Mid year new teacher

[Anonymous]

Has anyone had a teacher leave mid year? How did it go? Do you feel that they still had a good year? My sons 2nd grade teacher isn’t coming back from maternity leave and his awesome permanent sub can’t stay past the end of December. They said they are going to hire a new teacher, but I feel that all the great teachers already have jobs. It’s just taking me back to my experience where I had 3 different teachers in 6th grade and learned nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone had a teacher leave mid year? How did it go? Do you feel that they still had a good year? My sons 2nd grade teacher isn’t coming back from maternity leave and his awesome permanent sub can’t stay past the end of December. They said they are going to hire a new teacher, but I feel that all the great teachers already have jobs. It’s just taking me back to my experience where I had 3 different teachers in 6th grade and learned nothing.

Don't assume all the great teachers are taken. There are lots of reasons that good teachers may be hired at that time: new graduates; moves because of spousal employment; personal reasons--perhaps they had an ill family member; etc.

One of the best teachers I know started mid-year. She was an Army wife with over 20 years experience. She replaced a teacher who had to leave to care for her terminally ill child. It was very sad, but the class did get a good replacement.

[Anonymous]

As PP mentioned, there are teachers who relocate mid-year. Sometimes there are also good paraeducators or subs who get promoted after completing degrees. It is a little more challenging to settle in when starting in January because there’s less ramp-up time to lesson plan or create classroom materials. The teacher is also taking in classroom management routines and a other set-ups that were created by other people. Some people do well to run with it, while others find that the existing classroom never feels like a great fit. That said, children are fairly resilient and contemporary accountability measures, curricula, and data keeping make it less likely that you’d have the lost time in your child’s classroom that you experienced in your youth.

[Anonymous]

We had this in 3rd grade and it was terrible.

The replacement teacher was fresh out of school, and not given any support. DD learned nothing the rest of that year.

OP, talk to other parents and if it's not working reach out to the Principal. We should have done that more. It was a miserable situation.

[Anonymous]

There’s a situation at my school right now that’s similar to this- main teacher left a month in, short term sub then longer term subs and after Christmas another long term sub will step in for the rest of the year. Honestly, it isn’t ideal (I am a fellow teacher). Yes the kids will learn. Hopefully the team is helping the subs with content and establishing consistency. No question it’s not ideal and kids do better with one teacher throughout the year but it happens and everyone just does the best. Your kid will get through okay, luckily 2nd grade isn’t a super important year (no SOLs) but will it be their best school year ever? Probably not. But they won’t have any negative lasting impact either.

[Anonymous]

I left mid year after health complications with my child after birth. The person that took my place was finishing a grad program and had years of experience as an assistant. It’s ten years later and we still work together. Don’t assume the worst!

[Anonymous]

Find out what supports your system has in place to support new hires.