CREATING EFFECTIVE SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES

Did you know that, on average, every K-12 student will be taught by a substitute teacher for the equivalency of one year’s worth of instruction over the course of his/her education? One full year!  That works out to approximately 13 days per year that a student is taught by a substitute teacher.  If you think about it, thirteen days per year can easily be accumulated just from teacher absences related to personal or family illness, professional development obligations, personal leave, and local or state test grading obligations.  This does not even account for any teacher long term leave absences such as a maternity leave, extended personal or family illness leave, or a sabbatical request.

Given the important role substitutes hold in our schools, having well-thought out substitute hiring, planning, and daily procedures and systems is critical.  Making sure these procedures exist in your school will help ensure that student learning continues even in the absence of the classroom teacher.

I did not initially realize how important having well-established substitute expectations, procedures and systems was.  A few weeks into the school year our need for substitutes was increasing and I recognized that not all teachers gave the same thoughtful consideration to preparing for being out of the classroom and having a substitute for the day.  Our “procedures” and expectations were all over the place from non-existent (no sub plans or guidance left by the teacher) to a dissertation and pile of handouts, etc. left for a sub.

We lacked formal procedures and consistency.  I realized after talking with substitutes that they often felt unprepared, did not have any working knowledge of our daily routines and emergency procedures, were unaware of who to call for support when needed, and felt unappreciated.

Knowing this required us to change how we did things because we could not risk losing any of our substitutes and we had to ensure that our students and staff were safe at all times, even if a substitute was in a classroom for the day.  Plus, our mornings in the main office were way too chaotic!!

The first thing we did was systematize our substitute arrival and information sharing procedures.  Here are the steps we took to minimize the chaos of substitute arrival, sign in, assignment notification, and teacher classroom information sharing for that day’s substitute assignment.  We:

1. Communicated arrival time expectations to every substitute via a newly created Substitute Teacher Expectations document that was shared with every building substitute (see GYLO #22). This document included a Daily Teacher Report for Substitutes (see GYLO #23) that every substitute was required to complete before they left for each assignment as feedback for the teacher.
2. Streamlined substitute sign-in and assignment notification by removing this responsibility from my main office secretary (who was super busy first thing in the morning). I received approval to flex the start time of one of our teaching assistants by 30 minutes.  That TA became the person our substitutes reported to first thing in the morning. We moved sub sign-in, key pick up, assignment notification and binder pick up from our main office secretary’s desk to a different location in the main office manned by our TA. This allowed our main office secretary to be available for teachers, parents, and others at this critical time of the day.
3. Established a building key sign out procedure for substitutes. Previously, subs picked up a key for the day, used it throughout the day and may or may not have returned it before they left at the end of the day.  There was no accountability for keys and we lost keys throughout the year.  Now, each key was numbered, placed on a breakaway lanyard (important for safety reasons), and signed out by a substitute for the day.  Every substitute was required to sign out at the end of the day and return the assigned key.  Failure to do so could result in lack of payment for that day (it never happened but we stressed the importance of returning keys!).
4. Created a Substitute Teacher Binder for every teacher (see GYLO #24) as well as one for every other employee we would hire a substitute for (i.e. TA’s, nurse, etc.). This was probably the best thing we did!  The implementation of the Substitute Teacher Binder standardized our substitute teacher assignment information sharing and led to a better understanding of our daily and emergency procedures by substitutes. These were kept in a certain location in the main office, provided to a substitute upon arrival, and returned at the end of each day.

The feedback from our substitutes on the procedural changes we implemented was tremendous.  They felt relieved to know that no matter what assignment they would have on a given day, the information shared would be consistent, formatted the same, and available; no more “flying by the seat of your pants” days because a teacher forgot to leave lesson plans.  It was important to us that our substitutes were given every opportunity to be successful, had what they needed to provide quality instruction in the absence of the classroom teacher, and felt they were a valued member of our school community.