Substantial Classrooms - by Jill Vialet & Amanda Von Moos (Paperback)

About the Book

"In the current educational climate, where the conversation has shifted to focus increasingly on student voice, project based learning, individualized learning and mastery -- moving away from the standards-based emphasis of the past 20 years - the pressure to update the approach to substitute teaching is all the more pressing. Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience offers insights, and concrete suggestions, as to how substitute teaching might be reimagined as a relevant and valuable part of a student's educational experience and an asset to the school. Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience will include an introduction to process improvement, providing a data-driven lens to understanding substitute teaching challenges, and the principles of design thinking, offering an experimentation approach that lends itself well to the daily nature of the demand. Subsequent chapters highlight different opportunities for addressing the challenge of substitute teaching, such as working with college students as subs, focusing on the sub to teacher pipeline, and developing specialized sub pools (art subs, poetry subs, financial literacy subs). Each chapter will include stories and examples to illustrate the opportunity, what this looks like for different players (school leaders, district leaders, colleges and community partners), and some concrete suggestions on how to get started and experiment"--

Book Synopsis

Transform Your School's Substitute Teaching Experience

Just like everything else, substitute teaching is about to undergo a big change. In Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience, authors Jill Vialet and Amanda von Moos usher in a new era of innovation in substitute teaching. Threaded with concrete and actionable ways to improve the experience of substitute teaching for administrators, students, and the teachers themselves, Substantial Classrooms is a leading voice for innovation and renewal in substitute teaching. Instead of viewing substitute teachers as a placeholder in an educator's absence, this book encourages readers to view substitute teachers as vital resources that diversify the typical classroom learning experience. While other books look only at making a bad situation bearable, this book re-examines substitute teaching with an eye towards reinventing it as a unique and valuable part of students' educational experience.

Key themes of Substantial Classrooms include:

• How substitute teaching works today
• Applying human-centered design to create change in legacy systems like substitute teaching
• Concrete and inspiring examples of different models for substitute teaching, for example, reimagining it as paid fieldwork for aspiring teachers.
• In addition to these key themes, every chapter includes stories and techniques from dynamic and innovative educational practitioners.

This must-have guide to substitute teaching can improve schools everywhere and revolutionize the way educators, school and district leaders, colleges, and community partners view the experience of substitute teaching as a lever to positively impact schools.

From the Back Cover

A FRESH LOOK AT THE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL OF SUBSTITUTE TEACHING

For decades, substitute teaching has been an afterthought, stuck in an unhappy equilibrium. Substantial Classrooms sheds much-needed light on the subject, offering fresh insights and actionable strategies for reimagining substitute teaching as a valuable asset both to the school and to students' educational experience. Applying a new perspective to the challenge of substitute teaching, this innovative book identifies opportunities for improving the experience for administrators, students, and faculty in a range of educational settings.

Offering educators an opportunity to reexamine the nature of substitute teaching, Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience is a much-needed resource for anyone looking to infuse innovation and renewal in the substitute teaching space.

"Substantial Classrooms is an engaging and inspiring look at an aspect of the educational system--substitute teaching--that has gone unexamined for too long. Amanda and Jill have not only done the work to prove you can jump in and turn small hacks into surprising, systemic change--they'll radically alter how you see substitute teaching."
--ARNE DUNCAN, Former U.S. Secretary of Education

"By effectively applying design thinking to the broad-spectrum educational challenges that surround substitute teaching, Substantial is opening new pathways to collaboration, innovation, and truly significant change."
--DAVID KELLEY, Founder, IDEO and Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design

"Substantial Classrooms is the first book I've seen that takes an optimistic and practical look at how substitute teaching can be a positive, and integral, part of teaching our next generation. I can imagine that a lot of people will initially hesitate before cracking a book on subbing, but I can assure you, if you're looking for encouragement--and answers--Substantial Classrooms is the place to start."
--ELLEN MOIR, Founder, New Teacher Center

About the Author

JILL VIALET and AMANDA VON MOOS are the Co-founders of Substantial, a nonprofit organization focused on redesigning the way schools and districts recruit, train, and support substitute teachers.