The school district pay period for substitute teachers runs from the 26th of one month to the 25th of the next with the check issued on the 10th of the third month. When you factor in unpaid school holidays and breaks, this works out to an average of 20 possible working days a month. A good paycheck for me is little more than half that.
The reason that it isn’t 20 of 20 days every month is that the district doesn’t call every day. When the system does call, I’m might not have been at home to take the call. If I am home to take the call, it might be for a school/class I’d rather “gift” to someone else if you know what I mean. Then there are the calls that I let go just because I need a break. Subbing lots of elementary assignments in a row tends to fuel more of those “just need a break” occasions.
Since I added a couple middle schools to the list of 13 elementary schools I sub, the system has been calling almost every day. My trepidations about working with 7th and 8th graders hasn’t come to pass (yet) as I’m tending to actually prefer the middle school assignments over elementary.
For the pay period Feb/March, I worked 7 days at the elementary schools and 8 at the middle school for a total of 15 working days.
Just in time for tax day April/15.
9 comments:
Hi,
I am currently in the teacher education program at Illinois State. We are doing an assignment about teacher blogs in my curriculum and instruction class and yours was one of the ones that I chose.
I found your posts to be really interesting in that there are thousands of teacher blogs out there but not many substitute teacher blogs. There is a high possibility that if I do not get a job right away that I'll sub for a while so it's really nice to get a better idea of what being a substitute is like.
Keep up the great work. Awesome blog!
- Justin
Justin,
Good way to get your feet wet and try different grades and ages.
Good luck!
...Mark
Justin,
I was dreading subbing when I got my license, but it was the best professional development that could have happened. Just a few things I got really good at:
1. Instant classroom management (not just the "build relationships and expectations over time" stuff).
2. Remembering names!
3. Spotting and being sensitive to learning disabilities really quickly, without an IEP on hand.
4. Improvising when lessons don't go your way.
Good luck!
I am currently a pre service teacher and I found your blog very interesting and was just wondering why do you substitute teacher? Is it for the kids, or is it just to keep busy?
As someone who substitutes, goes to school at night and has a family with activities, I can relate with your comments about not working every school day. As of right now I am averaging 12 days a month.
Love the site.
Although I am enjoying my sub assignments in both elementary and junior high, I am finding that the junior high kids don't take quite so much energy out of me. I wonder if it is because I only see each class for an hour, and then it is time to move on. There is not much time for the energy level to get out of control.
Substitute teachers have an interesting role in school systems because of their "gig" kind of work availability. It's nice to be able to switch it up between schools/grades.
Just and Anonymous - I work as a substitute teacher in Champaign (and I blog about it, as well). Feel free to email me if you have any questions and want another perspective on subbing!
Mark - Two of my district recently switched to an online system that let's me see all of the assignments available. It has made it much easier to get work (I now teach 4 days a week on average instead of 1) and it lets me decide which assignments to accept and which to pass on. Maybe your schools will discover this awesome system!
Yea, we have the online and phone system access except it's disabled this year to us non-layed off ex-teacher subs.
Laid off teachers get to access the system for first dibs and the leftovers are offered to the us on call subs after 05:00pm the night before.
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