Any substitute teachers in the crowd?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A local school district, through Kelly Education, advertised on Indeed for substitute teachers. All that was needed was a Bachelor’s degree. On a whim, I sent them a resume. To my surprise, they were very receptive. I went through the whole process: hours and hours of on-line training, a variety of clearances and criminal checks, FBI fingerprinting, and enough paperwork to fill a two-inch binder. Now, I’m waiting to see if I made the grade.

I have to admit to being a little scared if it actually happens. I’m an old hand at public speaking and was most recently a tour guide at an historic site, but I’ve never been a teacher, and I’ve never had to deal with kids much.

For the record, I graduated from high school in a much different era, 1970. I had good teachers and bad, but I hated public school and have always felt that my life began the night I got that paper that said I never had to go back to that place again.

Has anyone here ever been a substitute teacher? Especially if you were one who started in a situation like mine? What are the pitfalls? What are your stories? What’s your best advice? Am I crazy for even considering this?

2

I’m not, but my dad moonlit as one (he was a city firefighter) from 1961 until the early 00s. Our last name is uncommon, and I would meet kids from other schools and they would ask me if I was related to Mr. Nearwildheaven. I would tell them he was my dad, and they would usually say things like, “He’s pretty cool, but we can’t get away with anything when he’s there.” Yep, you got that part right!

The last few years, they would put him into the behavioral disorder classes, because in addition to being one of the few people who would do it, they knew he wouldn’t take any crap from those kids. He said that he never felt like he was in imminent danger in any of those classes, either, which was NOT the case with “regular” classes. He also always said that the wealthiest schools actually have the biggest problems; they just cover things up better.

Miss you, Daddy! (He died in 2023.)

3

I started subbing last school year, but it was after 20 years as a school librarian. The best advice I can give is to not let the kids push your buttons (often easier said than done). Most school systems are desperate for subs, so you can probably pick and choose. I hated school as well, despite working in schools the last 20 years of my career. You’ll probably be astounded at the sense of entitlement a lot of kids have; there are some who you’d think have never heard the word “no” in their lives. I can say that I only had two classes all last year that I never wanted to see again; the thing about being a substitute is that you don’t have to ever work with a class again if they’re too much of a pain to deal with.

4

I was a sub for a few months between getting my license and getting my job, back in 2007, so my advice might be out of date. Here’s some high-level things:

  • Whatever you do, don’t take it personally. Kids who are nice to you and kids who are mean to you are projecting a lot onto you. When you need to impose a consequence, do it as part of a plan, as part of the job, not as a satisfying act of vengeance against that little shit.
  • If a kid is looking for a power struggle, don’t give it to them. If you can pull some emotional judo and get them on your side, fantastic! If not, figure out how to move on, making notes about the situation.
  • Give students jobs whenever possible. Students who are squirrelly will sometimes blossom with responsibility.

If I think of more, or if you have questions, lemme know!

5

I’ve had a stable position for a few years now, but before that, I spent a lot of time subbing. How good or bad a day I had mostly depended on how good the plans were that the regular teacher left for me. With good plans, I’d teach the lesson, and the students would work, and everything was fine. With bad or nonexistent plans, though, all I was was a babysitter, and they didn’t pay me nearly well enough for babysitting. It got better with time, both as I learned which teachers left good or bad plans, and as the good teachers learned that I could be counted on to follow the plans (lots of subs, even with good plans, will still just sit and read the newspaper all day, or the like).

One advantage to the job (at least, if it works like it did for me) is that you can pick and choose your jobs, and you can very easily take a day off if you want. The way it worked for me was that most of the school districts in the area used the same system for assigning subs. I only signed up with four or five of them, for reasons of travel distance (the fifth one was close enough, but I eventually realized that every day I had there was a bad day). Every morning, I’d get up at 6:00, and log onto the site showing the listings (occasionally, I’d get an automated phone call between 5:00 and 6:00, in which case I hung up and logged in then, because the phone interface was hard to use). If there were listings, I’d pick one I liked, and start getting ready for my day (or sometimes, I wouldn’t like any of them, and just ignore them, but you don’t want to do that too often, or the system deprioritizes you). Or, if there were no listings, I’d just go back to bed and sleep in. If I knew in advance that I wanted the day off, for any reason, I could just schedule that in in advance, and then it wouldn’t deprioritize me for not taking a job then.

If the regular teachers like the job you do, you can get listed as a preferred sub. In that case, the system would show you (and any other preferred subs) the job 10% earlier than it would for everyone else. So if the opening came with an hour’s notice, it’d list it for the preferred subs, and then for everyone else 6 minutes later; if the opening came with ten days’ notice, it wouldn’t show it for everyone else until the preferred subs saw it for a day.

I had a bit of an advantage, in that I preferred the math and science positions, while most subs preferred not to take those. So even if someone else was quicker than I to wake up and log in, they usually left those for me.

At the end of the day, I’d write a little note to the teacher, saying how the day went: If we got through the whole lesson, and if not, how far we got, and any good questions from the students, and any discipline problems, and so on. I don’t think that’s strictly required (some subs just write “Great day, kids were good” as their entire note), but it’s good form.

6

It warms the cockles of my heart to think of Dopers guiding the youth.

7

I worked as a sub for a year or two, here’s my best advice: one of the best and perhaps only classroom management tools you have as a sub is seating.

If a student is being unruly and disruptive then do not be afraid to tell him or her to move to the other side of the class. Once you start moving students away from their friends other students in the class take note. Ideally you want to encourage positive behavior but you also don’t want the class to think you’re some sort of pushover and moving disruptive students around is a good compromise.

8

I talked with my two teenagers about it last night. Their feedback:

Whatever you do, you’ll get a reputation. If you let things slide in first period, by third period class will be anarchy, and not the good mutual aid kind of anarchy. If you get on a power trip with some kid in first period, by third period some teen is going to be a Holy Warrior intent on vanquishing the monstrous sub.

Their favorite subs are warm and take no shit.

A lot of subbing at middle and high school level, they say, is just babysitting. The teacher leaves an assignment that kids work on independently for the whole period, and the sub sits in the back of the room.

Back to my feedback: I’d recommend choosing an age to specialize in and looking for jobs with that cohort. For me, I subbed once at a middle school. Never again. My subbing was elementary, where I have a lot better rapport with the kids. Other folks work differently, though. What age would be best for you?

9

Had the exact same experience.

Good advice in this thread already, especially LHoD’s advice about moving on from power struggles - one of the only useful soundbites I ever got from a training was to “give up the one up” and it’s honestly transformative when you’re able to let things go.

Teaching is hard and effective subbing is in a few profound ways can be much, much more difficult. Just temper your expectations (there will be no o captain my captaining) and remember that classroom management - which is the primary job of a short-term substitute teacher well ahead of actual teaching - cannot be learned except by doing. You’ll get better at it over time.

10

My wife is one, and she loves it. She almost always subs at the same elementary school – the one Li’l Map attended – and so she has developed deep relationships (in some cases, friendships) with several of the permanent teachers. So, she knows their styles and expectations. She is highly valued within the school (she even won an award a few years ago).

She’s really good at remembering individual kid’s names and situations (e.g., if they are not quite neuro-typical; or have a hard home life). Yesterday, a group of “her” kids came up to our house on their bikes, just to say “hi” to her! (She chose to not engage this time – she was still in her PJs).

It’s not all perfect, of course. There are serious challenges, especially when she’s asked to sub for a class that happens to have more than its share of rowdy or obnoxious or too-energetic kids. And, sometimes permanent teachers will vent to her about issues in how the school is run, or issues with other teachers, because she’s (to them) a “safe” person, not officially employed there. But this sometimes puts her in an awkward position, like when she then interacts with the teacher that the previous one had been bitching about.

This coming school year (which for us starts in a few days) brings an additional challenge: the banning of video technology (iPads, projecting on a screen) for most or all of most classes. While we applaud this in principle, in practice she finds it’s sometimes helpful, e.g. to get a rowdy class to refocus (rather ironically, since devices more broadly contribute to reduced focus). We’ll soon see how this goes. I’ll report here.

11

I have not worked as a sub in schools, but have in first year university classes and have worked with high school teachers and their classes on many occasions, so not entirely unknowledgeable about teaching in general.

The words of Maya Angelou may help you with the “big picture” or the mindset you might want to take into your planning and classroom: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

As noted above, “warm but take no crap” is a good start. If there isn’t a solid learning plan you should/must follow, inviting students to talk about school itself is a way to draw on their expertise and experience that can ground them and let them demonstrate and share their expertise rather than treating them as empty buckets you have to fill.

Resentful “empty buckets” are often looking for ways to vent, and the sub often provides that opportunity. You can take advantage of that “rebel energy.”

12

Put another way, people, including students, care a lot more about themselves and the issues they are navigating than they do about our syllabi and lesson plans. As a sub, you may be able to take advantage of that.

13

My experience as a sub is 30+ years out of date. I subbed for a large school district for a semester before landing a permanent position. I quickly learned to call into the phone system the afternoon before instead of the morning of. Those assignments were listed by teachers taking a planned absence and who actually put some thought into the instructions they left. As noted above, classroom management is easier with high school kids than with junior high. Math classes were the most undisciplined, especially if the students got an inkling that they knew more about the subject than I did. History, English, and Science were usually the easiest to manage. PE was either a breeze or a nightmare; a real crapshoot. Special Ed just scared me so I avoided those assignments out of ignorance rather than experience. I later learned those classes were small (6-12 students) and a first choice for many subs.

14

I’ve enjoyed subbing at the elementary school my kids attended. There aren’t too many teachers left who knew them, but there are a few. Last year I brought our son to see his third grade teacher, which thrilled the teacher. Teachers have also enjoyed hearing about our daughter’s wedding and our son’s impending wedding. I don’t go more than ten minutes from home (easy to do inside the DC Beltway), so I do run in to kids from classes where I’ve subbed. Most of my work is at 4 nearby elementary schools.

15

Whereas the absolute lowest I’d go was 5th grade, and that only because one of the districts I subbed in had a 5-8 middle school instead of the more usual 6-8. And my current permanent position is high school, mostly 11th and 12th. Because working with the older students is what works for me.

And yeah, subbing in only four districts, and usually only two, meant that a lot of kids got to know me. That could be a blessing and a curse: Mostly a good thing, but I had a kid once who would actually skip his own scheduled classes just to show up in mine to pester me.

It also means that I ended up with a lot of former-students over time. I’ll still occasionally have a student roll down the window and call out my name, when they pass on the road or the like. And a couple of months ago, I was at a fast-food place with a couple of workers behind the counter, and they were both former students of mine, from two different districts.

16

I’m not now, but I did sub for several years. The district I subbed in used a system similar to Kelly. I would see jobs appear, or would get calls and was able to accept or turn down any jobs I didn’t want. So, you’re not under any obligation to accept a job. However, if it’s something you do want to pursue, you may want to check with them to see if there’s a minimum number of assignments you have to take before they will remove you from the list. I never ran into that, but I did a lot of subbing.

17

Oh, and if you have a preference for only certain grade levels, or avoiding specific schools, in the system I was in, you could set it to just never show those to you at all, with no penalty.