Needs

 In Ohio, the only things substitute teachers are not supposed to do? Lunch duty and summer school. End of list. They are required to do lesson plans, testing, behavior management, report cards, IEP meetings, parent teacher conferences. If it feels like those lists may be transposed, I would agree with you. At my school, we are fortunate to have a parent volunteer to assist on lunch duty, and our staff is traditionally nowhere to be found when the list for summer school comes around. 

Each year, it seems, one class seems to be bit by the substitute bug at our school. Try as we might, getting and keeping an experienced teacher in that room somehow seems impossible. Personal and personnel issues collapse on themselves creating a perfect staffing storm. Students and parents complain that "nothing is being done," but we all know the challenge of getting a qualified teacher to take a classroom in urban Oakland. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the staff steps in as we can, supporting whoever it is at the front of the room, learning the names and figuring out how this thing called elementary education works. I know for a fact that we have seen enthusiasm and commitment broken before our eyes. Bright-eyed idealistic young men and women show up at our school with an eye toward being the next one to spend their career here. 

The problem, as it has been for decades, is a teacher shortage. That's how I found my way into a classroom. I enrolled in an intern credential program that allowed me to take a job in a school before I had any kind of "formal training." I truly was a "student teacher." I was being asked to teach reading and manage classrooms before we had gotten to that chapter. I was, as the saying goes, making it up as I went along. 

I can no longer count the number of colleagues I have worked with and through. I have been fortunate to have gained skills and wisdom as I have stuck around, but having that backstop of a master teacher who could step in and save me when I wandered away from the best, most effective strategies was sorely missed. I cannot imagine the experience that awaits those fresh-faced youngsters coming to us, or in Ohio, or anyplace else, with a bachelor's degree and the notion that teaching school might be a pretty cool gig while they are waiting for the next best thing. 

Whatever that might be. A job where three letter acronyms didn't fly around like debris in a hurricane. A job where the only nose you were asked to blow was your own. A job that was not in the education field. The curious thing is, there seems to be a lot of those hanging around these days. Not just in Ohio. Or California. 

Everywhere needs a teacher or two.