When the teacher left nothing

1 First, it happens to everyone

An empty desk is one of the most common surprises in substitute teaching. A teacher wakes up sick at 5 a.m., or a plan was left in the wrong room, or it was emailed to an address the office never forwarded. It is not a sign the day is doomed, and it is not your fault.

What the school needs from you is simple: students in the room, safe, and doing something reasonable. They do not need you to teach the next chapter of the math book. Review, reading and writing are always reasonable, at every grade, on every day of the year.

Give yourself a short, fixed amount of time to look before you decide. Searching for thirty minutes while students arrive is worse than starting with your own plan and switching if the real one turns up. Three minutes of focused triage is enough to know which kind of day you are having.

2 The three-minute triage

Work through these four in order. Each one takes under a minute, and you can stop as soon as you have enough to start the morning.

1. The schedule on the wall. Most rooms post the daily schedule near the board or the door. It tells you when specials, lunch and recess happen, which is half of what a plan does. Copy it onto the board.
2. The teacher next door. Knock, introduce yourself and ask whether they know what the class is working on. Teachers on the same grade often plan together, and they may hand you the same lesson they are teaching today.
3. The emergency folder. Look on the desk, in a drawer, near the door or in a bin marked Sub. Many teachers keep a folder of review lessons for exactly this morning.
4. The office. Tell them there are no plans. They may have a copy, they may call the teacher, or they may send someone to help. Either way, they now know, and that protects you.

Also glance at the teacher's planner if it is open on the desk, at the board from yesterday, and at any piles of copies labeled with today's date. Don't go through personal drawers or the teacher's computer.

3 Making a day of your own

If the triage turns up nothing, make your own plan. Keep the school's schedule as the frame: specials, lunch and recess still happen at their times, so you only have to fill the blocks in between.

The sub plan generator does this for you. Pick the grade and the length of the day, and it lays out a full timetable of review work, reading, writing and short breaks, ready to print or read from your phone. Every activity in it is something students can do without being taught anything new.

• Reading: a read-aloud with a few questions, or a reading passage for students to read on their own.
• Math: a review sheet from the math worksheet maker on a skill the grade has surely met, like addition facts or multiplication.
• Writing: a writing prompt with a length to aim for and a reminder to reread before handing in.
• Movement: a brain break between long sitting blocks.
• Gaps: a few ten-minute fillers ready for when a block ends early.

If you can't print, write each task on the board and have students use notebook paper. Every activity above works with paper, a pencil and you reading aloud.

4 What to tell the class

Students will notice if the day is different. Some will tell you that is not what we usually do. Keep it short and confident, and don't apologize for having a plan.

What to sayGood morning. I'm your teacher today. The plan for today is on the board, and we're going to work through it together. If you know a routine I should be using, raise your hand and tell me, because that helps.

Asking the class for routines is not weakness. Students know where the pencils are, how lunch count works, and what the quiet signal is. Pick two or three students who answer calmly and use them as your guides for the morning.

Be careful with requests that would change the rules, though. "Our teacher always lets us have free time" may be true or may not. A good answer is: "Today we'll stick to the plan on the board. If there's time at the end, we'll see." That keeps the day predictable without arguing.

5 If the real plans turn up

Sometimes the plan arrives at 9:30: an email to the office, a folder found in the next room, or a teacher who calls in with instructions. When it does, switch over at the next natural break, not in the middle of an activity.

1. Finish the activity students are doing now.
2. Read the real plan once, quickly, and see where the class should be at this point in the day.
3. Skip anything that was meant for earlier unless the plan says it matters.
4. Tell the class what is changing in one sentence and write it on the board.
5. In your note, say what was done from your plan and what from the teacher's.

Keep the work from your own plan, labeled. It shows the teacher what students did, and some of it may be useful practice the teacher wants to see. Put it in its own pile with a sticky note saying "from the sub's plan, before the plans arrived."

If the real plan asks for something you can't do, such as a lab with materials you can't find or a lesson that needs the teacher's login, keep doing the review work and say so in the note. That is a reasonable call, and teachers understand it.

6 Writing the note on a no-plan day

On a day with no plans, the note matters even more, because the teacher can't match what happened against what they left. Be clear about what you found and what you did.

• When you arrived and what you looked for.
• What you found, if anything, and where.
• What you used instead, block by block.
• Where the finished work is, in labeled piles.
• Anything you didn't get to, and why.

What to sayI arrived at 7:40 and couldn't find plans on the desk or in the folders near the door. I told the office at 7:50. The teacher next door said the class is working on fractions, so we did a fraction review sheet in math. The rest of the day was reading, a writing prompt and a read-aloud. All work is in the tray, labeled by subject.

Keep the tone neutral. The note isn't a complaint, and the teacher was probably sick or caught off guard. The sub note tool gives you the headings and plain sentences to start from, so the note stays factual and quick to write.

7 Being ready next time

Once you've had one no-plan day, you'll want to be ready for the next. A small kit in your bag turns this from a scramble into an ordinary morning.

• A printed backup plan for each grade you usually cover, made with the sub plan generator.
• A few copies of a reading passage and a math review sheet for those grades.
• Two or three writing prompts on a card.
• A book you like reading aloud.
• A short list of games and fillers that need nothing at all.
• A copy of the first-day checklist.

Refresh the kit every few weeks, especially if you move between grades. A backup plan for second grade won't help much in a seventh-grade room. The sub packs are ready-made sets you can print once and carry.

Remember that the triage is the same in every school: the wall, the neighbor, the folder, the office. Do it in that order every time, and an empty desk becomes three minutes of your morning rather than the shape of your whole day.

8 A no-plan day by grade

The same triage works everywhere, but the day you build afterward should fit the age in front of you. Short, varied pieces suit young children; one clear task per period suits older students.

• Kindergarten to second grade: a read-aloud on the carpet, a drawing and writing page about the story, counting or number games, a movement break, and a second story after lunch. Keep each piece to fifteen or twenty minutes and change places in the room between them.
• Third to fifth grade: a reading passage with written answers, a math review sheet, a writing prompt with a length to aim for, and a read-aloud chapter. Students can work on their own for longer, so give them a clear finish line and an early-finisher task.
• Sixth to eighth grade: one clear assignment per period, written on the board with the time it should take and what to turn in. A reading passage with questions or a writing prompt tied to the subject works in almost any class.

In middle school, ask the teacher next door or a student which unit the class is on, and give the review work a link to it if you can. A writing prompt about the current topic feels like real work, not a time filler, and students take it more seriously.

At every age, plan more than you think you need. Review work goes faster than new lessons, and the most common trouble on a no-plan day is running out at 2:00 p.m. A second reading passage or a few spare fillers in your bag solve that.