The Most Difficult Job In A School

This post from The Education Wonks got me thinking about teacher/substitute licensure. My general belief is that in the balance between knowledge of content area and pedagogy, high school teachers lean towards content, elementary school teachers lean towards pedagogy, and middle school teachers have that perfect combination (completely unbiased, right?). More and more, I believe that a minimum of content area knowledge should be required for any subject, but that high school teachers (and even college professors) need to spend more time studying pedagogy, and ways to reach their students.

Relating this to substitute teachers, it's impossible to ask that a teacher never be absent, so something needs to be done to get replacements. Realistically, you're never going to always have substitute teachers who have the content and pedagogy knowledge that the full-time teachers have. So what should the minimum requirements be? A college degree. I think that's about all you can ask for. I'd love to say that you need a person with at least 1 year experience in a classroom (as an aide/teacher), but there aren't enough subs to go around already, so we really can't be expecting that much experience. This should be the place where aspiring teachers gain experience. As schools, what we can do is welcome substitutes into our building, so they want to return, already knowing some of the students. We can even invite substitutes to take part in professional development activities. If schools spent the time to train their substitutes, you might get more repeat subs, which helps them know the students. And that's half the battle.