Substitute-Proofing the Classroom

by A.R. McCord

Allie Shah wrote a fine article on the teacher shortage, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Aug. 13, 2000). It tells of the "crying need for substitutes" in the metro area schools and how special training has been set up to prepare them. Shah tells how mean kids can be but also how substantial the rewards to substitute teachers can be.  (The limited pay is not one of the substantial rewards.) Something not discussed in the article is the way in which teachers often succeed in substitute-proofing their classes.

I first showed up as a short-term substitute teacher in the high school and later in the middle school. I was given adequate, written instructions about the routine and received answers to several questions. I learned I would likely patrol the hallways to detect students on unauthorized meanderings, help keep order in the lunchroom, and devote one class period to preparing tomorrow's lesson. Of course, a short-term substitute needn't prepare tomorrow's lesson because he probably won't be back the next day.

In the first class, the regular English teacher advised me that her students had a reading assignment. My task, therefore, was to watch them read and keep order in the classroom. Another time in that same class, there was a guest speaker so all I had to do was listen. On two other occasions I was called upon to show films from a TV tape, for a class in geology and one in civics. There was no time for discussion of the tapes. Another time I watched a practice teacher practice science. And yet another time I showed chemical diagrams on transparencies placed on an overhead projector. It seemed to me that a substitute teacher doesn't teach but mostly takes attendance, watches, and listens. At least that is my experience.

I bootlegged a bit of poetry recitation in the English class and a little probability in the civics class. I love poetry and the mathematics of probability and could not resist the temptation to try some on the class. I have taught at the college level for nearly thirty years. And while I know that school teaching is different, I think I have some ability at the high school level where I had already done a bit of tutoring in algebra.

It is somewhat understandable that full-time teachers have adopted methods to prevent potentially wayward substitutes from tinkering with their curriculum. In analogous circumstances, you and I might do the same thing. If we were required to use a stranger to look after our young children for a short period to time, we would likely tell her to just watch them as they read or watched TV. However, the analogy is faulty because substitutes may expect the enjoyment of actually teaching and interacting with students.

Teachers have always known that a few misguided educators have at times tried to teacher-proof the classroom by using films, programmed learning exercises, tapes, and other mechanical devices to eliminate "human meddling" by teachers. This, of course, is a justifiably doomed procedure. To dehumanize the process of teaching is a destructive objective. So, too, is the attempt to substitute-proof the classroom.

Copyright © A.R. McCord 2003