Chronicles of A Substitute Teacher: Stop Trying To Survive, Get Out There and Thrive!

tltran (59)in #teaching • 8 years ago

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One of the greatest struggles for new substitutes is garnering a regular schedule of positions to fill. I started substituting in January, but my maternity leave assignment wasn’t going to open until the end of February. There were a few doctor’s appointments that they teacher had asked me to fill so I could get more accustomed to the students and class, but they weren’t very frequent until closer to the time she was due to give birth. So I had about a month and a half of time that I needed to be working in the meantime, and very little idea where to start.

My employment agency has an app where you get notifications to your phone when they become available, but in such a large district I was often playing a losing game of quickly stabbing the “accept job” button on my phone as soon as I heard the high-pitched alert tone only to discover someone else had already filled the position. So, I needed to pull up my networking bootstraps and start letting people know I was available to sub for them if they needed anyone. I got on my phone and text messaged all the teachers I had on my contacts and put out a Facebook status tagging some of the local teachers I knew. I got lucky, and a friend of mine needed me for a three day position a few weeks out, but then she later called to ask me to work in her classroom the next day because her son became ill. It was a relief to know I would be working in a classroom and school I was acquainted with for my first position as a sub.
Still, I needed to extend my contacts beyond the few teachers I knew, so here is some tips as to how do just that.

Arrive early and sign in so you can get to your classroom. Once you are set up, make nice with your neighboring teachers. They will be your lifeline if something is going south in the classroom and also have great information as to what students are expected to do when they arrive. If you are doing a decent job and make a good impression they will ask for your information to schedule you for their vacancies.
If you have planning time and don’t want/need to sit in a quite classroom for a while, go to the office and offer to help the secretaries. Chances are they have filing, copies, or other office work that need to be done and will be glad you offered. Also, they will get to know you and offer up your information for any emergency sub needs.
Go eat lunch with the other teachers! This can be awkward and sometimes annoying (today I had a less than stellar interaction with two other teachers where I was working), but it will garner you some exposure and helpful hints on how the school works and again, if you make a good impression, you now have more teachers willing to request you on their off days. One of the schools I worked for had speech pathologists that travelled to various schools who often would recommend me to other teachers whenever they found out someone needed a sub.
Show your excitement for teaching in the class. Students WILL tell their teacher if they don’t want a sub to come back to their class. Teachers WILL listen. Afterall, as Rita Pierson said “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” If you haven’t seen her 8 minute Ted Talk on being a champion for students, you really should! Also, Principals are known to drop in on subs if they know they are in the building to make sure everything is going well. Don’t give them a reason to not ask you back to their school.

That’s all it takes to get regular positions. After a while, you have to turn down placements because you have already been scheduled. A positive attitude and making yourself known will get you everywhere in substituting. I used to worry constantly if I would last one day in an unfamiliar classroom, and after nearly 2 years I know I can do anything for one day. If I didn’t enjoy myself or found the circumstances weren’t conducive to the environment I wanted to teach in, I just made a little note not to go back to that school or work for that teacher again.