Maternity Leave and Teaching

The article in today's Post-Dispatch about maternity leave and Spain's Commander in Chief of the armed forces (sporting a big baby bump) made me think about these issues as it applies to the teaching profession.

When Ricky was in third grade, his teacher, Mrs. Lavac (he loved her, great teacher)left for a six week maternity leave. He has a very good sub, Mrs. Thomas, who had been a wonderful teacher for many years until she retired. Fortunately, this situation worked out well, and the kids were very happy for Mrs. Lavac and her baby. She returned after the six weeks, and the kids were where they should have been academically.

When fifth grade was to start, Ricky's assigned teacher had a baby over the summer, and at the last minute (like the week before school was to start), decided not to come back. At this point, it would have been impossible to hire a good teacher as all the good one's are usually hired by the first part of July, and the pool of available applicant's has dried up. So, the district hired a permanent sub. Ricky went to school and was surprised and happy to find out that Mrs. Thomas was his teacher again! In fact, she stayed for the whole year. Again, it worked out, but what if a decent sub hadn't been available? Was it fair of the teacher who was originally to teach the class to decide the week before school was to start that she wouldn't return?

It seems to me that a situation like this gives the term "maternity leave" a bad name, and sets an attitude toward pregnant workers that isn't very positive. But maybe the maternity leave policies in our country aren't terribly fair to new mom's and babies alike. In Europe, many countries have a 12 - 16 month paid maternity leave. In a situation like teaching, this would give notice to the school district that a new teacher must be hired way ahead of time. It would make sure that the students were in a better situation, while providing mom and baby the time they need to bond and begin a healthy emotional development process. But clearly the costs would be prohibitive for school districts, small businesses and in many other situations. In fact, the birth rate in European countries is much lower than that of the U.S., so it may be it isn't as big of an expense as we would expect here.

What about the child who has a substitute teacher for a long term, who doesn't know his subject matter, and doesn't have good classroom management? Both the kids and the district suffer (low test scores affect our accredidation). Is there an answer for this problem? Should the state maintain a pool of qualified long term subs to slot into these situations? I don't know the answer, and we remain with the delimma.

Have any of you stories to share about this? Please post comments on the blog so we can all (lots of people visit who aren't on my email list who would be interested in the comments) see them.