How is substitute teaching?

[dave134]

Anyone done it? How did you like it? Also, I presume you get to leave at the closing bell since you won't be grading any papers or have any extra work?

[ugarachel82]

If you can think on your feet, be firm, and not take any shit what-so-ever from students or other teachers, you'll be fine.

I personally sucked at it when I did it, but that's me. It did teach me to stand firm in my decisions most of the time and I did grow from it as a person. It's fairly good money too. Would I do it again? If times were hard enough and I was laid off from my current position, I might consider it. Otherwise, not at all.

Also, if you take a long-term sub position you would need to check with your district's guidelines because some districts require that you be responsible for grades turned in depending on the time of year. Depending on the number of days you are with a particular class, you might be responsible for progress reports or general test scores, etc. If you are just doing day-to-day subbing, you leave at the end of the day.

[wordsmith]

As the other poster said, depends on if you're doing long-term or day-to-day subbing.

It's not my cup of tea. I might do it on occasion if I were in the position a friend of mine is in, where she's a stay-at-home mom and just does every now and then for extra cash (she's an artist, so no regular paycheck). But I wouldn't want it to be my primary gig. No benefits, at least where I'm from.

[Krishna]

I didn't mind subbing. Assuming you can be firm with the students, you'll be fine. If friends or family describe you as a "doormat" than being a sub isn't for you!

[ebrillblaiddes]

It's not too bad but I could see it getting to be too much of a strain in the long term...it's nice to have work not follow me home, like from a regular teaching job, but the tradeoff is the guilt of hoping that someone gets sick so that I'll work that day.

[wordsmith]

If you're on sublists for a couple of districts at a time, you can work close to every day, if not every day.

[wordsmith]

A couple of my friends who sub a lot have their pick of whether or not they want to work on a given day. My one friend has found, though, that if she turned a parituclar district down with any frequency, she quickly got relegated to the bottom of the sub list, and only got called for the tough-to-fill spots, like the special ed-behaviorally disordered spots, that others had passed on.