How to Succeed as a Substitute Teacher

Learning how to succeed as a substitute teacher really begins with a visit to your own memory bank. As a child, how did you react when you went into a classroom and saw that there was a substitute teacher present? Like students, past and present, you might have seen the substitute teacher as a clear signal that it was time to get the party started. That's because substitutes have long held a reputation for merely being paid babysitters who will keep students from doing bodily harm to one another but are very unlikely to do any serious teaching.

Learning how to succeed as a substitute teacher begins with a willingness to cast those self defeating assumptions of the role of a substitute teacher aside and to look at substitute teaching in a far more positive light. As a former high school teacher who also spent 4 years in the ranks of substitute teachers, I taught every grade from 4-12 and subjects as unrelated as middle school geography and high school physics. What I discovered was that whatever I was teaching - math, health ed, creative writing - these same simple tips seemed to help me do more than just get through the day.

Most important in learning how to succeed as a substitute teacher is to take yourself seriously. Whatever the students may think about substitute teachers in general, you are a unique human being. You come to the classroom bringing your own tools. Maybe you have a masters degree, maybe you have taught elsewhere before, perhaps you have experience in the field you are teaching, you might have children of your own the same age as those you are about to teach. The point is you bring something distinct to this group of children. Success in sharing that distinct something begins with slowly but surely unpacking a full supply of self-respect and self-confidence in full view of your students. You can be certain if you don't take yourself seriously, the children will gladly join you in that verdict and the games will definitely begin. But showing yourself as a competent adult ready to teach creates a positive and far more receptive attitude in most classrooms.

Of course taking yourself seriously isn't going to be enough to get you through an entire day as a substitute teacher. You also need to be serious about what you are doing. You have to demonstrate that the lesson you have been left to teach has meaning and isn't just a pile of busy work. This means getting into the lesson with enthusiasm and interest. If you are obviously bored with the subject matter, you invite the boredom and chaos that will undoubtedly follow. But by taking the subject matter seriously you send a strong signal to students that you expect them to take the material seriously as well.

In one of my substitute stints I was asked to teach health education classes to middle school students for two weeks. In one class, a student told me at the end of the first day, that he thought I should know that the teacher of this course really didn't do too much and shared the suggestion that I didn't need to either. When I responded that I thought the course was really important and planned to teach the daylights out of it in the next two weeks, I got a surprised look but it was followed the next day by a whole different attitude. By the end of the two weeks, not everyone, but lots of students had come around to thinking there was something worth learning here after all.

Finally besides taking yourself and your course material seriously, if you want to succeed as a substitute teacher you also need to take the students seriously. This can sometimes be the most difficult part of the task of substitute teaching. Both you and the students know that your relationship is going to be brief. It's easy for both the teacher and the student to translate the brevity of the relationship into an excuse for refusing to connect or get involved with one another. After all you may never see each other again. But don't fall into that trap. As much as you like to be treated seriously as a teacher coming in to do a job, students like to be seen even by the substitute as worthwhile human beings.

Substitutes who take on classes but don't recognize that each class is made up of individual students, with different learning techniques, different home environments, a variety of personality traits is unlikely to feel or be successful. Even though yours is likely to be a short relationship, learning to take each child seriously and to work to meet the learning and personal needs of each as much as is possible given the limitations of your position will mark you quickly to your students as someone who is kind and caring.

Substitute teaching can be one of the most difficult jobs you will ever do. You will come into situations with the deck stacked against you: no lesson plan, no seating chart, no visible sense of order or discipline. You can survive, but you can also do more than survive. You can become a successful substitute teacher by remembering to take yourself, your work and your students seriously. Sounds simple, because it honestly is.