Oh, and because of a shortage of substitute teachers, four of the eleven teachers who showed up at the district office this morning were sent right back to their classrooms, so fewer of us got to do the same work in (virtually) the same time. Our school's contingent was missing two teachers, and we had to put in an hour of overtime (we're salaried, but we'll get 1.0 hr or our divided-up-into-hourly-rate pay. Having the two other teachers would have let us finish on time.
I spent three hours designing a two-day, self-contained lesson, including detailed instruction sheets for students, pre-chosen small-group seating charts, and question handouts with page number references, When I got to the DO, I learned that tomorrow's scheduled work-day had been postponed because of substitute teacher shortages. It's been rescheduled for two weeks from now.
Tomorrow, I'll be subbing for myself: I've committed my classes to a two-day lesson, and I have to go through with it: my students did half of a mini-project today, and it needs another day to complete. So much for my planning. They wouldn't have done the mini-project had I not been gone.
Of course, two weeks from now, I'll have to design another lesson plan to cover that second day away from my classroom.
On the bright side, my students are always glad to see me when I return from being absent. We're a team, they and I.
Our district pays substitutes less that the surrounding districts, by a wide margin. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to enlarge the substitute pool enough to cover our actual needs, does it? Why don't we try something like becoming competitive?
Even bureaucracies can't consistently escape market forces.
While they're at it, someone should draw a ten-mile radius circle around our school district, and check out teacher salaries. Our district is an embarrassment, and our turnover rate of good teachers leaving for higher-paying positions with similar commute times is high.
No comments:
Post a Comment