It is the final day of the first semester and you’re more stressed than ever. You go into your first period class and the teacher is gone. You begin to panic because you have a low grade in this class and, need support. After first period, you go to your next three classes and everything is going well until you realize your fifth period that teacher is gone , as well. It is another class you have a low grade in, and you’re told the teacher will be gone for the rest of the week because they have COVID-19 and there is no sub. You head to the release room where many other students gather that also don’t have a sub for their class. In sixth and seventh period, it’s the same thing, no teachers. This isn’t fair to the students, and this is also not fair to the teachers because they don’t want students to fail their class.

There’s a nation-wide sub shortage which means most of the subs aren’t working. This is a big problem because many teachers are gone and if there are no subs students would have nowhere to go and this can make it hard for students getting their work done.

“You have to do your work either way but having a teacher helps because there’s more instruction and more directions but at the end of the day you have to do it yourself,” sophomore Oshay Franklin said.

Teachers being gone isn’t fair to students or teachers. If a teacher is gone, the student may not know what to do and this could cause them to fail. In cases where it’s deadline week, they would have limited options to make up the work. This isn’t fair to teachers because since they are gone, they can’t help their students in an efficient way. This can put a lot of stress on teachers at home. Another reason this isn’t fair to students is because some students need the teachers help and if the teacher is not there, they can’t get help right away. This can cause students to lose motivation on the lesson and give up.

“It would be harder, your teacher is gone and you can’t ask questions,” sophomore Eric Chavez said.
The best way to solve this issue is to give students who failed a class due to missing work during the last week a chance to make it up over the summer. This is an option all students have but I think it would be fair for the students who failed the class because of one test to have the chance to only do that test over the summer. This is fair because there are some students who worked hard all year but because their teacher was gone, they failed the test, and this shouldn’t affect them the way it did (grade wise). Another reason this is fair is because it will show which students do care since it happens over summer, they could either do it or enjoy their summer and retake the class. In many cases if the student fails the class, they would take a class over summer especially if they failed because of one test.

“I would take a summer class; I’m trying to get as many credits as possible,” Franklin said

There was one other way to fix it and it was F/IE. This is an added week to the end of the semester where you could turn in work. This is a good yet bad idea, it’s good because it gives the students another chance to fix their work while the information is still in their mind, but it’s a bad idea because during this time students have other work to worry about.

“I didn’t miss regular deadline, but I did miss the F/IE deadline and there were a few people who probably would have passed if I didn’t have COVID-19,” chemistry teacher Samuel Juhl said.