When there aren't enough subs, part 1: What the sub shortage means for schools
It’s 7:45 on Monday. Masks, lunches, and kids are in the back seat of my car. As we crawl between traffic lights on the way to school, my mind turns to the inner commute: our new 6th grade is expecting me during first period prep, and I need to draft a formative assessment for a PLC. Reach out to the teacher who has two newcomer students from Guatemala. Get it done before our afternoon meeting with the instructional team.
That’s when my phone rings. We’re short three subs at one of our high schools. How soon can I be there?
Sub calls always seemed to come when I was driving my children to school. Photo credit: Joe Parkin @partial_exposure
This is how many work days began this school year, as my school district grappled with in-person classes, COVID mitigation protocols, and a record shortage of substitute teachers. Plans and timelines were not all that suffered when I and other staff members received last-minute sub calls. Teachers’ time is a precious commodity, and delaying or canceling support meant that time-sensitive needs went unmet.
As a working parent, I also seemed to get that call just as I drove my own children to school. For me, the sub shortage spelled daily uncertainty. On any given morning, I might need to reschedule with everyone I had planned to work with that day, all while shuttling my kids through the drop-off line.
Stretching to fill the gaps
Since then, school districts across the country have come to terms with just how little supply exists to meet our demand for subs. In my district office, everyone with a teaching credential now doubles as an on-call substitute teacher. We were all asked to budget our time with one less day per week, so we can adhere to a weekly- and thankfully, predictable- schedule for sub coverage.
When subs can’t be found, an already strained system pulls and stretches to fill the gaps.
In secondary schools, teachers are called on to cover for their colleagues during their prep periods. In elementary schools, interventionists cancel the services they provide to struggling learners so that they can fill in for missing teachers. Instructional coaches slash the hours they would normally spend investing in teacher development, to ensure kids have an adult in the room. In a profession that is notoriously time-poor, we are squeezing minutes from those who have very few to spare.
Our system is missing an essential piece of its structure; every other part is affected, from the bottom up. Substitute teachers are really, really important.
Schools are clearly taking a hit as they try to remain open during Covid surges. Plan A, with or without a pandemic, is that substitutes cover when there aren’t enough teachers. Plan B taps counselors and interventionists to cover when there aren’t enough subs. Plan C, I imagine, scraps together anyone else on campus, for an hour at a time, in every effort to keep kids in school. Strapped for personnel and weary of spread, some school districts have skipped right down the alphabet and returned to online learning. No doubt, more will follow.
Effects on teachers, administrators, and students
Closing schools is a worse-case-scenario when personnel is scarce. As an educator, however, I think it’s important to name the more cloying ways our sub shortage affects schools. They are not as drastic as school closures but are as harmful as a slow leak. Eventually, the pipes can burst.
Take professional development, for example. Reflecting upon their practice or making sense of complicated data requires teachers’ focus and time. Both remain elusive if they spend their prep periods subbing for a colleague. Logistics for professional development are impacted too. Learning walks and peer coaching are nearly impossible if there aren’t any subs to cover while a teacher observes another classroom. Could an instructional coach or a colleague step in to make it happen? Not if they’re already subbing in another room.
Workshops, one of my favorite ways for teacher teams to pause and learn together, are impacted as well. Workshops remove teachers from their daily routine of moving students from bell to bell, and can be a catalyst for launching new ideas. This protected time gives teachers the mental space to consider new ideas. When there aren’t enough subs, even small, customized workshops feel like a luxury of days long past.
The toll of the sub shortage on administrators in particular is also acute. I’ve seen admin teams race against the clock as they strategize how they will move teachers and subs around to fill all the day’s vacancies, right before the morning bell rings. Two breaths later, they’ve turned on their heels and begun the morning announcements over the school intercom. They have made a day’s worth of decisions before the school day has begun.
Student safety is also compromised when campuses are scrambling to find substitute teachers. It’s not uncommon for my sub call to come just as school is beginning, after the list of “real” substitute teachers has been exhausted. Campus supervisors or assistant principals graciously step in to cover while they wait for someone to arrive.
The important work they have been hired to do, especially in the crucial first hour of the day, isn’t getting done.
Students who are tempted to linger in bathrooms or behind buildings can do just that when the adults tasked with “sweeping” campus are confined to one classroom. This year in particular, as students adjust to being in large crowds with their peers, teachers are reporting that aggressive behaviors are in an uptick. When support staff is helping to cover a class during the school day, it means there is one less adult supervising breaks and passing periods- times when tensions between students can escalate if there is no adult to intervene.
Ultimately, students are the stakeholders who have the most to lose when there aren’t enough substitute teachers. When the adults around them are stressed or in constant flux, they notice.
I was asked by a class of high schoolers who had had five different adults covering their class in as many days, “Are you coming back next week?” I had to confess to them that I didn’t know who would be filling in next. They went on to boast that they were such a difficult class, that the previous day they even had a substitute for a substitute who decided to leave. Teenagers act tough, but with this group it was clear that having a different person covering for their teacher- or their sub- every day had lost its luster. They just wanted someone they could connect to.
A system in need of manpower
Lastly, and most importantly, is the simmering tea kettle of stress and uncertainty that permeates an understaffed system.
It’s not just the times that counselors, teachers, or admin do need to cover for a colleague that put a kink in the work day. It’s the mental strain of knowing they might need to cover that makes it difficult to prepare efficiently. The moments of downtime needed to plan, grade, or communicate with parents are precious. It’s hard to know which commitments should get the most care-filled time, when you’re not sure if tomorrow will be available to play catch-up.
Mentally and physically, our schools have less safety and stability when there isn’t a reliable pipeline of adults to fill in on campus. The teachers who work so hard to support them have less time to invest in their own professional growth, planning, and grading. It adds up and it’s hard. Bay Area teachers are staging sick outs in protest of the mental and physical risk of teaching during the recent surge.
Meeting our students’ needs requires every ounce of personal resilience and innovation we can muster. We need a consistent, abundant power supply but when there aren’t enough subs, we are perpetually running on a backup generator. Extra manpower would be nice.
This is the first in a three-part series. Still to come: What leaders can learn from being a sub, and tips for making your substitute’s workday better.
