Transcriber: Rebecca Rakowitz Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Substitute teacher.
What comes to your mind when you hear that term?
(Laughter)
Right. Exactly.
(Laughter)
Chaos.
Screaming children.
Maybe children forming spitballs and paper planes,
throwing them across the room.
Boring videos popped into a VCR that rolls with a cart down the hallway.
(Laughter)
A headache for the poor teacher
trying to just corral all of the kids in the classroom.
But now think about the best teacher you've ever had in your life.
She's like, "Oh yeah."
She's got that one.
Probably someone totally different, right?
Inspiration, engagement, interesting lessons, maybe experiments.
Relationships and connections made with that person.
I'm a teacher.
I'm an educator.
And the first seven years of my secular career,
I spent them right here in Chicago on the Near West Side,
and I taught at a high school.
Those years were amazing.
All the relationships and the connections
that I was able to make with the students, the school, the community at large.
I'm definitely appreciative of those experiences.
But most recently,
I had the privilege of serving as the substitute teacher
in a 5th grade classroom.
5th graders.
And as I got all of the expectations written on the board, all of our rules,
pass out my papers,
try to relate to the kids in some way because they don't know me,
kid raised their hand, say,
"Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders, I got a question."
"Okay, what's your question?"
"What kind of substitute teacher are you?
(Laughter)
Are you one of those that take your job too seriously?
You will make us do our work all day?
(Laughter)
Or are you one of those that doesn't really care what we do,
and you will let us do anything?"
From a 5th grader.
I never had even one of my high school students to ask me,
"What kind of teacher are you?"
So I thought about that question, then I responded.
I'll tell you what I told this student in just a second.
But substitute teaching
is not a foreign concept, really, to any one of us.
We may not have thought about it in a long time,
but it's not foreign.
Whether we attended public school, private school, charter school,
vocational school - whatever the case may be -
we came into contact with a substitute teacher.
Because teachers, our regular teachers,
even though we looked at them as being superheroes
and they always had to be on,
they experienced the same things we do:
life, right?
Maybe they had a family emergency;
they've got to take care of their own kids.
Maybe they just need a break, a mental vacation.
Maybe they get sick - teachers get sick too.
In this country,
teachers spend about 11 days out of the classroom every year.
So that means by the time a student comes into their schooling,
their kindergarten year,
all the way to 12th grade,
they must spend about 143 days with a substitute.
So give or take a day or two, that's one month shy of a full school year
spent with someone who is not your regular teacher.
As you may think, that has a negative impact on students.
If they don't see their regular teacher, they may not achieve that day.
And it's even more critical, those numbers are even higher,
for the 16 million students
that we have living in poverty in this country,
where only 8% of them are projected to graduate from college
before they turn 24.
They could be even further behind
because their teachers just experienced life.
I specifically remember being that teacher who just experienced life
and needed that day off,
and I was so nervous:
"Who's this person that's going to come in and step in for me?
Are they going to even care about my kids?"
And I remember making these lesson plans that would have the notes verbatim:
"Sub says this.
Do this here.
Pass this out."
(Laughter)
And if I couldn't get a substitute, I'd have to knock on my colleagues' doors,
and say, "Hey, okay, you take period 1;
you take period 3; my lunch can be here."
And even though my colleagues were great, and we did that for one another,
I knew that wasn't a good use of their time nor my time.
But what if, what if that didn't really matter?
What if being out of the classroom
was actually a step forward in the education of young people?
What would happen if we came together
and really redesigned the way that communities supported schools?
People who live in those communities
supporting the schools in those communities.
What would happen?
You know, wouldn't it be cool if a person with a music degree,
maybe a recording deal,
whose music is on Spotify, iTunes -
wouldn't it be interesting if they went into a school for a day?
Or maybe a Zumba instructor?
A yoga instructor?
They instruct, right?
What if they went into a high school?
Or what about a CEO of a small company, of a small business?
What if they go into a school
and teach some high schoolers about how to be a good entrepreneur?
What would happen?
Well, all that is possible.
All that is possible.
Allow me to introduce to you the concept of the guest educator.
[Guest Educator]
Now, a guest educator is exactly what it sounds like.
They're a guest, but they're also an educator.
They have a heart for kids.
So they're in a school for a very short amount of time.
Because what you get
when you take the temporary nature of a substitute teacher
and mix it with all of the qualities of the best teacher you've ever had,
when those two things come together, you get a guest educator,
not a substitute teacher.
And guest educators
have the opportunity and the possibility
of really affecting the educations of our young people.
The vision of what a guest educator is
is a local leader in the community,
and they serve as a top-tier temporary teacher.
And every single day,
guest educators can transform the academics of our young people.
But not only that, they can be a valuable mentor,
having someone to expose our youth to different life and career pathways.
There are other professions.
Doctors and lawyers, yes.
But there are other cool things that people are doing.
It's very, very interesting when we look at the guest educator.
I remember being that teacher that needed that day off.
I remember that.
And it was so, so nerve-wracking.
But when I think about substitute teaching, I don't think about chaos.
I don't think about waiting for the next day
to see who's going to come to my class.
I think about guest educators.
And guest educators have interests and passions and names
and talents and abilities.
I think about Laura.
[Laura]
Now, Laura, she was a teacher.
A full-time teacher.
She taught for five years at a school.
But for the past three years, she's been a guest educator.
But what makes her so great as a guest educator
is not necessarily her experience in the classroom as a teacher.
It's her passion for things like activism, for traveling, and for writing.
And she loves to go in the classroom on a flexible basis
but also pursue her other passions.
Matter of fact, she's writing a book right now,
trying to get a novel published.
Imagine her going into an English classroom and bringing a text to life.
Maybe in a way that the regular teacher couldn't,
because this is what she kind of focuses on.
You know anyone like Laura?
Maybe you are Laura.
And maybe you have an unequivocal belief
that all students deserve a great education, no matter what,
even when their regular teachers are not there,
a hundred percent of the time.
Or maybe you just like the learning process,
you can communicate effectively,
or you know someone who can do those things.
Maybe you're pursuing something else in life,
but you can still give back one, two, three days to a local school
and be a guest educator.
Maybe you know someone like Tony.
[Tony]
Now, Tony, he does not have any formal training as a teacher,
but that doesn't matter.
He's one of the most effective guest educators we've seen.
See, Tony is very passionate about music, hip hop, spoken word,
and he uses these passions when he goes overseas.
He holds these - or facilitates, rather - these workshops for young people.
He teaches them his music, the music of his city, the music that he makes.
And then he brings that back to his city.
To his kids.
And he shows them videos, pictures, even brings them back souvenirs,
showing them that "Hey, the world is so much bigger than you may think,
than your sphere of influence,
and if you keep your education first,
if you keep your big, all this could be opened up to you."
Imagine kids seeing pictures from a different country the first time,
a video for the first time.
A guest education might also be a way
in helping us to further diversify the teacher pipeline
and introduce individuals to the classroom
that never thought that education might be for them.
Now, take Claice for example.
[Claice]
She just graduated from college with a degree in history,
and she started to guest educate in January, going into classrooms.
And Claice has a very high passion for solving problems.
She loves to solve problems.
She does it in her community on a regular basis.
But she found out through guest education
that she has a knack for helping young people to solve their problems.
So now she's in a teacher certification program to be a full-time teacher.
Who would have known?
But if she hadn't taken that step to go in the classroom,
maybe she wouldn't have figured that out.
Imagine the impact
that she's going to have on her students
as she goes into the classroom and teaches them full time.
Now, finding guest educators like Laura, Tony, Claice -
it's very hard work.
Scouring communities for local leaders who want to serve,
it's hard work.
But our kids are worth it.
Connecting them with schools
in need of high caliber, temporary teachers,
it's difficult.
But our kids are worth it.
Giving them the resources that they need
to be able to be effective in the classroom,
that's no easy task.
Every day is a constant struggle, but our kids are worth it.
And having guest educators in the classroom, it benefits.
Imagine a teacher not having to worry about a really long lesson plan,
knowing that, you know what,
tomorrow we have a local CEO coming in for my students.
They're okay.
Tomorrow we have a Zumba instructor;
they're going to go through some Zumba routines.
Tomorrow we have a hairstylist coming in.
Tomorrow we have an individual who is in retail.
They're going to teach my students how to tie a tie.
My kids are okay.
The principals, school leaders, benefit from guest educators
because they have a proven solution to a very real problem:
when their staff need a day out, guest educators jump right in.
The guest educators themselves benefit
because it is a privilege to serve students, to serve schools.
Guest educators tell us all the time,
"I had a great day today.
I taught a student how to write their first sentence.
They didn't know how to do that before I taught them that."
Or they say, "I had a great day today.
These kids, they were having an issue,
and I gave them ideas on how to have positive conflict resolution.
They didn't fight.
They didn't argue."
"I had a great day today.
I talked to this student about their future.
Now they're energized about college,
about maybe going overseas to study abroad."
But that can only happen unless we all start to use our talents and abilities
and give them back to schools.
Remember that student?
That 5th grader?
"What kind of substitute teacher are you?"
So after I thought about it for a moment, I looked at him, and I said,
"I'm the type of substitute, no, hold on, I'm the type of guest educator
that is here to enrich your education.
And I expect that you give me your absolute best."
And I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Right now there are hundreds of guest educators in five U.S. cities:
in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Nashville, Dallas, Washington D.C.
And they're going into schools
and offering their talents and their abilities to our young people.
Allow me to give you a little bit of a glimpse
into what the future possibilities of guest education can be.
Imagine in this country 130,000 schools.
In those schools, 3.5 million full-time teachers working hard.
In those classrooms, 55.7 million students,
and they're all being supported by guest educators.
But once again, that can only happen unless we really tap into
our talents and our abilities, our passions, our interests,
and offer them to schools.
It's a privilege to be able to do that,
to have an effect on a young mind.
So I ask you:
What are your passions?
What are your talents?
What do you have to offer to our young people?
Like we like to say at rich schools on our team, why not come with us?
Join us on our mission, on our journey.
Get off the bench, get off the sideline.
Walk the talk, get involved in education in a very real way,
in a way that supports schools but also serves our most important asset:
our kids, our students,
the future.
If you're interested in what we do, follow us at different schools
to see some of the experiences that our guest educators are having
and what the possibilities are;
see what we believe.
You and I, we can exchange that term, "substitute teacher,"
the one that you chuckled at at the beginning.
We can exchange that for one with a much higher purpose:
the "guest educator."
And we can flip the sub-script.
Thank you.
(Applause)