PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

Needing a substitute is something all teachers understand. You get sick, your children get sick, you are at a conference, whatever the reason, all teachers need a substitute at some time or another. Lessons need to be modified for the substitute because they possibly don’t know the students or the material well enough to teach something new. 

I have seen this time and time again in my two fields of study: Spanish and Math. In general there are a few to none substitutes who speak Spanish and the higher up in grades you go the less likely you are to find a substitute who knows how to explain the math concepts. Therefore there are two choices a teacher can make; one is to chance it and give the substitute new material hoping they will come through for you and the second is to leave a ton of work for the students to do so the substitute only has to monitor all of the students while they work on content they already know. On more than one accounts I have heard the second option described as “losing a day” as the teachers feel like they lost a day of instructional time, while the first option, being a gamble could result in success or the possibility of “losing 2 days” as the teacher has to take the next day to fix all of the misconceptions that the substitute taught the day before. I have witnessed all scenarios first hand and I’m sure that all of you experienced with the daily life of a teacher can recall the very same things.

With the content we’re expected to teach expanding year by year and the school year shrinking we as teachers cannot afford to lose a day in the classroom. Therefore it is crucial that we look to other avenues to allow learning to still happen in the classroom while the inevitable absences occur. Many substitutes are not allowed to take students to the computer lab, so the solution must remain in the classroom. Therefore I propose the use of slidecasts and vidcasts.

The actual teacher can’t be in the classroom, so the next best thing is to have a recording of the actual teacher. Although the teacher is obviously not able to answer questions, they would still be able to teach the students and walk them through the process step by step. A vidcast could be simply a video of the teacher teaching the lesson in the normal way with possibly a whiteboard or a smartboard, while a slidecast could be a voiceover of the teacher explaining the concepts with a powerpoint presentation. In both cases the teacher would have to do little extra work because they were already prepared to teach that very same lesson. In the case of the vidcast they just have to take the original lesson and video tape it or if they already had a powerpoint slide ready they could complete a slidecast. It would only take the normal time to present the lesson to then tape it.

There is online software that is free and available to anyone with Internet access that would allow these vidcasts and screencasts to be created, such as Jing, Audacity, and Slideshare. There is also Movie Maker that comes on a PC and iMovie that comes on a Mac. The only expense on the district or possibly the individual teacher is a videocamera that records digitally (which many districts might already have and can be shared between the teachers) or a webcam, and a microphone. Many computers now-a-days come with a webcam and a microphone standard, possibly reducing this cost even further. All that a substitute would need to show the students was a single computer in the room and a projector, which is almost standard in most classrooms these days.

This works perfectly in the case of absences that you know about in advance, but what about the case when it is a last minute absence? In this case you could use vidcasts from a previous year if you have it, or borrow a vidcast from another teacher. Not only would this be beneficial with a substitute but teachers could also learn new ideas for teaching material through viewing other teachers’ videos. What an amazing bonus! To see another teacher talk about her ideas and how she incorporates videos in her classroom when a substitute is present check out this site.

The portion that I will implement immediately in my classroom is to make two vidcasts, one for an elementary class and one for a middle school class. I will try it with a substitute and get feedback from the substitute on how it worked and how the students responded to it. I will see if he or she feels that this was more beneficial and helpful to both the substitute and the students. Then I will talk with the students and see how they reacted to the video and what improvements they felt were necessary for the next time around.

For future implementation I would make more videos to prepare for the possibility of a substitute including a standard expectation video, which would break down the expectations I have for my students with completing their work and with the treatment of the substitute. I would also make videos of content that is often repeated or reviewed throughout the class to have videos prepared and to have a fallback in the case of an unexpected absence.

I will know that this is a success if the students are engaged and pay attention to the vidcast that I have created according to the substitute. An additional indicator will be if the students demonstrate learning and growth after my return.