Teachers Get and Give a Lesson

I’ve suffered the equivalent of having my hand smacked with a wooden ruler this past week as readers sounded off about my column last Sunday on the growing problem of teacher absenteeism.

Some readers accused me of “teacher bashing” by suggesting that when kids are regularly handed off to substitutes, their education suffers. Many said I gave subs a bad rap, implying that they’re not competent to teach. And some said I missed the point--that teacher absenteeism is not the cause of our struggling public schools, but the result.

“For heaven’s sake. Stop blaming everything on the teachers,” e-mailed Debbie Mitchell, a teacher at Chaffey High in Ontario. “We have enough to worry about. I am absent from school a few days a year, when I leave meaningful, complete plans for the sub. Sometimes ill-behaved children give those subs a hard time and treat the lesson plan like it is not important.

“I would appreciate a bit of support from home. That would have been a great column.”

*

I’m not sure how much support from home would help. Yes, parents should require their children to be helpful and polite to substitute teachers. And keeping sick children at home would certainly help teachers stay healthy and cut their absentee rate. But is it really my daughter’s job to be “sympathetic” to the plight of her substitute teachers, as one sub suggested in her e-mail?

Several readers--including many teachers--thought my column hit its mark. “Everything you said was so true,” wrote teacher Jacqueline Ludwig-Bragg. “Unfortunately, no one takes this seriously.”

But others took umbrage at my complaints, as if I’d wounded them personally. The column wasn’t intended as a rebuke; just a mother’s-eye view of an intractable problem that tends to sour parents on public school. It was prompted by my frustration over the procession of substitute teachers my middle-school daughter has experienced this fall. On a single day last week, for example, she had substitutes in four of her six classes. School administrators say teacher absenteeism is a problem in most districts. In Los Angeles, teachers take off an average of nine days each year for illness or personal reasons and often miss another week or so of class while attending required workshops and training sessions.

“We know from research that by the time a student reaches the 12th grade, he or she will have spent the equivalent of one full school year in front of substitute teachers,” e-mailed Rick Bagley, director of human resources for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. “That’s an incredible statistic, but our own data . . . supports it.”

Their data also confirms what anecdotal accounts suggest--that teachers today take more days off than their counterparts in previous generations. Most districts grant teachers 10 days off with pay a year, which they can use for illness or personal reasons, or carry over from year to year. Veteran teachers tended to accumulate dozens, even hundreds, of unused days over the years, beginning early in their careers. But many young teachers today “have little, if any, accumulated sick leave after a few years of teaching,” Bagley said.

Perhaps that reflects a cultural shift that gives less priority to work and more to leisure, making it socially acceptable for any of us to take a day off from work to create a three-day weekend or catch the opening of the Nordstrom sale.

Or perhaps, as many teachers told me, there is so much more pressure--and less satisfaction--in education today, that teachers need more time away from their students to recharge their batteries. High-stakes testing, mountains of paperwork, discipline problems, continual training ... it can take a toll on the best teacher’s energy and passion.

“I haven’t missed a day in eight years,” wrote one San Fernando Valley high school teacher, a veteran of 28 years in the classroom. “I don’t need a pat on the back. I just feel that if I expect the students to be in school, then I should be there too.

“But each year, I feel teachers are spending less time doing what they are paid to do--teaching. It’s no wonder that so many are burned out.”

*

It’s clear, listening to complaints from all sides, that the problem has no easy solution. Teachers need more creative support from parents and administrators. And improving the lot of subs would help. Subbing is largely a thankless job, and our hit-and-miss system of hiring, training and assigning them does little to ensure that we get and keep the best.

California does better than most states. Here, substitutes are required to have a college degree and pass a series of tests. Large districts, like Los Angeles Unified, pay them more than $150 a day. In other states, the job pays as little as $45 a day, and all a sub needs is a high school or general equivalency diploma.

Still, every classroom teacher seems to have a horror story of a day squandered by a sub.

“I took one day off this year to drive my son to college up north,” wrote a Coachella Valley third-grade teacher. “My sub not only spelled every spelling word wrong on the board, but showed a [borrowed video] in class. He totally ignored my lesson plan. It took me a week to undo the damage he did with my class. I’ve made a commitment this year; I will be at school every day unless I am deathly ill.”

And substitute teachers will tell you that their best efforts are often undercut by unruly students, unprepared teachers and a system that feels like a Band-Aid on a festering sore.

“I know the reputation substitute teachers have and feel it is an unfair generalization,” e-mailed Tim Swanson, who has spent almost two years subbing, while he works toward his teaching credential. “I would much prefer helping students with algebra to showing films,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the way the system works, teachers have no idea who will be taking their class, so they play it safe by leaving a no-brainer lesson plan. This makes for a dull and unrewarding day for me, a wasted day for the students and a catch-up day for both students and teachers the following day. I just feel like an overpaid baby-sitter.”

And if the teacher is feeling uninspired, you can imagine how the students must feel.

*

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.