[ARCHIVED] How to handle teacher leaves of absences?

[cgurysh]

I am looking for some suggestions on how to handle teacher leaves of absence. Our courses are generated through our integration with PowerSchool. This means that when a teacher of record is changed in PowerSchool (i.e. when a Long Term Sub is in for a teacher on leave), the original course shell is deactivated and a new shell is created with the LTS as the teacher. We have been handling this by creating a copy of the original teacher's course and then importing that copy into the new shell. This allows students to have consistent access to materials. There are, however, several drawbacks to this method. One is that students lose access to submitted work. 

It has been suggested that the teacher on leave is left as the primary teacher in PowerSchool and that the LTS be added as a co-teacher. Our IT and HR departments each have issues with this idea. 

Is anyone able to share how they handle teacher leaves in Canvas?  

[braker]

We have eSchoolPLUS and the same thing occurs.

What I did recently was that I crosslisted.

A = Original class that has the teacher's content, but no longer has any teacher or students.

B = New class created automatically because of the switch in teachers. It has the new teacher and the students, but no content.

I crosslisted B to A. And added the new teacher to A.

The import automatically updates the students so it stays up to date.

[cgurysh]

Thank you, Beth. May I ask a few follow-up questions? When you cross-list the courses do the previous submissions made by students reappear? When the original teacher comes back do you have to follow the same procedures with the new shell- "C"- being cross-listed back to A or does the original teacher get automatically placed back into Course A?

[braker]

This is what I did when a teacher left permanently. The students did not lose their work.

If a sub is covering for weeks or months, we leave the original teacher on the class in our SIS and put in the sub as LTS.  It allows us to go tot he teacher's record and list someone as the LTS which allows that person to use the same gradebook. Canvas isn't aware of this... So we add the sub manually to the Canvas class.

It sounds like PowerSchool handles subs differently than our system.... Sorry!

[ysmalls]

We have eSchoolPLUS also and pretty much do the same thing!  So far it's worked for us.