Better Training for Substitutes
You’ve heard of Power Rangers and Power Brokers? How about Power Subs? The Greenwich, Connecticut school district hopes to create around 24 of them, according to greenwichtime.com. The plan is to select around two dozen of the district’s best substitute teachers, out of several hundred on-call, and give them extra training this summer so that they have a firm grasp of the district’s elementary math and literacy curricula, and the know-how to use current classroom technology to deliver the lessons.
The Power Subs should come out of the week-long training with the ability to “jump into the middle of a lesson without missing a beat.” Some parents and school board members are concerned, the report says, that students can miss out in the classroom when a substitute takes over for a teacher who is off for professional training or is ill. One board member says that students’ academic progress starts to lag the longer a sub leads a class.
The district’s elementary principals are being asked to handpick their most dependable subs for the power training. The website says most will likely be substitutes who don’t want to work fulltime and have flexible schedules, mainly retired teachers and stay-at-home mothers with teaching experience. At the end of the next school year, feedback from teachers and principals will determine if the Power Sub program will power ahead.
Filed under: K-12 Education News
Tags: Programs for Teachers, Substitute Teaching, Teacher Training
