Subs: Reporters find teaching a learning experience

A boy spit in Laura Warner's face.

A chaotic class left Tiffany Erickson gasping for breath.

A child chanted "Kill Kerry!" when Stephen Speckman mentioned the presidential election.

And a teenager interrupted a personal story Jennifer Toomer-Cook hoped would illustrate the lesson, saying: "We don't care!"

Still, we temporary substitute teachers find ourselves looking fondly on our experiences.

Despite the horrendous pay.

Despite the exhaustion of keeping kids in line.

Despite feeling totally unprepared — some of us had trouble finding our classrooms, let alone winging a science lesson.

Four Deseret Morning News education reporters each worked as substitute teachers for three days in Utah public schools to see what it's really like.

Speckman and Warner taught in Davis and Alpine elementaries, respectively. Erickson taught in Salt Lake City middle schools and Cook in Jordan middle and high schools.

The districts gave their blessing up front. We vowed to answer honestly if anyone at the schools asked if we were reporters, but nobody did. We think no one — except principals in Jordan, whom Cook was required to inform — had a clue who we were.

We were largely undercover, mostly out in the cold without experience and, collectively, a big bag of nerves going in.

Substitute teaching is serious business. And we didn't want to be the weak link in the educational chain.

Utah children will spend nearly one academic year with a sub before graduating from high school, according to Utah State University's Substitute Teaching Institute, which dispenses best-practices and training materials to subs and school districts nationwide.

Students in high-poverty schools will be taught by subs even more often, states Davis Superintendent Bryan Bowles' 2004 doctoral dissertation on substitute teacher socialization.

Considering high standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and the demonstrated relationship between teacher absenteeism and students not reading on grade level, districts need the best subs around, Bowles writes.

"If we are committed to leave no child behind, then we must also be committed to leave no educator behind," he writes. "Substitute teachers educate children in our classrooms every single day. We currently leave many of them behind."

Some schools are juggling the Three R's with social and political issues: Teachers' low pay; huge classes; kids who are hungry, or can't speak English, or whose mom was hauled off to jail last night.

No wonder subs seem peripheral.

"We ignore them. We look through them," Bowles said. "As long as there is some semblance of order, generally, administrators are pleased with what's happening."

Some rocky spots