Not a sex question. Sorry.
Refering to substitute teachers. Surely they don’t just sit around by the phone waiting for a call to come into work for someone that woke up sick.
And I can’t see them holding down a ‘regular’ job that would be okay with them taking days off without notice.
How about it? I know we have a few teacher type dopers out there.
I’ve worked at three schools where I was a sub as well as a part-time instructor. I could sub any hour I wasn’t teaching to a total of 39 hours/week. I was also a part-time, home-based proofreader, which gave me income and had flexible hours as long as I got manuscripts tuened around in time.
All the substitute teachers I can remember fell into 2 groups:
Generally, either were available on unscheduled, short notice. The retired ones were often bored, and enjoyed coming back to teach occasionally. The young ones were hoping to make a good impression as subs, and be on the short list when a full-time teaching position became open.
I think part time substitutes are generally new substitutes. After you get a rep, if you don’t want a permanent full time position you can work as many hours as the system allows, usually just short of 40. If you are not offered that many, it could be full employment, or it could be that you just aren’t all that desired as a teacher, for reasonable or unreasonable perceptions about your ability.
I know my sister is retired, and has often said no to substitute offers, although she does do it sometimes.
Tris
Also, at the time I was teaching middle and high school, at least, if they kept you under some number of hours, they didn’t have to pay benefits, raises, etc.
In LA at least a percentage of the subs are actors that don’t want full time, so they are free to get to auditions.
I worked as a sub for a year. It was a get by while I was going to night classes for computer technology. I taught second grade math. At one school a student asked if I was the secretary’s husband (We shared the same last name.) The secretary was my mother.
I’ve known several that were housewives. Their husbands all made enough money to provide well for the family. The women enjoyed the opprotunity to get out of the house and make a little extra cash.
I often joke that the quality of subs is an economic indicator: when the economy is good and there are lots of good jobs, we get terrible subs. When the economy is bad, we get great subs, because it is a good job for someone who is looking for a better one: no long term commitment, easy to take a day off for interviews, etc.
As far as days off go, in the districts where I have worked (and most I have heard of), a competent sub need never stay home–there is always more demand than supply, and while there might be the occasional odd day once or ywice a month where you didn’t get called, you will work the vast majority of the time.
A bigger issue is summers. If subbing is how you make your living, you’d have to come up with an alternative for summers.
Back in the dark ages when my mother went to work (after The Divorce), she was ultimately looking for a full time teaching gig, and subbing was the best way to make her work and skills known to the principals who would be doing the hiring. The Substitute’s Dream was to pick up a maternity leave, and hope the full-time new mother decided to stay home with the baby and the sub hired in her place. If you do a good job at a long term substitute gig, develop a rapport with the students and other faculty, the principal would be an idiot not to offer you the job.
Until then, yeah, it was day by day or maybe two or three days if a teacher was out for a funeral across the country or something. The phone would ring around 6 AM with an offer for that school day at one of a number of schools (my mother was on the lists of probably a dozen school districts, some up to an hour away). Sometimes she’d work five days a week and sometimes none. The weirdest days (and there were only a few) were when she was subbing for MY teacher.
As it turned out, after about four years of subbing, she got a sixth grade classroom long-term (more than half a year) when their original teacher had a nervous breakdown (seriously), and she proved herself and was hired in his slot the following year. Now she’s been there almost 22 years.
I worked for two years as a “full-time” substitute, trying to decide if I wanted to become a teacher by training. I worked primarily for three districts, and, once they all accepted that i was a capable substitute, I could work four days a week without trouble. I tended to be a bit picky about the jobs I would accept; certain junior highs were off limits in my book, and I uniformly refused to accept morning of calls for special ed classrooms; they usually were the result of the teachers having reached their limit with particularly difficult kids!
What I found interesting is that morning of jobs were only about 20% of my business. Most sub jobs are parcelled out in advance because the school knows the teacher will be missing. You’d be surprised at how often teachers are out of the classroom for scheduled reasons.
The key, of course, to working as a sub is to get to where you are preferred by a district or two, so that your usage is regular. I was lucky to have an “in” at a local small high school, where I was number two or three on the list for both years. Of course, if I had really wanted full-time employment, I could have worked for Toledo Public Schools, but that took me potentially geographically far away and I preferred to stay more local most of the time.
I was a sub for a year. What you’ve written here pretty much describes it. You usually got the call the very morning of the opening!
It sufficed for a 5 day a week job, most weeks. (I was paid daily, not hourly.)
-FrL-
[hijack]OK, I give up. How is “subbing” related to sex?[hijack]
Dom and sub
I worked for a standardized test company for several years. Many subs scored standardized test essays when they weren’t subbing. Worked out great during the summer.
Actually, am I the only one who saw [part of] the thread title, and thought that it was about submarines/submersibles? 
Thanks, gotta get my mind back in the gutter. 
No. I was thinking it was about what do submarines do when they’re not underwater…
Also true of regular teaching, including 9- or 10-month university contracts. Yes, you might be able to do without it. However, I’ve known few teachers who actually took the summer off. (I teach at a university and community college, but also teach a set of summer classes that are not on my contract, plus see clients year-round. I can’t manage three months with no income and no stimulation.)
My wife and I are considering substitute teaching while we finish our degrees. Around here, you put down what areas you prefer, and if there are jobs available a computer calls you early that morning and tells you the closest available job you could accept. If you accept, you hit 1 and get further directions; if not, you hit 2 and it either moves on to the next-closest job or (if there are no more) it hangs up and calls the next person on the list. I’m not sure how they determine the order that people get offered jobs, but I presume it has something to do with seniority.
Me, too.