especially starved for some productive time in my classroom that day. I HATE Thursdays, and the idea of making Friday another Thursday is NOT appealing to me. Of course Friday is the day when coverage is most needed.
Tomorrow they are THREE subs short, so EVERY period requires three different people covering different classes. I still couldn’t bring myself to give up my prep, but I did offer to take one teacher’s 6th period class and combine it with my 6th period class and figure something out. Both are relatively small so I’ll only have 40 kids. I’ll be trying to get them outside if possible.
One of the hardest things about being a teacher is how difficult it is to be gone. I can’t think of another profession where coverage is as complicated. Sure, there are tons of jobs where you need to find another person to cover when someone cannot come in, but you don’t generally need to have a detailed breakdown of exactly what needs to happen during five 55 minutes period to give that person. In most professions that require a warm body take the place of someone who is out, that warm body can generally figure it out (because they know how to be a nurse or a bus driver or a retail worker, etc). But for in teaching it’s a lot harder. Even if you don’t care how they fill the 55 minutes, they still need to keep those kids occupied.
My fear of being out for an extended period of time is the main reason I’m taking so many covid precautions at this point in the pandemic. My friends are spending the weekend at a cabin in October and I would honestly go, except I’m so fearful of my daughter getting sick and all of us being stuck at home for weeks that I can’t bring myself to do it. A 6th grader (who cannot be vaccinated yet) in my class is stuck at home until 10/6 at the earliest because their sibling has covid. With two unvaccinated kids at home, the quarantining from a positive case could takes WEEKS to resolve. I absolutely cannot manage that. It’s one thing to negotiate who is staying home when one of our kids is identified as a close contact, it’s quite another to manage the long quarantine period a positive case would require. And so we continue to take precautions that others might deem unnecessary, because even a regular illness would be really hard to manage right now, and a positive covid test would be a massive disruption.
It’s really stressful. And I’m really tired. And it feels like there is no end in sight. I just need things to ease up a little. But they won’t, not for a while.
All I can say is TGIF! For real.
Do all the teachers at your school leave detailed sub plans like you prepare? I can remember being a sub … decades ago … and the ‘plan’ was a movie, or simple worksheets to be done and collected. That would not work for a long absence but does cover one day away.
Offering to combine the 6th periods is quite a supportive action. Outdoors sounds like an excellent idea. Best wishes.
If any of your immediate family had to quarantine it would be a terrific problem and I agree with your logic in not taking risks … but it is a high price to pay … having to miss refreshing time with friends.
Boosters and first vaccines for 5-11 year olds would really help.
I think people leave pretty detailed sub plans. Even just watching a movie can be a lot to write out because you have to explain your rules and procedures. I always try to plan for a pretty simple day when I have a sub but it still ends up being a lot of work to prepare for the absence.
Curious if you get paid for subbing when you miss your free period? We do but that doesn’t make up for the inconvenience if it’s a day when you really need that time!
This post reminds me of something that made me roll my eyes a little when I heard about it — my city is doing a weekly lottery to reward those city employees who have their vaccine and have submitted proof to the city in a timely manner. The prize is X amount of days of paid leave… which seems great (and would be useful obviously if you needed extra days for quarantine or whatever) but it’s not like a teacher is going to be able to take off on an extra week of vacation now that they have those days. :-/ I don’t even come close to using up my days as it is.
I forgot to mention, we do get paid but after taxes and everything else taken out it ends up being a pretty small amount. Certainly not enough for it to feel worth it for me personally. And yes, extra days to take would not help me much right now. I actually have more days banked than ever before because I didn’t take one day last year. So I guess that is the good news – if I did need to be out for multiple weeks I would have the days to cover it. At least I wouldn’t be losing money in that circumstance.
That sounds so hard. I am sorry. This has been rough for teachers!
Maybe the people in the district and school office should come and substitute for teachers. They get paid more than teachers and often are out of touch with classroom realities. NO, I am not talking about admin assistants but the highly paid jobs.
Politically however you need to not suggest this.
I am clearly grumpy that the cdc is way too hands off from actual patient care and way too interested in research papers published with their names . Reading Michael Lewis’s The Premonition was jading. Also an engaging and fascinating story told with an impressively even hand.
Note: the classes I substituted in clearly were not like classes in your schools. Your peers and you are quite admirable! I often was not even given a class list and had to 100% improvise.