• All three children reported having worked with substitute teachers on 10 or more days this year. This does include substitutes filling in for teachers other than their primary instructors (art, music, physical education, and others).
• Two of the children each reported at least one instance where part of the day that their permanent teacher returned was spent allowing the class to “finish the movie.”
• None of the children felt the movies they watched should be described as “educational.” No Donald Duck in Mathland, no Phantom Tollbooth, no movie versions of a book they were reading in class at the time, no old VHS copies of Square One or 3-2-1 Contact, not even Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer were reported as having been watched. The list of movies watched included Horton Hears a Who (the Jim Carrey version), Beauty and the Beast, Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc., and two episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants.
• All three children each reported that their classrooms contained televisions hooked up to computers and that they had previously watched academic video streamed from the pc to the screen by their permanent teachers.
• Two of the three students have more than one permanent teacher in their classroom on a daily basis.

We recognize that it is often difficult for a substitute teacher to maintain the flow of the permanent teacher’s instruction. However, we are not talking about asking a retired electrician to fill in for an Advanced Placement Calculus class (which we would contend could still be a productive day for those students).

Our unscientific study reveals an unfortunate waste of fairly limited class time,  and we can see how this sets up expectations on the part of the students for unproductive days with substitute teachers in the future.

What experiences have you or your children had with substitute teachers?  Please share them below.