Principal here-
OP, I’m sorry that happened to you. On behalf of all currently overworked principals like myself, we’re doing our best manage really stressful situations that are often out of our control. This week alone, I had…

—one teacher call out sick at 7am. Was able to use our site-based sub to cover. Great.
—then her teammate threw up less than an hour at school. Guess who covered her class most of the day? Me. And when I wasn’t in the class, I was in the cafeteria helping out as I do everyday.
—a sub who accepted a job weeks ago decided to cancel overnight. Gotta love those. 😒 Now on Red Rover I can see that they’ve picked up a different job. You can imagine my frustration as I’m working with my office team to scramble to figured out coverage.
—a teacher who has been going through infertility finally got pregnant and now has a lot of doctors appts to closely monitor. I couldn’t be happier for her. She’s been great about trying to schedule them towards the end of the day, but we still have to find coverage in-house to cover.
—to still cover local screening and IEP meetings so that the classroom teachers can attend the meetings. Between me, our AP, IAs, reading specialist and ESOL teachers, we’ve patched together coverage.

We’re all trying our best. And we appreciate our subs that do show up and help make a difference. Sometimes we are dealing with an ESOL sub showing up and a classroom sub not showing up. Guess which class has to be my number one priority? No one is trying to make things more difficult. It’s just really hard right now.

Thank you to everyone who follows through on jobs they accept and doing their best with our students.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a sub who is really sick of accepting a job, only to arrive at the school and be told I'll be doing something else. This has happened to me four times in the last month. Most recently, I signed up to sub for a 3rd grade teacher. Upon arrival, I was told they didn't need me anymore, but would I please monitor the cafeteria for two hours and then report back to the office for further instructions? I was furious, but tried to remain outwardly flexible and friendly, so I did as I was asked. After two miserable hours in the cafeteria, getting to clean up messes and scrub tables while surrounded by ear-splitting decibels, I returned to the office. I was then asked to cover for a couple of different teachers, which had me running back and forth to their classes until dismissal when I was told to help with bus duty.

Schools: when subs accept a job, make sure that you call them to cancel if they're no longer needed. This is not acceptable.

I'm sorry you feel this way, but this is my life as a non-classroom teacher. I go into work each day holding my breath to see if I will have a normal day, where I can do my actual job, or if I will be pulled for other duties. I am often doing cafeteria/recess duty/bus duty, covering a classroom, covering as a one-to-one para for a special needs child, or even sitting with a child who cannot be in their classroom after a significant behavior issue. This is the reality of public education today, with teacher and sub shortages. You are allowed to say no and ask how else you could help, or just leave. We have had subs do this in the past, and then we have subs who understand our struggles and pitch in however they are asked.

Anonymous wrote:Our ES did this last year all the time. We had a 6th grader AAP teacher who was retiring and burning through saved up leave. She had a smaller and well-behaved class. The school would post for a sub for that class, which was a good gig, and then redeploy the sub to a special ed class or much more behaviorally difficult class, and then have the AAP class move into another 6th grade class for the day OR sit out in the pod with minimal supervision. They did this all year.

Wow. That is deliberate bait-n-switch. I’m surprised they got away with it for so long.

I teach ESOL and if I secure a sub, they almost always get pulled to cover a class. I feel so badly about it, I don’t even want a sub for my groups but they encourage us to get coverage so those students get the hours of services, but then they don’t.

I would put your foot down on the cafeteria duty, but I think the rest you may have to suck up. The flexibility of subbing benefits you, but you need to be flexible as well for the school. The needs are so big right now.

Thank you so much!! Please don’t give up!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

You clearly don’t do I’m not sure why you felt the need to comment—maybe it’s been a few days since you got special attention for having TWO MASTERS DEGREES and you just felt the need to tell someone how smart you are.

I guarantee that PP that has two master's degree is currently a stay at home mom. GUARANTEE IT. That's why she had to tell you that she has two master's degrees.

Plus 1,000!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

You clearly don’t do I’m not sure why you felt the need to comment—maybe it’s been a few days since you got special attention for having TWO MASTERS DEGREES and you just felt the need to tell someone how smart you are.

I guarantee that PP that has two master's degree is currently a stay at home mom. GUARANTEE IT. That's why she had to tell you that she has two master's degrees.

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

Volunteering for something is very different than going in expecting to be paid for one thing and being told to do a completely different thing. You probably don't have a job so you wouldn't understand, but those of with jobs would be pretty pissed if we came in to, say, code the back end of a website and were told "actually, no, you're on vacuum duty today". That's not what I'm paid for.

Anonymous wrote:Our ES did this last year all the time. We had a 6th grader AAP teacher who was retiring and burning through saved up leave. She had a smaller and well-behaved class. The school would post for a sub for that class, which was a good gig, and then redeploy the sub to a special ed class or much more behaviorally difficult class, and then have the AAP class move into another 6th grade class for the day OR sit out in the pod with minimal supervision. They did this all year.

This happens with 6th grade classes at our school too. They are combined and sit on the floor all day, and the sub is repurposed to special ed.

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

Not okay at all. I’m a teacher and if nothing else you should understand this - I would wear different clothes if I’m teaching a class vs scrubbing cafeteria tables and cleaning messes all day. It’s different if you are volunteering and willing to do whatever to make the event happen. That’s not the case when you are hired for a job.

my mother is an FCPS sub, a licensed teacher in VA and says this happens to her once a month.

She will walk out. It is rude, inconsiderate and not contractually what the substitute agreed to when they accepted the third grade classroom teaching job or whatever.

There are not enough subs to go around and she keeps a blacklist of schools that don't treat her right because there are plenty of other schools that do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

You are incorrect. They are not volunteering for a PTA event. Sit down.

This. Subbing is a job, not a volunteer gig. I have a master’s degree and a law degree (totally irrelevant info, PP) and have scrubbed many a cafeteria table while volunteering at PTA events but that’s not what this is. OP signed up to sub for third grade. That’s the job she should have received. If the sub job was something like “as needed,” that would be different.

This.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t blame you for not wanting to do this but it isn’t demeaning. Do you look down on the people who monitor the cafeterias? Probably not.

This comment is irrelevant-OP did not imply that she is looking down on anyone. She was very clear to say this was not what she agreed to. IF you are hired to teach and they ask you to go landscape-would that be ok? It wouldn't and that does not mean anyone looks down on landscapers it means it's not what the person was hired for.

This is one reason I won’t sub. I’m a retired teacher, too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

Although I agree with this, I think she is upset that they did not call to inform her she was no longer needed for the position she signed up, and given her the choice to optionally come in for different duties. She didn’t sign up to work for cafeteria duty. I believe subs have a choice of what they signup for before going in.

Some subs do not do it for money and they don’t need to money. They do it because they enjoy subbing in certain areas of interest.

PP you replied. This makes sense.

To the others who replied nastily to my post, wow, I struck a nerve. Have a great day!

LOL

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They pay you, right? If they sent you home, would they still pay you? For having showed up in the morning, paid for childcare and cleared your day?

I scrubbed tables, swept, cleaned up, wipes noses, when I volunteered for the PTA (when you organize entire events, sometimes you have to do that). I have two graduate degrees. No work is demeaning.

I think part of the work of a sub is to be placed where the need is, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation.

You are incorrect. They are not volunteering for a PTA event. Sit down.

This. Subbing is a job, not a volunteer gig. I have a master’s degree and a law degree (totally irrelevant info, PP) and have scrubbed many a cafeteria table while volunteering at PTA events but that’s not what this is. OP signed up to sub for third grade. That’s the job she should have received. If the sub job was something like “as needed,” that would be different.