The Substitute Dilemma

Episode Transcript

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTAa [00:00:00]:
Last time on Year One, Jenna walked us through what it's like teaching students who need special accommodations.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:00:07]:
That's what's so frustrating as a teacher is because you only have so much time with this kid. I'm just starting to figure out what motivates some of my students, and especially students with special needs or special accommodations. I'm like, we could have been so much more successful during the whole first quarter if I knew this fact about you.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:00:25]:
On this episode, Jenna takes her first sick day, and we get into what it's really like when teachers unexpectedly need time off. This is Year One from Carnegie Learning, a podcast that chronicles all the ups and downs of one teacher's first year in the classroom. I'm your host, Kanika Chadda Gupta. Now approaching the halfway mark of her school year, Jenna has yet to take a sick day.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:00:55]:
Until one morning, I woke up on Tuesday morning at, like, literally 330 in the morning, and I had fever, chills. Everything was so, so sick. Like 100 to zero. So quickly. I went to bed feeling fine, so I woke up. My dad had tested positive for Covid the night before, and I live, like, five minutes away from my parents. So legit. At 04:00 in the morning, I drove over to my parents house to go steal a COVID test from them.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:01:26]:
Literally snuck in, like, fully had a key, snuck in while they were sleeping, got a COVID test, and I brought it back to my apartment to take. So I take the COVID test because I want to see if I'm positive or not before I, like, text my principal and officially put in for a sub. And I take the test, and it's a dud test. I just drove with a fever at 04:00 in the morning, and I don't even know if I have it or not. So then at that point, I'm like, I'm still so sick, I need to put in for a sub.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:01:54]:
Requesting a substitute brings up many guilty feelings, as we'll get into in this episode. But for Jenna, the first one is the guilt of using one of her few sick days for the year.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:02:06]:
So normally you get seven sick days per year plus four personal days. But as a first year teacher, because they're like, oh, you're a first year teacher. You're gonna get the germs and you're gonna get burnt out and all that stuff. They give us ten sick days plus four personal days. So I have a total of 14. I don't want to take a sick day because, number one, I only get so many. There's that guilt of me being like, no. Like, I need to save them up for when I really need it.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:02:33]:
But, you know, I have to look outside myself and be like, no, I really need it right now. So when you wake up at 330 in the morning and you're like, I have to write sub plans right now, you know, it's bad cause you don't have an option.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:02:45]:
Taking a sick day as a teacher is a lot more complicated than it might seem.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:02:49]:
Prepping for sick days can be interesting.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:02:53]:
This is Phonisha Hawkins, and you're gonna hear a bit more from her in future episodes. As someone who has been a teacher and is now a school administrator in Texas, we wanted to get her perspective from both sides of on just how difficult taking time off in the school year can be.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:03:09]:
Well, I'll go back to my first year teaching. My principal and my instructional coach. Their policy was have a subfolder already planned out, you know, each week with. With some work. So that way, if you wake up at 01:00 and you can't plan anything, there is a folder in your classroom that's already kind of pre marked and ready for a substitute or anyone else to come in and teach your class. So that's always been ingrained in me to kind of be proactive and not reactive because you might wake up at 01:00 in the morning and be sick and you can't necessarily plan for that.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:03:42]:
While substitutes are a lifesaver for keeping classes running smoothly, getting everything ready for them takes a lot of effort.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:03:51]:
Yeah, prepping for subs is so annoying, especially when you're sick, like, fully having 102 degree fever and at 03:30 a.m. i'm like, up typing subplans horrible. You have to sit and you have to look through your plans and make everything as easy as possible. You kind of have to replan the whole day even though you have it planned out because there are so many things that are like, nah, that's. That won't work with a sub. Like, only I have the knowledge and the content and the ability to get that into their brains and get that into their notebooks and get that into their mailboxes. As an elementary school teacher, your sub plans are like seven pages long because you're teaching eight subjects and also you're with the same kids all day. So, like, you know exactly how those kids work and who's in charge of what and who does what when.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:04:33]:
And I was so stressed that it was a Tuesday because all of my kids leave for different things on Tuesdays. Some kids have speech. Some kids have a group with the counselor on Tuesdays at different times. Some groups go to intervention time on Tuesdays. Like, Tuesdays is where for like 45 minutes of the day, I literally have ten kids left in my room because everyone else is out doing things. So I was like, trying to remember where everyone goes so I can put that on the subplan and then on top of that, also coming up with random activities that have to do with what we were just learning about but not going on without me because I don't know who's gonna be in there and what they're capable of teaching. Sometimes you can plan for them to teach something on their own, but it's always a toss up because either you give it to the sub and they don't teach it the way you would teach it, and then the kids are confused when you come back or the lesson doesn't go well and the kids are confused when you get back or you just missed a lesson with your kid and you don't know where they're at. So, like, me being the first year control freak that I am, I'm like, I don't want my sub to teach my kids elapsed time of all things.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:05:37]:
Like, elapsed time is hard for third graders. Like, you went to the movie theater at 04:02 the movie's 2 hours and 36 minutes long. What time is it after? That's hard for third graders. And that was what we were doing. I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't do this.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:05:52]:
That's a lot to handle and communicate, especially at 04:00 a.m. while running a fever. But Jenna gets through it. She sends in her plan for the sub and goes back to bed, only to wake up to a surprise.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:06:07]:
When I wake back up after falling asleep, I check my email to make sure everything's, you know, all right. And there's an email from my principal that says that my class has been split instead of having a sub, they couldn't find a sub for me, which means that all my kids have been split into different third grade classrooms instead of having a sub in my room.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA[00:06:28]:
So not only did all that prep work feel like it was for nothing, but Jenna also feels bad for making her students have to abruptly switch to new teachers and new classrooms, something that can be tough for kids who thrive on routine and consistency. With a growing shortage of qualified substitutes, it's becoming more common to split students into different classes. Like what happened with Jenna students over the past five years. The number of substitute teachers has dropped significantly by nearly 20%. And more than 90% of school districts in the US report that they are struggling to find proper coverage when a teacher is absent. Here's Phonisha Hawkins again to add a little more context.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:07:12]:
I'm gonna guess 90% of the time if there's a sub shortage or you can't get a sub in your building, it's because there's a behavior problem. That sub has been there at least once before and they had to call admin or they were being disrespected by students or, you know, the teacher didn't have work. It could be a multitude of things, but I think it boils down to the substitutes experience in that building. And so I think it just boils down to what the substitutes want to handle, what they want to deal with, what their capacity is. This is not what they signed up for. And the pay may not have been great. I do know that I want to say it was during COVID They were paying substitutes a whole lot more to come into the building and stay, especially when you might have a teacher that might be out, you know, for the quarantine days or 1012 days. And so they were paying more, which we saw more subs then, you know, when the pay was right.

PHONISHA HAWKINSs [00:08:03]:
Because if I'm gonna deal with certain things, pay me what I'm worth, you know, to deal with this. So I think that kind of goes into why there's a sub shortage.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:08:13]:
Additionally, with no substitute to cover her class, Jenna not only feels guilty about how her absence affects her students, but also for putting extra strain on her fellow teachers who have to pick up the slack on short notice.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:08:28]:
Me as a teacher, I'm like, I feel bad for my team. Like, my team now has to deal with five extra kids in my room. Meaning, like some of the other classes with those five extra kids have like 33 kids in their class at once. I don't want to be that burden, but I know I can't help it. I have to take care of myself. I have to do what I need to do.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:08:47]:
While this is the first time Jenna's class had to be split up due to her absence, she's experienced the disruption from the other side and understands just how challenging it can be.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:08:59]:
One day I woke up and I was ready to go to school and I got a text from my principal in a group chat with all of the other third grade teachers. And I was like, oh gosh, what is this about at 615 in the morning? And she was like, hey, so and so is not going to be in today, so we're gonna have a split class. Like, oh, gosh, here we go. Here we go. Luckily, I got to school pretty early that morning, like I always do. So I was able to figure out what I was gonna do, make some extra copies for those kids and figure out where they were going to sit because I barely had enough seats in my room. I had to have them sit on, like, little wobbly stools that most kids don't sit in because they either can't handle them or they'll break them, whatever. So I just had to kind of problem solve at the last second.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:09:38]:
But I get, we have to do what we have to do. It's just unfortunate, especially when most times, like, I would probably say 9.99 out of ten times, it's always going to be, like, a surprise thing that you hear of the morning of, because the reason they would need to split classes, because they are scrambling and can't find anybody else. So it's always like, a scramble thing for the teachers, too. But my team had a lot of camaraderie over it. We were like, split days. You just. You have to do what you have to do to get by. It's just gonna be what it is for the afternoon.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:10:08]:
But surprisingly, it wasn't a horrible day with those kids. Was my classroom so full? Yes, but none of the kids that were added to my room were necessarily a problem. Like, they were all very well behaved in their little corner, which was very, very appreciated and very nice. But they also, at the end of the day, those five kids that were in my room, they were like, Miss Magnolta, your class is the best class ever. Why can't we be in here all the time? And that was only because the day that they were in there, I was like, you just got a lucky day. Because my kids had earned. I talked about the candy for kindness thing a while ago. My kids had earned their candy party.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:10:44]:
So at the end of the day, we were watching a movie, and I had, like, I brought a bunch of different candy for them. Like, I brought lollipops and chocolate and all this sort of thing. So they were like, this day is amazing. And I was like, it's not like this every day, guys. You just picked a really good day to come on in here.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTAa [00:11:03]:
With her students now spread out in other third grade classrooms, Jenna uses her first sick day to get some much needed rest for a little while, at least on the off chance she's not feeling better. The following day, Jenna heads into school after hours to start putting together another coverage plan.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:11:22]:
It's been about two or 3 hours. Me planning just for one day of me being gone. And that's not even thinking of, like, oh, what if I don't feel better tomorrow afternoon? Like, what if I'm still down in the dumps? What if I end up going to, like, a minute clinic and I end up testing positive for strep or coders? Like, I don't know. I don't know. That's gonna be a whole different thing. So I'm just taking it one day at a time. As long as I don't have Covid and I'm not stuck at being home, which I don't think I do. I really don't think I do.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:11:50]:
But as long as that's not the case, it will suck. But I still can technically come into the school and prep for, like, if I find out that I'm still not feeling well tomorrow afternoon and it's like, 04:00 p.m. and I know everyone has gone and out of the building, I could come back and prep again. It's either that or I would have to inconvenience one of my teammates and be like, hey, I'm emailing you my sub plans. Can you print them out and get all the papers that I need? And that would just make me feel horrible because, like, in the morning, even on a regular day when nothing's wrong, I'm always so frazzled coming in and I'm the first person to get here on my whole team. I'm here like 20 minutes before anybody else. So the fact that I would have to be like, hey, can you do this extra step for me last minute? And I can't guarantee that they would have the time or, like, the space or whatever to, I don't know, just makes me nervous.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:12:34]:
With all the prep work, worries about student progress, and the added strain on fellow teachers, it's no surprise many educators choose to come to work even when they're sick. In fact, over the past year, there was a study that found that around 16% of teachers did just that, which only adds to their stress and burnout in the end. Again, here's Phonisha Hawkins.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:12:58]:
I think a lot of times, a lot of teachers come to work anyway because they know we're not going to get a sub and I don't want my class split and they'll just come anyway when they really should just be at home. There was a time when I was in the classroom and I would come to work sick because there were only two teachers in 7th grade because we didn't get subs, because our kids were tough and it was like they could smell fear, you know, and then they would, they would attack. Literally. No, those are the kids that we had. Love them, but it took a special group to handle those kind of kids. And so one day I got up, I came to work, and I was literally in the front. There was a bench by the fish tank. And I was at duty and I just sat on the bench and I just kind of leaned my head over and I was just laying down.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:13:38]:
And Miss Hicks, my then ap, she said, hawkins, not feel Gus. I said, no, ma'am, but I'll be okay. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make it. At least let me make it to lunch. And she was like, let me know by the end of first period how you feel. Went to class, made it through first, made it through second. I had fourth period off fourth period.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:13:55]:
I literally was underneath my desk with a pillow, just trying to get myself together. And Alicia, Miss Davis came in and she was like, hawkins, go home. Like, they had to kick me out the building. I'm like, no, I'll be okay. We got one more period and they're gonna give the kids to you. And she was like, no, go home. I'll take your kids. So you have some teachers that are like that, you know, just because we know the burden that it's gonna put on the team.

PHONISHA HAWKINS [00:14:17]:
But when you have a strong team, they're like, just go home, girl. We'll take care of your kids.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:14:23]:
In the end, Jenna's fever finally broke, letting her return to class the next day, avoiding further disruption for her students, lessening the burden on her fellow teachers, and keeping her remaining sick. Days at 13 days total. And despite the guilt and stress of a day that included a lot of unused work, Jenna feels better equipped to handle things next time.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:14:48]:
Just takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. But I know with elementary, it's better to have more prepared than not enough prepared. So itll be worth it. Its just, its a lot.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:15:04]:
This is Year One, an exploration of one teachers first year in the classroom, brought to you by Carnegie learning. Join us for the rest of the series as we follow Jenna through every moment. And be sure to follow Miss MacNulty on Instagram and TikTok to keep up with her. For additional exclusive content, free teaching resources, and more, visit yearonepodcast.com. Next time on Year One, we discuss the time and energy it takes to understand the student inside and outside of the classroom.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:15:36]:
Teaching is more than teaching. Like, teaching is knowing all of these things about your kids, and it's placing it into action, and it's treating those students with, like, the care and respect that that situation deserves.