Often there are no subs, and the stories of what kind of subs we get - the one who had taken a vow of silence, the one who urinated on himself in class, the one who is scared of everyone - are often preposterous. Yet, I was just at North Avenue this morning, and a woman was refused an opportunity to turn in a substitute teacher application until March 1.

The substitute situation in the city is really bad.

The one job that is harder than teacher in BCPSS is substitute! Misbehavior by students is an issue that effects the regular teachers, but especially effects the substitutes. I had the utmost sympathy and respected the courage displayed by the couple of substitutes we had at the middle school where I worked. They dealt with a lot of crap in their efforts (admirable, but often futile) to provide a meaningful day of education when the regular teacher was out.

On another note, the administration at my school was quite competent at the time and we were NEVER asked to cover for a missing teacher - the administrators or the secretary would cover open classes. Even our principal once covered a class without a teacher. (Our principal at the time was amazing).

Ultimately, a competent substitute with a kind demeanor will win the kids over and will be able to accomplish at least some education. But ultimately, I think the article said it best when it said a substitute usually means the class will be in a holding pattern.

The other thing that happens in many middle schools because there are no subs is that a section of students will be divided among the remaining sections. So if there were 4 sections with 30 students each, they disband one section, add about 8 kids to the other three sections, and so the teachers who are there end up with more kids than they have desks and with kids who are not used to being together. A pretty poor solution all around because it then also disrupts the learning of the entire team not just the one class in which the teacher is absent.

Our school is atypical. Teachers generally leave written plans. We have a regular pool of subs; the ones that have been around for a while are pretty good. We get new ones often, and if they don't work out they don't get invited back. What becomes a problem is when we have a higher level of absenteeism-- then we struggle to get have enough subs.

Long term ones are definitely the issue: as I posted before, my students told be horror stories about middle school long term subs. This is when kids drop in progress.

I've almost never seen an admin cover for a sub, though we have department heads that cover (supposed to). I've seen classes uncovered and running wild.

At my middle school, the teacher absentee rate has skyrocketed in the last year. We have vacancies in mathematics left by teachers from the Phillipines that did not come back after their first year of teaching. Some of the students in my school have had 5 different subs this year for math. Teachers and Department Heads have volunteered to teach a class or two a day, but have been told that they can not miss the all important team meetings to do so. Studies show that the effect of not having a teacher will be felt in the negative for 3 years. The fact that nothing has been done to this point to address these students education this year points to my school's lack of leadership at the highest level.

The flip side of this is that we had a long-term substitute this year who practically out-taught all the veteran teachers. Unfortunately, the administration kept shifting her around so much that she quit.