Taking a day off!
Okay, for most people this is a simple task. Call into work say cough...cough "I am sick and won't be in today." And then enjoy your day off. To a teacher, a day off takes a lot of preparation. I was writing and getting lesson plans together for over 2 hours last night. Not because I am poking, but because it really does take that long to do it decently.
First off, you need to make sure your substitute has enough details. Even little things like the bathroom procedures and where the kids sit in the lunch room seem trite but it makes a huge difference in the day running smoothly. Secondly, you never know what kind of person you will get as a sub (at least in my district where we call into a phone database). Any person walking the planet with 90 college credit hours can be a substitute teacher. It could be 90 hours in basket weaving, and they can still sub! So you have to give a lot of details on what to do, or you will come back to find the day you missed was worthless and the students learned a concept wrong. Thirdly, I think it's very helpful to leave a brief description on the kids so that the sub knows what they are dealing with. They need to know that your chronic liar will try to be getting everyone else in trouble during the day, or if they let Diamond talk to them once during the middle of a lesson, she won't stop all day. Just knowing who can be responsible enough to take a note to the office can make a day run much smoother.
So, I guess my point is that taking a day off as a teacher is not as easy as it is for people in the other job worlds. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of time to arrange it properly. By the time you are finished, you feel you've earned a 2nd day off!
First off, you need to make sure your substitute has enough details. Even little things like the bathroom procedures and where the kids sit in the lunch room seem trite but it makes a huge difference in the day running smoothly. Secondly, you never know what kind of person you will get as a sub (at least in my district where we call into a phone database). Any person walking the planet with 90 college credit hours can be a substitute teacher. It could be 90 hours in basket weaving, and they can still sub! So you have to give a lot of details on what to do, or you will come back to find the day you missed was worthless and the students learned a concept wrong. Thirdly, I think it's very helpful to leave a brief description on the kids so that the sub knows what they are dealing with. They need to know that your chronic liar will try to be getting everyone else in trouble during the day, or if they let Diamond talk to them once during the middle of a lesson, she won't stop all day. Just knowing who can be responsible enough to take a note to the office can make a day run much smoother.
So, I guess my point is that taking a day off as a teacher is not as easy as it is for people in the other job worlds. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of time to arrange it properly. By the time you are finished, you feel you've earned a 2nd day off!
posted by Becs @ 6:34 AM
1 Comments:
At 8:44 AM,
Julie said…
Do you keep a copy and just update it every time you need a sub? Wow. That sucks. You have to be responsible when you call off. When I call off I'm just plain irresponsible.
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