If you are wondering why this post is only going up now instead of way earlier, I lost both my internet and my car for most of this week, needing to rely on hospitality to get to and from the school. I've been unable to get to an internet connection until mine finally went back up today. My apologies to my group mates for any annoyances this may have caused.
Speaking of my car, that is what I wish to talk about in this post, because it made me think of something very interesting. It's a situation I've never read about in any of our texts before. I should begin with where the problem started and work my way from there.
It was lunch time early this past week. As I have taken my custom to do, I was driving back from picking up something to eat down the road. Approaching the intersection of 21st and Hillside, my car began to make a terrible squealing sound. I groaned, knowing that I'd have to have it looked at when I got home. It didn't make it that far. As I pulled into the turn lane and up to the light, the car simply stopped running. It just sat there, unable to start, and not even willing to turn the engine over. Of course, this being lunch hour traffic, I had a great deal of people lined up behind me who wanted me to move, but I could not. This was not the worst of the situation. The worst was that I did not have my cell phone on me, and thus I lacked any way of calling for assistance. The people who were whipping around me angrily now were not interested in providing any.
Luckily, I broke down very near the police station and I was able to just walk over and get help. Here's my problem as it related to education though. I was delayed with my car for the next hour and a half, well past the allotted time for lunch. I'm in the middle of having full control of all of my CT's classrooms. The only reason I was able to make it back to the building without missing any classes is because my plan period immediately follows lunch.
My question is as follows: What if I had broken down without a cell phone (this means I had no way of contacting the school and letting them know what was happening) and I had been forced to miss a class I was supposed to teach? What would the school policy be to do then?
This is a situation that was entirely out of my control. If I were a full time teacher, who would watch my students? No one would know I wasn’t returning to my classroom unless a student went and reported my sudden disappearance to another teacher or the office. I would assume in that case they would have to send someone to at least watch the class. I do recall a few times in my high school career that a teacher no-showed a classroom which was then watched by the principal of vice principal. It essentially became a study hall as they didn’t utilize any sub materials for the class. That is either because there weren’t any (since the teacher was expecting to be there), or because they chose not to; I do not know which.
This situation really got me thinking about this issue, which is something we’ve never really talked about before. We talk about being prepared for sudden sick days, but the possibility of unexpected, sudden disappearances from the classroom seems like a good topic to discuss at some point. There must be some standard of procedure for these things I would imagine.
