absenteeism

Stop Normalizing the Exploitation of Teachers 

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Nearly everyday I get to school only to be confronted by the call-off sheets. 


 
Pages and pages of people who aren’t coming in to work – and the substitute teachers assigned to take over their classes.


 
Yikes, it’s a long list today.

I see Mrs. K is still out. She was sobbing in the faculty room last week. Wonder what that was about.

Rumor has it Mr. C was rushed to the nurse to have his blood pressure taken after his face turned beet red in the middle of his last class yesterday. Not a shock that he’s missing.

And Ms. P’s out again. I can’t blame her. If one of my students attacked me, I’d have trouble coming back, too.

My eyes pour down the names of absent teachers and present substitutes only to find the one I’m dreading – my own.

I’m expected to sub for Mrs. D’s 8th period – again.

Great.


 
Too many kids I barely know stuffed into a tiny room. Last time there was almost a fight. Will they even listen to me this time?

I have my own classes. I shouldn’t have to do this.


 
But that’s exactly what’s expected of teachers these days.  


 
If your colleagues are absent and there aren’t enough subs, you have no choice. You have to fill in somewhere.  


 
Normally, I wouldn’t mind all that much. After all, I AM being paid for doing the extra work. But day-after-day, week-after-week, for months on end – it’s exhausting.  

It’s not my responsibility to make sure every room in the building is covered.  


 


I never applied to fix the district’s supply and demand issues. 


 
It makes it harder to do my own work. Beyond the increased stress of being plopped into a situation you know nothing about, subbing means losing my daily 40-minute planning period.  


 
Grading student work, crafting lessons, reading IEPs, doing paperwork, making copies, filling out behavior sheets, contacting parents, keeping up with Google Classroom and other technologies and multi-media – one period a day is not nearly enough time for it all.

Not to mention it’s my only chance outside of lunch that I can go to the bathroom.  


 
And now I don’t even get that! If I’m going to do even the most basic things to keep my head above water, I have to find the time somewhere – usually by stealing it from my own family. 


 
Even under normal circumstances I routinely have to do that just to get the job done. But now I have to sacrifice even more!  


 
I’ll be honest. I often end up just putting off the most nonessential things until I get around to them. 


 
This month, alone, I’ve only had four days I didn’t have to sub. That’s just four planning periods to get all the groundwork done – about one period a week. Not even enough time to just email parents an update on their children’s grades. So little time that yesterday when I actually had a plan, there was so much to do I nearly fell over.  


 
When I frantically ran to the copier and miraculously found no one using it, I breathed a sigh of relief. But it turned into a cry of pain when the thing ran out of staples and jammed almost immediately.  


 
I didn’t have time for this.  


 
I don’t have time for things to work out perfectly! 


 
So like most teachers after being confronted with the call-off sheet for long enough, that, itself, becomes a reason for me to call off. 

I am only human.


 
I figure that I might be able to do my own work today, but I’m just too beat to take on anyone else’s, too.

Some days I get home from work and I have to spend an hour or two in bed before I can even move.

And my health is suffering.  

I’ve had more trips to the emergency room, doctor’s visits, medical procedures and new prescriptions the beginning of this year than any other time I’ve been teaching.


 
It’s a problem of exploitation and normalization. 


 
Exploitation is when you treat someone unfairly for your own benefit. 


 
Our schools have been doing that to teachers for decades – underpaying them for the high responsibilities they have, expecting each individual to do the work of multiple people and when anything goes wrong, blaming them for it. 


 
The way we mishandle call-offs is a case in point. 


 
When so many educators are absent each day, that’s not an accident. It’s the symptom of a problem – burn out.  


 


We’ve relied on teachers to keep the system running for so many years, it’s about to collapse. And the pandemic has only made things worse.  


 
We piled on so many extra duties – online teaching, hybrid learning, ever changing safety precautions – these became the proverbial straw that broke educators’ backs.  


 
And now we’re screaming in pain and frustration that we can’t go on like this anymore. That’s what the call-off sheet means. It’s a message – a cry for help. But few administrators allow themselves to see it. 


 
They won’t even admit there is a problem.  


 
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard principals and administrators talk about the call-off sheet like it’s an act of God or a force of nature like a flood or a tornado.  


 
No! This wasn’t unpredictable! This didn’t just happen! It’s your fault!  


 


If there have been a high number of call-offs nearly every day for the past few weeks, it’s not a freak of nature when it happens again today! Administrators are responsible for anticipating that and finding a solution. 


 
This is not a situation where our school leaders are helpless. 


 
There are things they can do to alleviate this situation – reducing nonessential tasks, eliminating unnecessary paperwork, refraining from excess staff meetings, forgoing new initiatives, letting teachers work from home on professional development days – anything to give us a break and an opportunity to heal from the years of overburdening.

These are just the short term solutions – the things that don’t require money or political will. 


 
However, most administrators refuse to do any of it! They refuse to even admit there is a problem.  


 
They’re happy to just let teachers keep picking up the slack. 


 
That’s what I mean by normalization.  


 
It’s taking a bad situation and redefining it as usual, typical and expected. 


 
It’s like saying “This is the way things are now. This is school. This is our new baseline.”  


 
However, it is not sustainable! 


 
We cannot continue to apply the old model of public schooling to the problems we have today. It didn’t work before the pandemic and now it is frayed to the breaking point.  


 
When the first wave of Covid-19 washed over us and many schools went to online learning, leaders promised we’d rebuild back better when they finally reopened. 


 
This was the perfect chance, they said, to change, to reform the things that weren’t working and do all the positive things we’d wanted to do for years.  


 
Even at the time I thought it was rather optimistic to the point of naivety. Time has proven me correct.

 


 
Since schools have reopened, there has been no rebuilding back better. We’ve been forced to accept things worse.  


 
Teachers were already trickling away from the profession before Covid-19 was even discovered. Now they’re running away in droves.  

Standardized tests were always poor assessments of student learning. Now we’re encouraged to spend every minute teaching to those tests to overcome the bogeyman of “learning loss.”

Poor and minority students often suffered more traumas and insecurities than their wealthier and more privileged peers. Now after as much as two years of online learning, student trauma is the norm. Kids lack the basic social skills needed to communicate without fighting and they’re taking out their frustration on their teachers.

It’s a raging dumpster fire. And few people in a position to take action have the courage to do so.

Few are even brave enough to admit the dumpster is on fire.

Teachers cannot be exploited forever.

Even we have our limits.

We want to be there for students and their families, but we can’t do that if we’re sick and suffering.

We are a renewable resource but we need renewed.

If society is not willing to do that, there will be none of us left.

The call-off sheet will stretch to the horizon and there will be no one there to take our place.

 

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I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Blaming Schools for Student Absences is Like Denouncing Doctors for Disease

stevenmsinger absenteeism, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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If something is wrong with children, it must be the school’s fault.

 

Right?

 

If kids can’t read, write and do ‘rithmetic, the teachers must not have taught ’em right.

 

It couldn’t have anything to do with home life, generational poverty, economic inequality and systemic racism.

 

Except that it almost always does.

 

Inextricably.

 
The fact is children who don’t live in safe, loving homes have much greater difficulty concentrating and caring about academics. Kids with impoverished parents are much more likely to go to underfunded schools and sit in classrooms that are racially segregated.

 

None of that is under the control of teachers or schools, but a focus on high stakes standardized testing, school privatization and dangerously unregulated ed tech hides the problem.

 
It’s not that teachers don’t teach. Inequality, prejudice and privatization – these are the root causes and the reason we do nothing about them generation after generation is that we have an easy scapegoat in the public schools in general and public school teachers in particular.

 
Take student absences.

 

It’s a huge problem.

 

When kids don’t show up to school, they learn less. It’s a simple concept.

 

Yet just four years ago when we had a chance to rewrite the federal law governing public education to actually DO SOMETHING about the problems we’re facing, we dropped the ball. Again!

 

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to include five indicators measuring school performance: four based on academic achievement, and a fifth, “non-academic” measure of student success.

 

Most states have adopted chronic student absenteeism as this “fifth indicator.”

 

So we take those five indicators, weight them and combine them together to get overall school scores that are used to sort and rank educational institutions. That way we can prioritize funding to the highest performers and withhold it from the lowest.

 

It’s the same supply side nonsense we’ve been doing for years with a few numbers moved around and given a different name.

 

Schools overflowing with resources serving rich white kids get a sticker. Schools starving for resources serving poor brown kids get a kick.

 

And somehow that’s supposed to help things get better.

 

Don’t get me wrong. Absenteeism is important.

 

Nearly 8 million students missed 15 or more days of school in 2015-16 — an increase from the 6.8 million who missed the same amount in 2013-14, when the federal Department of Education began tracking the data. And there’s a mountain of research that links chronic absenteeism with poor academic performance, delayed graduation, and increased dropout rates.

 

But putting it all on neighborhood schools and local districts is a huge abrogation of responsibility.

 

By and large, public schools do not cause students to be absent. Nor do they have the resources to ensure these students start attending.

 

But we’ve found someone to blame and that’s really all this whole exercise was about in the first place.

 

It’s like denouncing your doctor for your disease. It won’t cure you, but it might make you feel justified as you die.

 

The reasons students are chronically absent have little to do with individual schools.

 

According to Attendance Works, a non-profit focusing on ways to improve student attendance, the main causes of chronic absences are:

 

•Chronic disease or lack of health care and/or dental care.

 

•The need to care for siblings or other family members.

 

•Unmet basic needs: transportation, housing, food, clothing, etc.

 

•Trauma.

 

•Feeling unsafe getting to school.

 

•Academic or social struggles.

 

•Being teased or bullied.

 

•Poor school climate or unsafe schools.

 

•Parents had negative school experience.

 

•Lack of engaging and relevant instruction.

 

•Peer pressure to be with peers out of school vs. in school.

 

•No meaningful relationships with adults in school.

 

•High suspension rates and disproportionate school discipline.

 

Certainly some of these things are under the control of school directors, administrators, and teachers.

 

Schools can and should provide safe ways for students to get to and from school. They should work to reduce bullying and make school a welcoming place for all children. They should provide engaging instruction, fair discipline policies and reach out to parents and the community.

 

But most schools are already doing that – or certainly trying to do that within the confines of their budgets.

 

My own Western Pennsylvania district has been flagged by the Commonwealth for increasing chronic absences. In the state, this is defined as students with 10 or more unexcused absences. We’ve been put on an improvement plan – which basically means an employee at the state Department of Education wagging his finger and telling us to get better or else.

 

However, the overarching problem and solution are easy to see. We are a district without busing.

 

The high school and middle school sit on top of a hill. Students who live in the poorer sections of town at the bottom of the hill have to walk or take public transportation daily to get to school.

 

It’s no wonder that some of them don’t do that every day and stay home instead.

 

However, we serve a mostly impoverished population. Decades ago, school directors decided it would be more cost effective to save money on busing so they could provide greater services for students. Yet as the economy has continued to stagnate and funding has become even more hard to come by, attendance has worsened.

 

So what are we to do? Cut services and add buses?

 

Doing so would mean we’d have to bus students to local charter schools as well, increasing the burden on taxpayers and the amount of muscle and bone we’d have to cut from our own academic programs.

 

It’s all very well and good to have the federal government tell us that attendance is important – but where is the help to improve it?

 

As with everything else in education, we get threats and the promise of economic sanctions but nothing in the way of assistance, aide or intervention.

 

We could be working together to try to solve this and other social issues. We could pool resources and construct social programs to help parents get jobs, set up stable homes, fund robust systems of public transportation, and a host of social services for students and their families such as tutoring, counseling, child care, and continuing education classes. We could end discriminatory policies such as school segregation, school privatization and high stakes standardized testing.

 

But doing so would mean abandoning the blame game and nothing has worked better to shield the rich from paying their fair share than pointing fingers at the less privileged and those who dedicate their lives to help them.

 

In truth, the problems with public schools are rarely the teachers.

 

It’s that society has written them off and refuses to take responsibility for its own role in supporting the next generation.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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