My complaint: Sub plans.
That's enough to make any teacher shudder. But I wish that people who aren't teachers could really understand how incredibly it sucks to not go to work. In most jobs if you call in sick or have a training or whatever the reason is that you're not going to be at work, it's not a big deal. Someone can easily cover for you, or the work just waits to get done until you're back. Not so for a teacher.
Yes, someone covers for you, but not until after you've done all the work planning and preparing what they're going to do all day for you.
That's a screenshot of my sub plans for tomorrow. Almost 3 whole pages. I'm going to a training because next year they're changing our science curriculum and also altering the way they want us to teach science. It's not exactly a mandatory training, but it seemed like a really good idea to have an idea of what I'm supposed to teach next year, plus as a teacher you do have to go to enough "professional development" classes and trainings to add up to a certain number of points/credits to renew your license every few years. (That's another topic for another day.) Anyways, my point is I don't have to go, but I feel like to be a good teacher I should.
But do I get any paid time to come up with these sub plans? Nope. Not really. I worked on them a bit over my break, meaning I filled in each subject box with the general idea of what they were going to do.
Math: dividing fraction review
Reading: story
Social Studies: Greek mythology
Then today I worked on actually typing in the detailed instructions that I feel like a sub needs and deserves in order to do what I expect. But did I have time to do that during my contract time? Not really. It was an inside morning because of rain, meaning I had kids in my room like almost as soon as I got there, plus I had a couple quick things I needed to get ready for the day. I didn't have a moment of rest all day either. It was one of those days where my kids were especially needy, even when I didn't think they would be. So it wasn't until 3:30 that I was able to fill all of this in. Although, that meant I had to actually decide what I meant by "Greek mythology" and "dividing fraction review." I had to find worksheets and activities and then go make copies of all of them too.
So 5:10 rolls around (the building closes at 5:30) and I'm not quite ready. I've got everything printed and copied, but I need probably another 20-30 minutes to finish getting it all organized and adding finishing touch instructions. So I have to go in tomorrow morning. My training isn't until 8:30 and it's only 10 minutes away from my house. But I have to go in to school (25 minutes away from my house) at like 7:30 to make sure I have my 20-30 minutes to get everything ready and get back to my training in time.
Okay, I know this is my fault because I could have been more organized and planned a little further ahead, but I really thought I'd have time during the day today. And honestly I was just tired over the past several days. I took 3 hour naps like almost every day of my break. I really needed a break from work, so I didn't do anything. And now I'm reaping the consequences. It just sucks that that's the nature of a teacher's job.
Then there's the times when you're sick. You feel like crap, but you know that if you decide to take a day off to stay home and sleep, you have to do a ton of work to get ready for that. All the plans you have to type up, all the activities and worksheets you have to find then print and copy, not to mention the cleaning you have to do because your classroom is probably a mess. At that point it often seems easier to just suck it up and come to work sick the next day. Then again, any good teacher has some emergency sub plans tucked away in the cabinet, ready to go with easy review worksheets and activities that can be done in a moment's notice. But no teacher ever really wants to have to use those emergency plans because 1) that means they have to make new emergency sub plans (which again is a lot of planning and copying); 2) it is pretty much all busy work and review, meaning a waste of a day; 3) if you don't get to teach those lessons that you had planned for that day, your whole week that you have planned is going to be off a day, which could be a big deal. Long story short, don't get sick unless you want more work.
And of course I won't even go into how much you stress about how your class is behaving for a substitute. About how it's in the back of your mind all day, and you dread coming back the next day to find the report about how horrible they were and then having to come up with a fulfilling punishment. No need to mention that.
Well, that's my rant for today. It really sucks for teachers when they have to miss work, no matter the reason. It's always just as much (if not more!) work than if they were just able to go to work. So next time you're able to call in sick, be thankful you're not a teacher.
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