The five-minute bell rings right as you’re walking into class. You’re just about to sit down when you realize that your teacher is nowhere to be found, and then you remember that they won’t be for a while.
Teachers sometimes must take extended leaves due to personal circumstances or they permanently retire during the school year. Often, a replacement teacher cannot be found and students are given a long-term substitute and some form of assignments to complete in their absence. Steven Williamson, a White Station High School history teacher, took a seven-week paternity leave. He was concerned about his students’ learning being affected by his leave but his family needed the support and his presence.
“[Knowing I had to be absent] was kind of bittersweet, because I knew I wouldn’t be there to help the students, especially my AP kids, who … have a test to take in May, but I also knew that it was imperative that I be home to help my wife,” Williamson said.
To prepare, Williamson continued his reading schedule for his Advanced Placement (AP) World History students, where they were expected to read and take notes on each chapter, and he created the assignments for his other world history classes. He also asked a former teacher to be his substitute so she could ensure they were completing their assignments that he would then grade.
“I’ve tried to make the assignments as repetitive as possible … and that way it’s kind of developed a pattern of the same expectations of what I expected from the kids,” Williamson said. “I like structure and … routine, so I figured in my absence, the best way I could kind of overcome not being there was [to] try and provide … some sort of structure and routine.”
From the student’s perspective, many factors can affect their learning from the subject they are taking, to how they are learning it and even the classroom environment. Nikolaus Shirley (10) is in Williamson’s AP World History class, and for him staying disciplined was most important to keep him on track and learning the material through doing the assigned work.
“So [his absence] only worked out because it was history. If it was math, I wouldn’t have been able to self-learn for six weeks and still actually get better at math,” Shirley said. “That’s because, [for math] you just need a teacher, someone who knows how to do it, telling you how to do it, picking out your mistakes. Then also, it helps when in math, you need a group of people because you do the problems together and so it’s more of a group learning subject. Whereas history is just memorization and reading. So, … you can teach yourself.”
Another important aspect of how students are able to perform in the absence of a teacher is the type of academic support they have. For Shirley, he relied on his classmates for support, but for others like Eve Li-Harms (10), present teachers of the same subject were helpful.
“I think the other computer science teacher, [Jacob Walz] … offered help to our class … So he was like, ‘You can come up anytime if you need help.’ So it’s really good we have him as a support.”
Li-Harms’s teacher, Thomas Harris, retired before winter break, and readjusting has been difficult because of the nature of the class, AP Computer Science Principles. The resources her class was given, a website called Project STEM, is “not AP geared.”
“I feel like there’s not just a big motivating factor anymore,” Li-Harms said. “We’re also kind of in the dark because this is like the first level of advanced computer science, and … I haven’t done any computer science courses previous to this class … I feel like we do have the resources, but it’s not the same as if we had a teacher in our classroom telling us what to do.”
For Williamson, the rigid structure of school is good for efficiency, but readjusting to teaching has been a bit tiring. Nevertheless, he was eager to return to helping his students learn.
“My favorite part about being back … as much as certain students … talk too much and get off task a bit, I did miss the smiling faces, the kids who wanted to learn, the kids who asked good questions,” Williamson said. “And I missed being amongst students who enjoy being here.”