Ever wondered how to stand out in the bustling world of substitute teaching? We've got some unique strategies to share, inspired by none other than George from Seinfeld - because who doesn't want to appear busy and important? But remember, it's more than just owning a clipboard and perfecting the frustrated look. In this episode, we unveil the real secrets to gaining respect and success in your role.
We'll also dive into the importance of taking a sincere interest in your students. You'll hear our personal experiences and learn how small gestures, like remembering and correctly pronouncing names, can truly set you apart. We'll guide you with practical tips to avoid common pitfalls and ways to shine in your role. Listen in, and let's debunk together the myth that you have to be constantly rushing and dining in the hallway to appear important - true respect comes from your deeds within the classroom!
Ever wondered how to stand out in the bustling world of substitute teaching? We've got some unique strategies to share, inspired by none other than George from Seinfeld - because who doesn't want to appear busy and important? But remember, it's more than just owning a clipboard and perfecting the frustrated look. In this episode, we unveil the real secrets to gaining respect and success in your role.
We'll also dive into the importance of taking a sincere interest in your students. You'll hear our personal experiences and learn how small gestures, like remembering and correctly pronouncing names, can truly set you apart. We'll guide you with practical tips to avoid common pitfalls and ways to shine in your role. Listen in, and let's debunk together the myth that you have to be constantly rushing and dining in the hallway to appear important - true respect comes from your deeds within the classroom!
Greg Collins Substitute Teacher's Lounge, december 5th 2023. On yet another episode of the Seinfeld Show, george describes to Jerry and Elaine how he's found out how to always look busy while working for the Yankees. He just basically carries around a book and a clipboard and look frustrated all the time. And you know it worked. They think it's busy. So let's have some fun. Today let's talk about what substitute teachers can do to make themselves look busy, look more important than everybody else and to maybe make yourself look like you're the best person around.
Speaker 1:All right, before we get started, let me mention a sub alert glitch that's a bad word because it's not really a glitch. It's just getting used to the way things work. Give you a, for instance. You know I've talked about in the past situations where I've cancer, one job to take another. Usually it has to do with either sickness or not to take another one. But if I'm going to cancel one and take another one, it usually has to do with maybe I picked up one job randomly and the school has called me specifically and asked me to take a job that same day. I'll cancel the first, take the second Now, keeping in mind they're going to have a history track of everything you do. But let me tell you something that happens with sub alert. I assume it happens with all similar apps. I have noticed that when I cancel the job, it immediately repost on my sub alert, like I could take it right back again. Well, in effect that's not true and in fact if you look at frontline instead of sub alert, frontline will show that that job is actually no longer available. But there's just that split second where sub alert shows it as a reposted job and it looks like it's out there available for you to again. Now I misinterpreted that before because I used to think that it reposted and then when I would go back in later and see that it's gone, well, that means somebody picked it up and I felt good about that. But that's not really what it means. It just means you know the iterations that sub alert does, whether that's every 10 seconds, every 15 seconds, whatever when it refreshes. During that time that job still shows available to you when really it's not. Now I assume I have sufficiently confused everybody, but I hope if you use sub alert often, you know what I'm talking about. Just something to get used to.
Speaker 1:Today I thought it would be fun to mention some things that will make you look better than other substitute teachers without trying too hard. And I got a lot of these ideas from the corporate world. I'll even go so far as to say maybe I did some of them at some time. I'm not going to tell you whether I did or not.
Speaker 1:First and foremost, if you want to look busy, if you want to look like you're important, show up late to meetings. Everybody you know you can think of people right now that they show up late to meetings all the time and it's kind of their way to. Oh, I was just so busy that I couldn't make it to the meeting on time. I apologize. Now you may say that that's organizational skills, but it does kind of give you the appearance that you're more important. You got more to do. You got to get things done. That's the first thing we'll talk about. I've told you this before. I've joked around that me and my preacher who do a podcast I'm one of those that if I'm five minutes early to a meeting, I think I'm late, and if he's five minutes late to the same meeting, he thinks he's early. So that's the kind of concept we're talking about, but for some reason people think that you're important if you have to show up late for meetings.
Speaker 1:The other thing is always walk around with food in your hand Like I'm so busy I can't even sit down and eat my food. Normally I have to walk among everybody with a little container and a fork and eat it in the hallway so that everybody knows I'm sorry, but I'm just so busy. I cannot eat that during my lunch period, during my planning period. There's just no way I can do that. That makes you look important, makes you look better than everybody else Just another one of those things you can do. So, whether it's a salad if most people that do this use a salad because it not only makes them look more important, it makes them look concerned about their health, all that good stuff. So that's another reason to make you look more important than others.
Speaker 1:The third thing is forget that smile. If you want people to think you're more important, you want to make them to think you're more busy, that you're always swamped with problems. You need to work on that scale. You may need to make that frowny face look more intense than the others. Then people think you're more important. People won't even come up and talk to you because they don't think you're worthy, all that kind of stuff. So keep in mind all those things to make you look more important, to make you look like the best substitute teacher around, to make you look like you're always busy.
Speaker 1:Now, after all that, I hope you remember that I have a sarcastic sense of humor. Most of those things that I mentioned to you are from my corporate environment. When I used to be in the business world, People would do that all the time Come late to meetings, eat in front of everybody, just to make it look like they didn't have near as much time available as you have, because they were more important. That's not what we're about today and I hope, as you were listening to the first six minutes of this podcast, I hope here's what I hope I really hope that you could tell that I was doing a little tongue-in-cheek routine, that I was being sarcastic. And let me tell you now that is not the way I feel, not a way to make you more important than everybody else. In fact, I don't feel more important than everybody else. But I am going to share with you now some things that will separate you with those students, with the teachers, and show everybody how you really care, that you're in their environment, that you're teaching those kids, that you're not just in it to be a babysitter I hate using that phrase, but that's the one that's used most often. You're in it to win it, so to speak, and we're going to talk about those now.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me this week, and I guess I had substitute taught long enough that I was now doing this subconsciously. We have an episode. I didn't even look it up. You can look it up if you want to. It's about remembering names. You can do a search for that. Well, here's what happened this week.
Speaker 1:I was in a class and I'm one of those that I will at least get there early enough because I want to make sure I got lesson plans. I want to make sure I got rosters. Those are the two main things. In fact, to be honest, the rosters are the most important to me, because we live in an age now here in 2023, almost 2024, where teachers, if they had a sudden absence, they will leave an assignment on the kids Google classrooms. It's as simple as them maybe just put a link in an assignment and you're good to go for the day. You just monitor it and make things like they should be. But let's go to those rosters. When I go in I glance there's two things I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Most of you, I'm guessing, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're serious enough about substitute teaching, that you're listening to this podcast. You're teaching students, even though not long term. You're teaching students in a method that you see them from time to time. You might teach them one day this week and then again next week. When that happens, students, they want you to remember their name. They really do. Let me tell you what happened to me this week.
Speaker 1:When I go into class, the first thing I should do the reason I was get there early is to look over those rosters and say, okay, first of all, do I know anybody already and am I going to have a potential to mispronounce a name? Now I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I get that lazy feeling. Now I'm thinking boy, I hope the substitute teacher has a seating chart. Then I don't even have to call the names. I can just say when I go in make sure you're setting where you're supposed to, because if you're not, I'm using the seating chart and I will mark you absent. I've said that a few times. That gets them to where they want to be.
Speaker 1:But look at that roster. And what substitute teachers do a lot is try to read those names as quickly as possible. When you do that, you will make a mistake. I jokingly say I like to look at first names as if maybe that was my kid and if I gave them this name, this is how I wanted to pronounce, so I'll look at it and I look at it and then sometimes it'll fall into place. You'll realize how that name is supposed to be pronounced because you took your time to look at it. Look at the vowels, look at the way it's composed and all of a sudden, oh yeah, it's just a fancy way of spelling this or something like that.
Speaker 1:And what happened to me this week? I had just called the roster. It was at a middle school, it was in eighth grade, and I had a student raise their hand Just after I called the roster and I think of what in the world would they have a question with now the student? I said I called on the student and she said Mr Collins, I just want you to know that you're the first substitute teacher all year that pronounced all of our names right Now. That made me feel good doggarnet. I took the time to look through them and say, yeah, this is right Now. I'm still gonna get some wrong. In fact, I'm still gonna get some wrong. That I got wrong the last time I was in there One of the volleyball players this this week.
Speaker 1:I didn't call her name when I was going through because I knew she was there and I was afraid I was gonna mispronounce it, so I didn't call it. She raised her head and said Mr Collins, you didn't call my name andI said oh yeah, but I knew you were already here and she was. She was satisfied with that. Then I went up to her and said you know, I have a confession to make. I feel like I always pronounce your name wrong. Pronounce it for me so that I get it right from now on, and I really concentrate hard to do so. That meant a lot to her.
Speaker 1:So you can separate yourself from other substitute teachers if you take the time to learn their names and practice their names. And what the heck? If you know a student maybe you, you're a friend or family with a student there ask them before class starts how you pronounce this this student's name. Make sure you get all those right. You want your pronoun pronounced right I? A lot of times. I don't know why it is, but probably the most name that I most often get called instead of Greg is Gary, for some reason, because it just sounds close enough to like. And sometimes I'll get called Miss Collins because they're just used to having so many female, so many more female teachers than male teachers, that it just slips out. But work on those names. That is a way to not make yourself look better than everybody else, but just to make sure you show everybody that you think names are important enough to make sure that you're calling them by the correct name all the time. The other one that I will mention other than just being generally dependable, they know they can depend on you.
Speaker 1:If you can, the night before when you pick up your substitute teaching class, try to do some research, whether that be on Facebook the part that's public, that's not illegal to try to break into the public Facebook, maybe the school website. Find out what subject you're walking into so you can at least brief yourself. I consider myself my favorite subject is math, as I've always told you for the most part when I'm in middle school, doesn't matter what they're studying. I can usually help them with middle school math. When I get to high school it's a little bit more difficult because some of the concepts I haven't studied for a long, long time and I will tell them that if they asked me for advice, taught a social studies class mainly this week.
Speaker 1:I was at the same school for three days and we were talking about the Revolutionary War and they were getting comfortable with the concept of Reveley, when that occurs, what it was, and I at least knew from my background what I could tell them. Now. At the same time they were supposed to answer questions from an article they just read. So I couldn't tell them with a hundred percent that this is the answer multiple choice answer because I didn't read that article. It's in your Google classroom, I don't even have a copy of it, but they read it and I said I know it's in there and I told them what I thought about Reveley we also talked about. The one of the answers was D-Day and I could at least carry an intelligent conversation.
Speaker 1:So do your best to find out what subject you're walking into, maybe even what age group you're walking into. And those are just a few of the concepts that will help you separate yourself from other substitute teachers. That, and I feel confident it's okay to be better than other substitute teachers if those other substitute teachers are not putting in the time to get better, if they just want to show up and get their pay. It's okay to try and be better than that and these concepts will help. Not the first three, but the last two. Don't just carry around a salad. Eat at the hallway all day. Don't just show up late everywhere you go to make yourself look like you're swamp. Do it the correct way. Work on what you think is important to make those students feel special, to make the teachers feel special, using the same methods, and that way you will, in fact, separate from the other substitute teachers that don't put in as much time as you do.