At least some readers should put today’s eduhonest.com entry in the “job hunt” category.

There will be an absolutely gruesome shortage of substitute teachers next year. I wrote earlier posts on subbing when the number of available sub positions began climbing early this year, but those posts were short term thoughts. I stand by the advice in “Yes, We Have No Substitutes Today” and hope it will help teachers to get the back-up they need, but I am afraid my advice will not help teachers in more challenging schools next year.

Schools may open in the fall. If they do, most of those retired men and women who form a fat percentage of many sub pools will not be clicking on the openings on their screens. The job pays poorly — in some areas less than $100 per day. For a great number of retired subs, subbing represents a little spending money and a reason to get up and change out of their pajamas. Subbing is often fun for retired teachers, a chance to read “A Porcupine Named Fluffy” to the crowd on the rug, or to share the story of the American Revolution with older kids.

But subbing is also an adventure in ducking germs. Cough, cough. Cough. Cough. “Can I go to the nurse?” The stream of kids headed to the Kleenex box throughout the day comes with the territory.

I don’t think many retirees will listen to that coughing next year. Until a viable vaccination becomes available, balancing the $100 per day against COVID-19 risk, I expect former subs to stay home and take long dog walks instead. Maybe a few will look into getting their real estate licenses. In the meantime, teachers will end up covering for each other during their students’ specials and their own planning periods.

Eduhonesty: As you consider where and what you may be teaching next year, if you are given any choice, I would keep these thoughts on subbing in mind. If I were searching for a teaching position, I would want to know how a possible district paid subs in comparison to nearby districts. The subs won’t exactly vanish. Young, aspiring teachers will still be there. Hearty moms with education credits and all their kids in school should mostly be showing up too. But if the pool shrinks significantly, those districts that pay $95 per day will go wanting while the district that pays $120 will find more help.

I would also talk to district teachers about their personal sub situations since money makes up only part of the equation. Supportive administrations and engaged students will attract subs even when the money is not great. Big red flag: Problems getting substitutes last year should make teacher candidates cautious. Any district that encountered sub troubles in 2019 will be in greater trouble — maybe much greater trouble depending on the make-up of their sub pool — in 2020.

I strongly recommend adding the sub factor into any job search this year.

Lack of subs may sound innocuous to those without experience — but going day after day with lost planning periods can be extremely rough. And those planning periods will disappear. If Mr. X is out with the flu, someone has to cover Mr. X’s classes. That “someone” becomes a group of teachers who give up their planning times to take over Mr. X’s classes throughout the day. An administrator may step in on occasion, but mostly the burden is shouldered by other teachers who may pick up a little extra pay, but who lose the downtime during their days.

P.S. I expect requirements to become a substitute to be relaxed soon. This might become the right time to invite the right friend or neighbor to join the sub pool in your school.

I am not going to put forth a long, reasoned post against the idea of evaluations in this time. Kudos to those districts and states who are dropping teacher evaluations for the year. A walk down the Hall of Shame for any others. I am just going to share a comment by a young friend who captured the drama of evaluating teachers harshly in this (and other) times:

“A job evaluation should not feel like your dog just got hit by a car.”

No PD speaker, book or journal article has ever expressed this idea better in my view. Even if Charlotte Danielson meant well, and those State Departments of Education were trying to boost test scores as best they could, the fact is that many evaluation instruments are filled with slots that represent ambushes in a time when at least some administrators feel “there’s always room for improvement,” a phrase that tends to translate to “almost nobody ever gets an “Excellent” or “Distinguished” in anything.”

Eduhonesty: During the coronavirus craziness, I’d ask those people who are still inexplicably evaluating teachers to remember the above phrase:

“A job evaluation should not feel like your dog just got hit by a car.”

Hugs to to everyone who is staring at that evaluation in disbelief, especially those parents who have been trying to homeschool while also teaching their classes and keeping homebound children from bouncing off the walls. I’ll add one more thought: The relationship that always makes you cry? They call that relationship “toxic” — and usually recommend that you walk away as soon as you are able to set up a safe departure plan. I might start by finding happy colleagues within the many social media groups online. Ask yourself: where would I rather teach? Then check the postings.

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I read a post from a coworker yesterday, a coworker who was “feeling furious.” She is trying to manage district on-line learning demands. She ended up starving by day’s end — no time for food — and “in tears, shaking and nauseous.” Teacher friends commiserated, sharing that they also had no time for family, food or friendly video chats.

Eduhonesty: Today’s message is simple. Until and unless school districts can provide childcare for the teachers in their district who are sheltering at home, they need to back off. Teachers should be given the time they require to take care of themselves and their own children. Newsflash for administrators: You can’t save this year. It’s lost. I’d suggest trying to hold on to the loyalty and support of your staff for next year.

Many of America’s teachers are home with their children, expected to provide home-schooling for their own children while also texting, calling, and emailing all 26 families in their classrooms. These educators are helping their own children to find and manage online classroom demands, while making meals, managing emotional trauma, helping with loneliness, playing ball, finding other games for bored kids, managing overuse of electronics inside the home, in addition to all the regular parenting tasks that suck up each day in bits and pieces: baths, laundry, kitchen, bathroom and floor cleaning, cat care, dog walks, paying bills, changing lightbulbs, checking on parents, family and friends, and finally bedtime stories. In too many cases, those educators are then skipping that post-bedtime relaxation, instead calling families whose children are not going online because mom, dad or someone has decided that online learning is interfering with COVID-19 life. Title of an Education Week news article that I just discovered on my phone: “Where are they? Students go missing in shift to remote classes.” In the absence of a 48-hour day, this set-up is a perfect recipe for a major emotional meltdown. Some administrators are forcing teachers to drive books and materials out to student’s porches. Even single or older teachers without children at home are sometimes being expected to work nonstop all day with glitchy technology to produce… what? “Rigorous common lesson plans” that perhaps almost no one will complete?

Newsflash for clueless administrators: You can’t make parents do anything they don’t want to do right now. This craziness should stop, stop, stop. I can guarantee readers that the children of the teachers in the middle of this on-line push will not say on some future career day, “I want to be a teacher.” At this rate, nobody will ever want to be a teacher again.

May I suggest a trip to https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-home-school.html ? Dr. Jennie Weiner is an associate professor of educational leadership and she does a stellar job of explaining why she is not doing Coronavirus homeschooling — at least not the homeschooling being thrown at her as an option. Parents are always homeschooling, every day. I’d say we ought to let parents decide how they want to do their homeschooling right now. If that’s an opt-out, then teachers should be left alone to accept parents’ wishes.

And, damn, can we forget about grades? Grades are stupid this spring. What are we grading? Access to technology in many cases. It’s hard to work on a phone and a phone may be all the connection students own. We are grading competition with siblings in others. That kid with four brothers and sisters? He may not be getting a lot of screen time and his parent or parents may not have time to do the day’s packet with him. Levels of cooperation by parents will also be part of any grade. Jennie Weiner has opted out of homeschooling and I’d guess she has millions of counterparts in greater or lesser degree. Then there’s the problem of the parent who has to use the household technology to work from home… I loved this FB quote, too: “Ugh. Dear webinars, plz just make slides I can download and read? I am not an auditory learner!” Current online lessons may be more problematic for the auditory learner than the visual learner, but the fact is that many kids benefit from classroom interventions that help them access material they cannot effectively read. Those interventions may not exist in the home. The huge and manifold inequities inherent in the shift to online learning should automatically shut down any idea of spring grades.

I am not against providing schooling for children at home. Schools should make this treacherous time a period of enrichment, an early summer school creative writing class with fun reading assignments for those who will read, adding in recreational mathematics at free sites and certainly art projects and fun days. This is a perfect time to let children post pictures of themselves to virtual classrooms, showing their braids sticking up through paper plates and donuts for crazy hair day.

P.S. Fellow teachers, if your routine is bringing you to tears, I suggest letting some of the home rules go by the wayside. If administrative demands are making you feel frantic or overwhelmed, well, another episode of Power Rangers Beast Morphers honestly won’t matter in the long-run. A few hours of phone games won’t rot anyone’s brain. I suggest sitting down to watch Stranger Things with the older crowd. Let go, let go, let go. Do what you have to do to get by. Then make cocoa for everybody and ignore those emails until you feel ready for them.

WebQuests: Life is a webquest right now. My current quest involves getting Amazon Prime to give me a window for a Whole Foods delivery. Two have escaped already, for no reason I understand. I think the pantry will eventually send me canned pineapple. The run on peaches seems to have wiped out any supply. I managed to order Coffee Mate, which my spouse considers palatable. As to Whole Foods and Amazon, the site’s simply overloaded, I fear.

Readers who are not as far into the crazy as Cook County in Illinois – please pay heed! I drove a girlfriend with vision troubles out to stock up on paper goods a few weeks ago. She declined that last package of toilet paper I tried to put in her cart. Well, she’s running low and there is no toilet paper. A couple of days ago, she went out to a favored area grocery store. They were selling one roll for one dollar with a limit of one to a customer. This morning they had none. The quest for TP is in full swing around here. People attack like a battery of starving barracuda when a pallet of that precious white paper is unloaded. I know people who have driven around for hours to do battle with the Invasion of the Toilet Paper Snatchers.

This post was going to be about webquests for students and I will finish that quest in the next day or two – I love to create webquests – but I thought I might put in a practical post today. Are you in a smaller city that has not yet been hit hard? Or even an out of the way area with no or almost no cases?

I’m about to write a few unpopular thoughts. But I want to help. And I know I am right.

Wherever you are, you are probably too late to find masks or hand sanitizer. If not, BUY THEM NOW. You don’t have to load up like some gouger headed to EBay, But the truth is – AND ALWAYS WAS – that the evidence suggests that wearing a mask helps you to avoid getting sick. All that talk about how masks don’t really help because you will put your hands on your face to adjust your mask? I strongly suspect that talk was meant to slow a panic run on masks during a time when health care workers throughout the country need those masks badly. But you may also need at least one mask badly. During panic buying, many people do not respect one another’s space. Shelter in place does not always work; Trips to pharmacies and stores happen despite good planning.

If you can’t find a mask, here’s a webquest for you. Go online to find information on how to make one. Apparently you can use old bras. If I did that, I’d probably stick a few Avengers stickers or something on my mask. If you are going to be absurd, well, push it to the limit! We can use a few laughs right now.  Don’t poke holes in your new mask with your Ironman pin, though.

Gloves can be hard to find. You might get lucky at a dollar store or smaller establishment. The medical ones may fit better, but a washable plastic with sausage fingers, like those used for scrubbing the sinks, is a functional alternative.

Buy the damn toilet paper in quantity. First, estimate your need and usage. I strongly suggest you do the best job on the math that you can. Plan to buy at least six week’s toilet paper and maybe more. The toilet paper in the greater Chicago area may mysteriously reappear at any time, but it remains a shortage item, with people on neighborhood websites sharing sightings that tend to work for only short windows of time. Truth: Some families with kids are struggling. People with three or four kids at home all day use a LOT of toilet paper. For the moment, we are fine in my house, but my fondness for fiction about zombies and plagues helped me out here. I nevertheless watch our usage nervously despite the fact that we were better prepared than many others. When estimating quantities to purchase, be careful to take into account that usage can soar up into the stratosphere when the whole family is homebound.  

Buy the water too. When I first looked at the gallons of water going by in those packed SUVs, I’d say to friends, “I don’t get it. It’s not a hurricane!” But my village had a water advisory yesterday due to low pressure. The break in the main was fixed quickly and my family suffered only minor aggravation from low-pressure showers. Down the road, they had a boil order however. You do not want to have to make a trip to the store for water once hundreds of people in your area are documented as ill. That assumes the water is there. Water supplies in suburban Cook County do appear to be holding, despite being obviously depleted, but regional supplies may differ. You could get by with fizzy water in a pinch, but I’d still recommend picking up water. I got Costco water and I have a fair number of bottles, bottles I can use when school reopens. Water keeps. I’m sorry about supporting plastic bottles, but I suggest you throw water into your shopping anyway.

Other items to pick up if possible: Clorox wipes or the like, bleach for when the wipes run out, yogurt and canned fruit – those items are in short supply, with canned fruit gone in some places. Regular rice, sugar and flour may now be rarer than toilet paper. Yeast went especially fast.

Dairy products are complex because of rapid spoilage. More expensive lactose free milks often have dates far out in the future. Soy, almond and cashew milks also last awhile. Milk and eggs do seem to keep making their way into the stores here, but the supply is erratic. I recommend a big carton or two of liquid egg whites in addition to regular eggs – more if you have a larger family.

Items to freeze include meat and bread. I’d say load up on frozen vegetables. Be sure to get some variety too. I did not do well enough on this score – too many green beans and bags of corn. I was late out of the gate on my veggies and the supply was extremely low.

Don’t think, “I will order from Amazon if necessary.” Delivery dates are weeks out for many items. My phone constantly tells me how much Amazon will pay me if I please, please, go to work for them. My phone also gave me a blast yesterday, shutting down a conversation with a friend. She, my husband and I all received a message at the same time telling us that if we were licensed healthcare professionals we should go to some website to sign up to work. Right now, sirens are going off in the background, We are living in fraught times. Deliveries are a matter of luck and Amazon/Whole Foods requires more luck than I have had in days. My favorite store was booking out a few weeks before it simply stopped booking. Adding to the delays are walk outs and protests by Instacart and other providers of food –  reader, if you are in a location that is only beginning its COVID-19 ramp-up, please do that shopping.

In fact, here’s your webquest for today: Go to the Amazon pantry and try to do your regular shopping. You don’t actually have to make a purchase. Just try to fill your cart and see what happens. Try to buy “peaches.” See what you can find — and more importantly, what you can’t.

One caveat: Avoid long, packed lines of crazy. If the idea is to get off the streets and avoid contact, standing in line in a store for an hour behind a bunch of people with 100 items will not help you avoid contact. Pick off-hours as best you can, and multiple 15 item or less shoppings may work better than a full frontal assault on the grocery store. If possible, wear the mask and gloves for shopping. At first, and before people start wearing those masks and gloves around you, the protective gear may seem like an overreaction or feel otherwise embarrassing. But there’s no sense getting sick while you are trying to go to ground to avoid getting sick.

Hugs and love, I’ll do that student webquest post soon. I decided to write today’s post after a sobering drive out into the world this afternoon. I ducked the main post office because letters were sticking out of the blue mail boxes and I did not want my letter to fall out. I went to another suburb to mail my letter. That suburb had space in the mailbox, but garbage was flowing out all around the garbage can beside the mail. I get it. No one is willing to touch other people’s refuse. The stores looked about 3/5s as full as usual to judge by the parking lots. And many people are now wearing masks, those who managed to find masks anyway.

Eduhonesty: This post is a heads up for people who are behind on the timeline, the ones in distant places that are not under siege. Maybe many of you will escape this reality entirely. Absent population density, spring breakers, and major airports, I am expecting many areas will not be clobbered by the Coronavirus the way New York, Seattle, and Chicago have been.

But don’t let people talk you out of the mask if it’s still in your store somehow and don’t let them talk you out of the toilet paper, Clorox wipes and bleach. Do the math. You don’t want to hoard, but you do need to be ready. Then fill your cart as high as you must to take care of yourself and your family. Don’t fill your garage or load up on unnecessary supplies that health care workers require – those EBay resellers with their $50 bottles of hand sanitizer are disgusting – but provide for yourself and your family. If a family member has a must-eat, daily cereal, buy eight boxes. Don’t set yourself up for a Raisin Bran emergency. Assume you may be stuck in your house for weeks or even a few months. Those months begin to look possible here. I’d guess six weeks is the shortest window for my staycation and I don’t guarantee I won’t be here longer.

Shortages in my area even include Tylenol. Supplies are low and apparently some hospitals have run out at points. Plan to order medications and other medical supplies well in advance and in the largest quantities your insurance will allow. Stock up on OTC items like Nexium or Pepcid if those are part of your routine. Here’s another web search for readers not yet in the hot zone: Search shortages in affected areas; I have likely missed a few that may affect you personally.

P.S. Don’t think, “I will just order out.” That sounds fine at first, until the numbers ramp up. My brother and I had a brief exchange yesterday. He’s in Seattle and I am about 35 traffic-light minutes from Chicago. He’s getting uncomfortable about McDonald’s and I skipped Starbucks on my way back from the pharmacy and mail run. Yes, pick-up options are out there. But low-wage food service workers cannot be expected to stay home when slightly ill. The evidence is rolling in, too, that a person does not even have to be sick (or sick yet) to pass on this virus. My husband and I would have ordered pizza a few weeks ago, but yesterday we took a pass.

P.P.S. As we ramped up, I kept throwing chocolates into my shopping — dark chocolate peanut butter cups, dark chocolate sea salt caramels, Snickers Creamy peanut butter squares and the like. Don’t forget to grab boxes of treats from above the frozen food in Trader Joes. I’d suggest tossing in a few cake mixes too, assuming you are not deeply immersed in the low-carb lifestyle. Somehow, a small chunk of chocolate after dinner — or licorice or whatever your favorite candy — does make the world better.