School board running out of teacher substitutes
The CSDM is running out of substitute teachers, so students whose regular teacher goes out on mat leave or gets sick are pretty much chivvied along from week to week by an uninspiring succession of subs. And yet François Legault still wants to launch classes for four-year-olds.
Brett 12:11 on 2019-03-02 Permalink
I don’t entirely understand your objection. Are you suggesting the solution is in hiring more teachers or starting school later rather than earlier I.e. at 6 years old.
jeather 12:24 on 2019-03-02 Permalink
The objection is to adding more classes that need teachers when there already aren’t enough teachers for 5+.
Kate 12:34 on 2019-03-02 Permalink
As jeather says. If they can’t recruit enough qualified people now, what chance is there that they’ll be able to find a whole lot more of them in a year or two?
Ian 19:20 on 2019-03-02 Permalink
News flash: being a CSDM substitute teacher sucks. You can be assigned class for any period of time anywhere on the island, and when you finally accumulate enough hours to qualify for a permanent posting you have to wait for someone to retire to get that job. You can be subbing irregular hours all over the island with no guarantee of a steady job for years and years. It’s no wonder so few people want to do it, there’s not many jobs that require a master’s degree where you have no guarantee of hours and will have to have at least one other line of income for up to a decade to make ends meet, just to get your career well and truly started.
JaneyB 09:01 on 2019-03-03 Permalink
@Ian. Thanks, did not realize just how badly it sucked. It reminds me of other employer complaints about how hard it is to find workers (while paying almost nothing/ offering zero job security or advancement/ requiring expensive training). If CSDM fixed its reasons, they’d have tons of applicants. There is no shortage of capable people willing to work but the good ones are not idiots.
Ian 12:50 on 2019-03-04 Permalink
FWIW the EMSB and other school boards are just as bad.
It’s kind of the same deal even at CEGEP but you at least only have one school to worry about and you can offset the lack of day work with night classes or other continuing education classes a lot of the time. Most CEGEP teachers I know also do consulting work on the side or have some other side work.