Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive teaching but actually thrive. I'm really excited for you guys to
be here today because this is a really important topic that I don't know what's
taken me so long to talk about. I mean, at some point everyone
is going to miss work, and I don't know why I haven't talked about
subplans or sub days or substitute stuff in general. I don't know. So
I think that this is going to be really useful for you, especially if
you are a new teacher, and definitely a refresher for those of you that
are veteran teachers. As teachers may know that the unexpected can happen at any
time, whether it's a sudden illness, a family emergency, or just a
much needed personal day. Having a planned or unplanned absence can be a stressful
experience. But how can you make the process of planning for a substitute as
stress free and seamless as possible. How can you make it so that it's
even worth taking a day off when you have to consider that sometimes making a
substitute plan is more work than taking a day off. I'm going to share
with you the best way to plan for when you're going to miswork to ensure
that your classroom runs relatively smoothly and that you have a greater chance of your
students actually accomplishing something while you're gone. So the first thing that you need,
and I'm sure that you've already heard of this, is a substitute binder.
This has everything that your classroom needs to run. So it should include
things like how to take attendance, seating charts, protocol for bathroom passes,
how to handle discipline, especially with particular students that you know ahead of time
are going to be difficult, a fellow teacher to contact if the substitute has
any questions or concerns. Definitely a school map and where the closest staff bathroom
is so helpful, bell schedules, daily routines, and of course the location
of your emergency substitute plans should you not have a plan for that day.
This is definitely definitely good to have, especially if you teach elementary because your
sub is going to be with your students all day long. But even at
the secondary level, it's still really good to have a substitute finder. At
my school, the substitute binders are kept with the front office secretary, So
make sure, if that's the case for you, that you keep that minder
updated every year. Now, let's be real here. I asked substitutes before
if they actually read this stuff or use these binders, and a lot of
them say that they might refer to it. Most of them don't look at
them at all, especially if they've already taught or subbed at that school.
But it's still a really good thing for them to have. So the next
thing that you definitely need are emergency sub plans. Now, I don't actually
have these because of the way that I run my classroom. Most of you
know that I use the modern classroom project model, which means that my students
get an entire unit ahead of time, and it's very much self paced.
So this means that my students have a list of all the assignments and they
know what to work on next. Whether I'm absent or pair absent, they
just know what they're supposed to do next. Also, anything that I do
gets pushed out in Google classrooms, so students can always refer to that in
my absence. Now, if you don't use a system like this, then
you definitely want to have some emergency substitute plans. These should definitely be an
activity that you don't normally teach during the school year. So for me,
that will include a story or some articles in the textbook that I normally don't
read with the students because frankly, I can't cover everything in a textbook.
So for your particular subject, you want to think of pages or chapters that
you normally don't get to. And these could be topics that you would like
to get to, but based on the pacing and how things go in your
school year, you know you're not going to get to that chapter or concept,
so that would actually be perfect for emergency subplans. You can also make
packets ahead of time that will include extra practice in terms of things that you
have already done the school year, because it's always good for kids to practice
more, whether it's practicing reading and comprehension questions or vocabulary or math, just
anything like that that you know they would benefit from doing and that will keep
them occupied for the entire class period. And then if you trust your substitute
and you trust your kids, this is important. You can also have online
programs that students can use for additional lessons or practice. So obviously the next
thing that you need if you're going to miss a day of school is detailed
lesson plans. Now, definitely, the best way to do this is to
lead up the lessons to the day that you're going to be gone. So
you definitely don't want to be absent on a day when you need to teach
a big concept that just doesn't make sense, because the substitute may not understand
that concept or just may not teach at all. So you want to try
to pace everything so that on the day that you're gone, the students are
doing some kind of individual work. So this could be more practice on a
content that you taught the day before, or it could be a test,
It could be group work if you trust the students, it could be a
project. If they don't need a lot of your help, maybe it's just
something that they have to do by themselves and it's just time consuming. That
would be a good day for you to be absent because all the substitute has
to do is just sort of monitor them, just make sure that there's enough
work for the entire period so that students aren't just sitting around, because that's
when trouble happens. And then also you want to have a plan if the
students finish early. Now, as you can see, I'm not necessarily making
it so that the substitute has to actually teach anything, because if they don't
know my subject area, I don't want them to teach it incorrectly. And
also if I'm relying on them to teach something and I can't do the next
day's lesson unless they taught it, then I'm setting myself up for failure.
So it's just better to have a class period where the students are doing individual
or group work and it's not reliant on a teacher leading it. The next
thing is I like to prepare my students for when I'm going to miss a
day of work and when there's going to be a substitute. I think it's
important to let the kids know ahead of time because that way they can kind
of be in the mindset that when I'm gone, the expectations are going to
be different. I expect them actually to behave better for a sub than they
would for me. And then you also want to ahead of time write the
agenda on the board so that when the students come in, it's already ready
to go. Especially if you don't have a substitute and it's just other teachers
covering your classes, then the agenda will be on the board because no one's
going to be there to write it. Also, if you have a learning
management system like Google Classroom or something like that, use that to send up
the agenda as well. I would double up online and on the board.
And then you can also appoint some students ahead of time to help the substitute
out and answer any questions if there are any. You can also ask those
students to take attendance or just kind of make sure that things run smoothly in
the classroom if you trust. And then you can also let the kids know
ahead of time for any consequences or rewords for good or bad behavior. So
if you want to get them some kind of reward like a movie or something
like that for being good, or candy or I don't know, whatever makes
you happy, you can do that. But you can also definitely let them
know the consequence of bad behavior. Just be careful because you don't want to
punish the whole class. If there's just a few knuckleheads that were acting up
during that time. The next thing that you want to consider when you're going
to be absent is whether or not you're going to tell your colleagues. So
obviously you have to call into a system or let somebody know that you're going
to be absent, but that's usually like the front office secretary or maybe your
administrator. I don't always tell my colleagues. It just kind of depends because
sometimes they get upset when you're gone, especially if they have to cover your
classes. It just depends on how you get along with the people in your
school. But it is helpful if you do have someone who you know,
you're good colleagues with, your good friends, or you just get along with
and let them go ahead of time. And the reason why I do this
is so that they can maybe help out, especially if it's an unplanned absence,
or just ask them to keep an eye out on my class or to
be there if the substitute has any questions. I just kind of have like
a buddy system with my neighbor because we both teach the same subject in the
same grade, and we help each other out when the other person is going
to be absent and it's unplanned, especially and this would be the person whose
name you put in the sub binder who the substitute can reach out to.
Now, the next step is preparing for unplanned absences, which sounds kind of
interesting because it's unplanned. If you are going to be absent and it was
completely unplanned you got sick, or your kid got sick, or just something
came up, then you definitely want to let your front office secretary or whoever
is in charge of those absences and the substitutes ask them if they can maybe
put the substitute binder on your desk. If you can, again use a
learning mannament system like Google Classroom, which I can access from at home,
you can also send out the plans for that day and say, hey,
can you please let whoever is your substitute today let them know what the plan
is. And that has actually worked really well for me and my classes because
my students will check Google Classroom to see what they're supposed to do that day.
Now, if you do have a trusted colleague, this is where it's
nice to have a buddy system. You can ask them if they can run
over to your classroom and write the agenda on the board so that whoever is
covering that day, they can see what the plan is, and maybe even
that colleague can print out the substitute plans for you. If both of you
have access to a computer and a printer, they can kind of help you
out that way. But honestly, if it's an unplanned absence and you don't
have anything like ready to go, maybe the substitute plans aren't ready to go,
or your emergency plans were already used last time, you just have to
give up hope that anything is going to be accomplished that day and it's okay,
Which leads me to the seventh thing that you need to consider when you're
going to be absent, especially if it's an unplanned absence and you're going to
have a substitute, is to just expect the worst. I mean, you
were a kid too, you know what it's like when there's a substitute.
Kids act up. Maybe you act it up. So you just have to
expect that that's what's going to happen. And if it doesn't go that bad,
well then that's just beautiful. So even with the best laid plans,
even with the most meticulous lesson plans, things will go wrong. You will
have students that will listen, and then you'll have a group of students that
are like, sweet, I get a day off and I don't have to
do anything. And then you'll have a handful of knuckleheads who will intentionally act
up and do things that they're not supposed to do. It's just how it
is. Now you need to decide ahead of time how much that means to
you, because what happens in your classroom in your absence is literally out of
your control. I mean, there should be consequences for the more egregious things
that kids are doing, like writing on the board or standing at the desk,
or hitting a student or anything like that, the obvious things, But
for the kids who just don't do anything, I really think you should just
let it go. The worst things I've actually seen happen are students doing things,
like I said, starting fights. I've had colleagues where they told me
that students stole some of their stuff, went through the desk and stole stuff.
But otherwise, just now that when you're gone, the worst will probably
happen, and you can be pleasantly surprised by just nothing happening. That to
me, that's the best case scenario is that nothing happens. It's just a
boring old day, And oh boy, would I give them a reward for
actually doing the work while I was gone, That would be amazing. But
otherwise I just expect that it's a waste of date and nothing gets accomplished and
we get behind. So definitely catching up your students is tough when you've missed
a school day and when you were hoping that it could actually be a day
for them to work so that you could move on to the next thing the
next day. So if you're someone who is struggling to catch your students up
because of something like this, then I would definitely check out episode one thirty
six where I talk about how to catch up students that are struggling and falling
behind, but I also talk about how to catch up a whole class when
they're falling behind. Thanks for hanging out with me today, you guys,
and I will talk to you next time.