Ask Your Kids About School

Every day, my boy Anton comes homes from school, does his homework, plays a game on his phone or laptop, hangs out, or does what any 12-yr-old does, minus the scheduled hourly activities. Every day my wife and I ask him how his day went, if anything happened, did he learn anything. Did he help anyone. Did he have any fun. I’ve helped him with his math and English this year; the wife has helped him with projects and everything else.
I’m not thrilled by some of his answers about school. He’s in Honors English, so writing summaries about stories is not that tough. I also don’t believe a teacher puts much effort into grading an assignment that will probably sound very similar a hundred times over. But it’s work, and I know he’s reading other things, too. He tells us enough to know that the school is doing a decent job at giving out information, challenging him here and there, and that his teachers are in the classroom.
Yesterday, when walking down to check out a book from our library, I noticed that my next-door neighbor teacher was not in her room. Neither was her substitute teacher, who had been there earlier. One of our classified campus staff was in the room instead.
Another teacher’s third period class had to be covered by a similar classified staff member. My students said that they had the same thing happen with another teacher during a different period. This is all true, though I don’t know if it’s the extent of it.
As a student, how should you feel about this? How should anyone feel about it?
These shortages happened in classes of math teachers who knew they were going to be out of school on a late start day, first day back from a 17-day break. Perhaps it was hard getting substitute teachers on a day like this, but it’s not like it was last minute.
The same goes for our former English teacher who never existed. She’s been gone for over a month and no word has been sent out detailing her absence (Syme has been vaporized). Other English teachers have no clue that she’s even gone. I worried that her absence was detailed in an email or meeting that I might have missed; but two people I spoke to yesterday had no idea she was even gone. How has no one asked? Or cared? Or even noticed? There hasn’t been an assignment graded since the middle of November–I have no idea what the students are doing because I’ve never seen the substitute.
The teacher’s absence is not as 1984-esque as I make it out to be. She is pregnant and on maternity leave. Her pregnancy was not a secret. It was known and very visible at the start of the year in September, and in October, and through the part of November where she was at school. She even was at school over the summer and made it known that she was pregnant. The bottom line is that our school knew for months. I have heard that the class had a long-term sub in place, but that fell through late in the game. Still, one would think the students haven’t had much continuity.
In her class are former Honors students, ones who have applied to many universities. What would these universities think about this whole situation?
I learned something long ago when I taught at Long Beach Poly, but I’ll reiterate it here. When a teacher leaves a position there becomes a hole which needs filling. That’s a problem. The solution is to fill the hole. Once the hole is filled, no more problem. Did it affect kids? Huh? Hole is filled. Did it affect the school? Whaaa? Hole is filled.
That’s us, teachers. We are the hole fillers. Take a bow and try not to fall in too deep.