by Marius Linstead

Created on: June 29, 2009   Last Updated: July 15, 2009

Boredom is not a term that substitute teachers are generally familiar with. Every school, every day, every class and every student will have something new to add to the experiences of a substitute teacher. Such differences cause great difficulty in describing any given day in the life of a substitute teacher.

The day usually begins with a phone call. Some member of some school's administration will be calling to send you into an exciting day in a classroom with many students you have never met. How exhilarating!

When you get to school, the day generally begins with homeroom. This can be a daunting task for a substitute teacher, especially at the middle school age group, because students often like to whimsically change their names just to confuse the teacher, in hopes of not getting in trouble later. Good substitutes can see through this and find out the students actual names in other ways. Once homeroom is completed the interesting task of starting to teach is suddenly on the teacher's plate.

Next, teaching begins. Teaching and instruction is often very difficult for a substitute as students often feel they can avoid working when their regular teacher is not present. Students may make suggestions such as we have already done this, or this was assigned for homework along with many other excuses in an attempt to escape the tasks at hand. Again, the good substitute can see through such nonsense, and get these students on task.

A substitute teacher is typically very busy throughout the day, often asked to cover other teachers' supervisory duties. This again is often very difficult for the substitute teacher because students are not familiar with these teachers and often defy the requests of the teacher knowing that he or she typically will not be present tomorrow when the regular teacher returns. Being taken seriously is often the most troublesome task for substitute teachers, and once you have learned to get students to take you seriously or you have been substituting at a particular school many times, this should become easier.

Finally, every substitute's day ends in the same way. They get to go home without the responsibilities of grading and correcting, or planning for tomorrow as these are the duties of the regular teacher.

There is no doubt that many of the tasks of a substitute teacher are very difficult and frustrating. Yet, with the changes that each school, class and student brings, the teacher is continuously experiencing something new and never bored. At the end of the day, the responsibility still belongs to the regular teacher and the substitute simply waits by the phone for the call that allows them to be a hero for another teacher, another class and another school.

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