Substitute Teaching: Rewarding Responsible Students

A skill that comes in handy for every conscientious student is the ability to "keep things in perspective." It is a skill that adults quickly notice and value in students. It is also a skill that we as adults can greatly benefit from if we put it to use.

Substitute teaching is simultaneously both a challenging and rewarding profession. Coming into contact with thousands of complete strangers every month and trying to provide a safe and stimulating environment for each of them to learn in is a challenge that few people volunteer to accept in the first place. It is easy to walk into a public school and imagine the students to be one big, like-minded blob. However, this is far from the case. Every classroom is filled with a wide spectrum of talents, abilities, personalities, and decisions.

Typically, when you are substituting in a classroom, you will notice that certain students command more attention than others. Often, these are outgoing people, who are enjoyable to talk with. Your job as a substitute, however, is to attend to the needs of every student.

How can you do this when so many of the most dilligent workers are also most often the quietest?

One sure way is to reward productive behavior and work. You do not necessarily need to do anything extravagant, like pass out prizes or anything, but you simply need to communicate to the students in the classroom that you notice them and their performance. Instead of only writing names on the board to penalize students, you can flip this model inside out, and write names on the board to recognize students who are on-track.

Something important to keep in mind is that you want for all students to feel valuable, whether they are on-track in class or totally off-track. Recognizing productive behavior is not about making a strong value judgment. While you will now and then find yourself using words like "good" and "bad" as you relate with students, you will want to avoid these terms as you evaluate the productivity of students, primarily because students will not always hear these words the way you mean for them to be heard.