Regardless of how healthy you ordinarily are, children are germy and they transfer those germs to you every time they love on you. Your first couple of years you will probably catch a few more colds than is customary. You have got to be prepared to be absent with little notice. Yes, it is absolutely more trouble to be absent than it is to just go to school but if you go when you are legitimately sick, you will just perpetuate the sickness in your class. Most teachers have a “Sub Tub” or a notebook with lots of information to leave for a substitute teacher. Some subs come in with the goal of keeping everyone alive and relatively quiet until the end of the day while others will teach your lessons, give tests, grade them and leave you an itemized list of everything every child in your class did that day. Go ahead and make enough copies of work students should be able to do in class. You need at least three days worth but ideally, you should have a week’s worth. Have different folders in the sub tub for different subjects so that the sub will be able to easily access the practice work. Include a class roster including a list of trustworthy students to ask if the sub wants to know where something is or how you do certain things. Include your daily schedule and list a neighboring teacher who will be able to help the sub if needed. Include a seating chart, classroom jobs, class routines and procedures, and an overview of your behavior management system.  If your absence is planned, leave a note for the guest teacher written on the board so the children can see it. Suggest that if the students show her respect and cooperation x number of times that day, they will earn extra minutes of recess when you return.

I can’t stress how important it is for you to have lesson plans prepared for your  PEC students, well in advance, for your planned or unexpected absence. This folder should include , but not limited to, a general overview of behavioral/emotional/social/academic concerns for each PEC student. In a typical Inclusion classroom, our PEC students  follow the grade level curriculum of their classmates, with accommodations as needed ( this will be written in detail in each student’s IEP). I also kept a list of  specific substitute teachers who worked well with our students and understood their individual needs.

In addition, before I asked them if they would be on my substitute list,  I invited them into our classroom to spend some time getting to know our PEC students and their routine, as well as the classroom routine.

Remember, most of our PEC students find “change” difficult on many levels. Their day will go much smoother if the teacher taking your place is a friendly face that they have already had a positive encounter with.

Pamela Webster, M. Ed., SPED