MAT Blog

Come on now, help a substitute teacher out!

We were looking over our blog index and noticed that, to date, we’ve tagged 48 blogs with “classroom management”; that doesn’t even take into account the 25 or so blogs that have been tagged similarly. We admit it, we felt that we might have been on the verge of exhausting all things classroom management, but then we found Farley’s blog, Oh, Boy 4^th Grade.

This blog is just as much for you as it is for the substitute teachers who take over when you attend a conference, nurse your cold, or insert reason for absence here.  

What do I do?
Using a dry erase marker, Farley suggests writing each student a note directly on the desktop (it should come right off, but if not, an anti-bacterial wipe will work).

Do you have a particularly “active” student who needs a personalized reminder? How about a classroom leader, someone the rest of your students respect and listen to? Do you need to remind one or two students to take something home to their parents?  

You don’t have to labor over the process and you don’t have to write a message to each student, but if you can find the time, it couldn’t hurt. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily guarantee that your students are going to be “great helpers” or “awesome assistants” when substitute teachers take over, but it does remind them of your expectations and encourages them to make decisions that will make your return a jovial one.