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Waking up at 5:30 a.m. to come up with a lesson plan is in no way a teacher’s favorite thing to do, but sometimes there is no alternative. Not being able to attend school for various reasons is fairly common for many teachers at NS, and it unsurprisingly has a negative impact on learning.
A common reason teachers are unable to attend school is illness.
“My daughter has been sick a lot this past year, and so I have had to miss a few days of classes,” said English teacher Jori Turpin. Turpin often has little to no buffer time to line up substitutes when her daughter is sick.
“I’ll wake up at six in the morning and call the office because [my daughter] was throwing up last night,” Turpin said. These short notices give the teacher very little time to come up with a lesson plan for the day.
Many teachers are also unable to attend school due to school activities such as sports or clubs.
“Because I am part of a sports team I get to miss a lot of class,” said Matt Braithwaite, teacher at NS. Braithwaite often misses classes on the same day of the week multiple times because of consistent sports schedules.
Braithwaite admits that while the sporting events were fun, he was still a little worried about his classes. Others feel similarly.
“I just can’t get school completely out of my head when I am unable to attend,” Turpin said. Turpin had a few absences earlier in the year when the volleyball team had to leave for events, and she often worried about her classes at NS.
“In a lot of my classes, especially French, the substitutes cannot show up and just teach the material,” said Turpin. On these days Turpin often has to assign bookwork to make sure the students are getting something out of the day, and even then she usually has to cover the material again. Some students feel that these class periods are a waste of time.
“I don’t get anything out of lessons when substitutes teach,” said Kayden Jenkins, sophomore at NS. Many students have had teachers miss classes this year for various reasons. Jenkins feels that he could’ve done the work and understood the material more quickly were the teacher there to explain it.
“If I try to understand the lesson and do the work we’ll just have to cover the material again anyway,” Jenkins said. He recognizes that teachers have to miss school for various reasons, but he feels that there should be something better than bookwork or busy work to do during the class.
Teachers at NS are unable to attend school for a variety of reasons throughout the year. Whether it be sickness or activity related absences, these times away from school affect students negatively.
