One thing that is immensely underrated in the school is our substitute teachers; they fly under the radar and are unsung heroes. They do a lot more than just sitting in their assigned classes for the entire day. They have to deal with students disrespecting them and using them as an excuse to get away with things they normally could not do. 

A stigma surrounding substitute teachers is that they are prepared and ready for all classes they are thrown into, however, that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

When a teacher knows that they will be absent from school, they have to submit an absence form through an online system. Once that is sent out, all substitute teachers are notified that there is an absence that needs to be filled. The subs can then go into the system and accept the job.

However, according to the principal’s administrative assistant, Michelle Broadhurst, “[It is] very,

very difficult” to find substitute teachers.

“We don’t have a lot at all,” Broadhurst said, “and we only have two designated subs.”

Broadhurst can count on designated subs Jerry Gulezian and Lori Peters to be here at least four days a week, but she also has about four more substitutes who get to decide when they want to sub for a class through the online system. 

Having six substitutes seems like an extremely small amount, but it is more than the school has had in previous years.

Broadhurst said there are usually one or two teachers out a day, which makes it difficult to get coverage for those classes.

When a substitute is thrown into a class with little time to prepare, they should be treated with respect. They are doing us a favor that they do not need to be doing. No one should use them as an excuse to behave poorly.

According to Dotti Gulezian, a substitute teacher who has been substituting for 26 years, she has had “a few [students] misbehaving” and had to “send them to their house offices” to handle the situation.

A substitute should not have to worry about taking care of misbehaving students when they need to make sure everyone understands the lesson and is doing their work. They shouldn’t have to be adding on extra work to their already stressful day of switching classes and trying to help in a new subject every period.

Eventually, substitute teachers will decide that this is not worth it for them and opt to stop substituting, further lowering our already-low sub numbers.

Another stressful downside of being a substitute teacher that could lead to subs choosing to stop substituting is not knowing where they will be in advance to the day of. They could be notified last minute depending on when a teacher informs Broadhurst of their absence.

If a teacher calls out on short notice, most of the time, no substitute will be available nor have seen the open slot on the online system. This leads to Broadhurst having to track down all of the teachers in the school and find a teacher to fill in for each period of the day in the absent teacher’s class, which can be very time consuming if there are multiple teachers out. 

A common misconception is that the substitute schedule by Broadhurst is all worked out ahead of time, but that is simply not true. Teachers can be pulled out of their prep periods to help cover for another teacher because there are no subs available. 

When a teacher loses a prep period, their own classes can be impacted if they haven’t been able to complete their lesson plans. This can lead to these classes falling behind and having to cram material in fewer days. 

A teacher shouldn’t have to worry about altering their class syllabus because they are helping out another teacher due to our small sub count, especially if this teacher has to spend the entire class trying to keep other students on task and out of trouble.

Let’s be on our best behavior for these teachers and substitutes so we don’t lose anyone else who volunteers to help. Substitute teachers play an extremely important role in our school functioning properly and let’s keep it that way.