On Tuesday, my FM received a call at about 1:00 pm that there had been a family emergency. After speaking with the principal, they agreed that, even though there was no sub, I could run the rest of the day by myself (it was just a 30 minute block, then the students went to specials, then dismissal). The next morning, my FM emailed me saying that she wouldn't be coming in that day and that she had sent in for a sub. When I got to school, no sub had been assigned to her class yet. The principal told me I could go ahead and do breakfast/morning meeting on my own and they would let me know after that what needed to happen with my class. At 8:15, there still wasn't a sub, so my class had to split amongst the other 4th grade teachers.
I've never seen this happen before, and I have to say, it threw off the entire day. Even though a sub came in around 10, my class had been separated for their first block, I didn't have a full class for reading RTI (literally only about 5/23 kids--some of the teachers must not have known that they could send me students), so I didn't do my lesson at all. Then I had my homeroom for the afternoon block, but some of them had already done the lesson I was going to teach with other teachers in the morning, so I had to improvise how to spend the rest of the class period. The only classes that weren't affected were their math RTI and specials.
All in all, it was a really chaotic day and nothing really went according to plan. I know there are reasons that we can't have a class without a sub, but I so wish I had been able to that day, especially since I'm running most of the day on my own at this point anyway.
One of the other teachers mentioned that when her daughter had been a student teacher, she had gotten certified as a substitute for her district so that she wouldn't have to deal with situations like this. That seems pretty smart, in retrospect, although it's definitely too late to get that going for this semester!
Have any of y'all dealt with crazy sub situations like this?
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ReplyDeleteDon't worry you're not alone. Last semester at Witsitt we had one teacher who was ALWAYS absent on our team. I mean once or twice a week. We would have to spill her class every time because she wouldn't call a sub or her sub wouldn't show up. This also happened today at Hickman. A 1st grade teacher had an emergency and we had to spill her class up.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I see this I see the same problems. These misplaced students act up and distract the other students from learning. Today my students were wild because there was so many of them in one room. We didn't even have enough seats. This hindered my students from learning for half the day until the sub showed up and it also hindered the other class to learn as well. Once lunch came the teachers were praising the sub came and were so happy to go back to a regular day.
It is understandable when there is an emergency. I get it things come up, but when it happened like it happened at Whitest there is no excuse. Students shouldn't be left with out a classroom, and especially with out a teacher. That makes them feel unloved by their teacher. It is your job to show your students you care about them and it's a caring place inside your classroom. It is hard to do that if you’re constantly absent. Students count on you a lot of the time to be the most and only consistent thing in their lives. If you break that trust with them, they will lose respect and love they had for you and their motivation will decrease. I think teachers really need to consider this when picking days they won't be in school. Especially when you leave with out a sub for no reason at all.
The only days worse than sub-days are no-sub days.
ReplyDeleteSo I got to have a lot of time with the subs in the last few weeks. My teacher has covered a few times for the principal/vice-principal when they have been gone. And then she got the flu. Here are a few of my conclusions to add into the mix.
Kids (maybe even more so for middle schoolers?) are crazier when there is a sub. After two days in a row I do not know if they could have taken another day without their normal teacher. They were better the second time around--I suppose they had gotten more used to having me as the instructor (and I was better prepared, and the sub was better).
So subs are nice, because it is good to have someone else who can help control the kids, right? I mean, if the kids are going to be crazy at least it's two on twenty-two instead of one on twenty-two.
But they also add another level of frustration to the mix. It's hard for the kids to have three different personalities and authority styles to react to (the normal teacher's rules, my management, and the sub's). And it's frustrating for me to have to both manage the sub and the kids. There were some times when I thought I could have had the class running pretty smoothly, except the sub had their own standards and disciplinary lectures for the kids. And it's hard when the sub changes every day. And I am teaching the whole day anyway.
All this to say, it would have been fun to have a sub's licensure if only to get paid for those days ;). And ultimately, yes, I believe it is less complicated in the long run to have only the student teacher in charge when the teacher is gone (but, of course, I'm biased).