Substitute Teachers Fill In For Holiday Season

SEBRING - Around the holidays and on Fridays, there's a greater chance students will be facing a substitute teacher in their classroom.

With so many teachers taking off the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, on a "proposed" calendar for the 2007-08 school year there is no school for the entire week.

The school districts in Polk and Hardee counties, and some others in the state, take the week off, Deputy Superintendent Rodney Hollinger told the school board Tuesday. It should be considered for Highlands County because of the large number of substitutes who work on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, he said.

The district made the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a school holiday a few years ago, which created a five-day-off period from Wednesday through Sunday.

There's definitely patterns, with a need for more substitutes around the holidays, said School District Human Resources clerk Jennifer Cooper. A lot of people took the Monday and Tuesday off before Thanksgiving to get the whole week off.

Also, throughout the school year, Cooper noted a "Monday and Friday syndrome." But it's not just the teachers in Highlands County who are taking more time off at the beginning or end of the work week or around the holidays.

The Monday and Friday syndrome and the pre- and post-holiday syndrome were brought up this summer at a conference, School District Recruitment and Training Specialist Sean Rego said. "That's a national trend; how do you control it?"

Highlands County School District data from the first half of the 2006-07 school year shows Fridays as the highest day of the week for teacher absences with an average absentee rate of 9.12 percent.

Also, overall during the first half of the 2006-07 school year there were more absences during November and December, Human Resources Director Vivianne Waldron said.

Teachers get four sick days and six personal days in a school year, but those days are somewhat interchangeable, she said.

Substitute teacher Rebecca Hillman works three to four days a week at Lake Placid High School.

She is called to sub less often in the first month of school, but by the last half of the school year (January through May) she is called more often.

"In the past I did the elementary school, but I mainly do the high school now because a lot of people don't like to go to the high school," she said.

Teachers provide their daily lesson plans for the substitutes so students remain on task despite the efforts of some students to avoid class work.

After subbing for more than 10 years, Hillman knows the little ways students try to take advantage of the situation.

Students will say: "We already did this paper; we did that yesterday; our teacher doesn't make us do that."

One student will go to use the restroom and then five more will ask to go, that type of thing, she said. "You just know the game and you don't go along with it. It's a good time. I enjoy the kids."