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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My first grader still does not have a permanent teacher for her class yet.  They are now hiring a long term sub who has zero experience in the classroom, while continuing to look for a permanent teacher. I’m new to MCPs, and wondering if this is a common thing that happens. Are subs usually any random person who applies?  No teaching or classroom experience needed at all?   Has anyone had a situation where their child never gets a permanent teacher the entire year?[/quote]

Substitutes, and quality ones, are a weakness of MCPS. While I won't say your situation is unheard of, I also wouldn't say it's common. Did the teacher leave after the school year started? That's usually where I see scenarios like the one you've described.[/quote]

No. They never had a teacher. One day before school started they apparently enrolled an extra student over the cap, to give them a 4th class. So they immediately split up the existing 3 classes, and assigned my daughter’s class two different staff members to teach the class. Now they are transitioning to a long term sub because they can’t find a teacher, and the staff members need to do their originally hired positions. [/quote]

What a mess. [b]This seems like the principal fumbled here[/b] since they planned on hiring a teacher and clearly didn't have a candidate in the pipeline capable of making it in time for the beginning of the school year.[/quote]

+1. Sounds like an inexperienced principal.[/quote]

I’m a different PP but at the same school. The extra class was added the day before classes started and no candidates were available at that point. It’s actually a very experienced principal who is usually really good at this but the timing here was impossible. You can reserve someone when lots of other schools know they have positions confirmed.[/quote]

The principal should not have split the classes up until they had a new teacher hired.  The teacher shortage is a real thing, and an experienced principal should have known how hard it would be to hire a teacher at that point.  I feel bad for these first graders. [/quote]

I disagree. I'm in a situation now where all the kindergarten classes are well above the max (a Title I/Focus school with 22-23 kids per class, supposed to be capped at 18/19). There is no more money for an additional allocation and so we are stuck with huge classes. The principal of this particular school likely recognized that the offer of another class was fleeting and it was best to take it while you can. Even the situation of having two staff members cover the class (I'm guessing a reading teacher and a math teacher) is better than having huge classes. Hopefully the long-term sub is getting support, but really, I will argue that I'd rather my 1st grader be in a small class with a so-so inexperienced teacher than a big class with someone "better" at teaching.[/quote]

I think it is very kid dependent. I have a kid that would do fine in a bigger class, so I’d much prefer a solid experienced teacher in a larger class versus a long term sub who it sounds like has never been in a classroom before.  I’d especially feel this way for a first grader, who is in a year where a lot of growth should be made in areas like reading.  My kids have had two brand new teachers in small class sizes, and the experience was terrible.  Never again. I’ll take a bigger class with a solid teacher over smaller class size with a bad teacher any day. Obviously YMMV[/quote]

I’ve been that teacher with the larger class size.

Each extra student means more papers to grade, more behaviors to watch, more parents to contact, more data to track, more emails to respond to.

Not to mention more noise, more movement around the classroom, and more stress.

Large classes are one of the many reasons we are quitting. 
[/quote]

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