Experiences with subbing....Here's some advice: don't do it!!
But Mike is right that continuity makes all the difference. Here's one
strategy that has been worked out for some subs by the Oakland, CA school
district. Since teachers' union activists managed to organize the subs
several years ago, the district set aside a number of "regular" sub
positions at some of the bigger schools, which provide lots of business for
subs from day to day. these particular subs are like lawyers on retainer
status. they report to the assigned school every day, and are given work
almost 100% of the time. Even if they are not used as a substitute in an
absent teacher's classroom on a given day, they may be assigned to help
with various teaching related tasks in the school. The value of this
arrangement is continuity: they get to know the kids and to be known by the
kids so that the anonymity factor is reduced. but this is only a few
people (a dozen or twenty?) in a school district of 54,000 kids.
Experienced teachers who turn to subbing often manage to create a select
"client's list" of a few teachers with well managed classrooms, and then
they can refuse to accept jobs from any but those clients. this works for
them because they work out the arrangements privately with the clients who
are happy to have a veteran (also someone with a shared philosophy of
teaching) sub for them, so they monopolize those select classrooms. If the
clients list is large enough, they can make a living. But as a rookie
teacher you won't be attractive to such teachers, so you'll get the chaotic
classes, which also have high teacher absenteeism.
Good Luck
Pete Farruggio
At 01:32 PM 1/28/00 , Mike Cole wrote:
>Rachel-- First, I think you are in for a difficult task. My expert
>informant on this is Doug Williams, an ex-sub now working outside
>of education who is on XMCA. Doug might want to summarize his
>reflections.
>
>And, but coincidence, unhelpfully, I saw a film last night on
>TV called "The Substitute" which was sort of like Death Wish II.
>
>The lack of continuity involved appears to set up insupperable problems,
>but maybe there are some folks who have worked out continuity-creating
>strategies.
>
>I would be really interested in what xmca-er's experience is.
>mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:03:32 PST