As a teacher under a contract, you have do enjoy some measure of job security once you’ve earned tenure. You generally have excellent health insurance, paid vacations, sick days and personal leave, and a union to protect you in case of conflicts with administrators or legal situations with students (both of which are far too common in the adversarial system which is public education). If you are unhappy with a job, however, you are legally obligated to serve out your contract until the end of the school year.

With substitute teaching, there is no contractual obligation. If you have a bad experience at a school one day, you never have to work there again. On the other hand, there’ll be other schools at which you will prefer to work. Eventually, if you demonstrate a high level of skill and are able to relate to the students, many regular teachers at your favorite schools will call on you regularly. This is no bad thing, and can often lead to a permanent position, if that is your wish.

In fact, today’s automated sub-finder systems allow substitute teachers to pick which school buildings at which they will work. You can set up your account over the phone or even online in such a way that you will be called only for jobs at particular schools, or even certain teachers (believe this: there are more than a few teachers out there for whom you will never want to sub!)

Of course, this works both ways: a teacher or a school can “exclude" you for any reason, and are under no obligation to tell you why.

If you are adaptable and have some mastery of a great number of different subjects, you will never be bored. In this particular field of education, substitute teaching can be a new adventure every day.

Another advantage is the meeting and paperwork requirement. Substitute teaching has almost none of this. A teacher under contract is forced to spend many hours before school, after school and on weekends attending meetings, filling out forms and reports, and of course grading student work. As a substitute teacher, your day ends at 3 PM (or whenever the last bell of the day rings). You may be asked to fill out a short report to the teacher and building administrator, but beyond that, you have no responsibilities beyond carrying out the teacher’s regular daily classroom duties.

Substitute teaching is not the easiest job in education – far from it – but it can provide a nice supplemental income for those who work in the evenings as entertainers or writers, and provides valuable real-world experience in education.