Secondly, my written plans fall well short of everything that I would want to do with my students. It takes a good deal of time for me to get my plans ready, yet they are but a shadow of the full intention. Again, if I am fortunate, the substitutes are able to see the larger intention and pull from their own bag of tricks to help my students do well.
Unfortunately, the plans I leave are not always followed, or sometimes my classes end up being uncooperative to the point that the plans don't really matter. As I am not there, I don't have a good idea of what was missed no matter how well written the notes by the substitute are. In general, I hold the students accountable for what might have been missed as they know what they are supposed to work on.
Since I will be out of my classes tomorrow, getting the decorations ready for prom, I will miss three days out of this week. I certainly hope that my students have been moving forward in their studies without me. Hopefully, it was worth my time to make those sub plans.