The Sub Hit Another Milestone: A Substitute Teacher’s Take on Building Classroom Trust
Maya was the first one to notice me in the doorway. She was wearing the same faded blue hoodie she’d worn the last two times I’d subbed in this classroom, and she had a habit of sitting with one leg tucked under her, like she was ready to leave. She looked up from her pencil case and said, “You again.” It wasn’t a complaint. It was more like a weather report.
“Yeah,” I said. “Third time this month.”
She went back to sorting colored pencils and didn’t say anything else. But she didn’t look nervous either. That was the milestone. Not a big moment, no applause, nothing to pin on the wall. But for a substitute teacher, it might as well have been a banner.
The first time I walked into this fourth-grade class, I made the mistake of trying to be the stricter version of a teacher. I had my notebook, the official sub plan, and a list of names I couldn’t pronounce. The kids were fine at first, but by 10 a.m., a pencil flew across the room, and a boy named Cameron started arguing with me about whether he actually had to sit in his assigned seat. I said, “Yes, you do.” He said, “Why?” and the whole room got very quiet. I didn’t have a real answer. I was just the adult in the room, trying to hold onto the last shred of control. It didn’t work. We muddled through the day, but it felt less like teaching and more like crowd control.
The second time was better, mostly because I had stopped pretending I was the teacher. I told the class at the start of the day, “I’m not Mr. Herrera. I don’t know exactly where everything is, and I might mispronounce a few names. But I’m here to help you get through the day.” Some kids nodded. One asked if I was a real teacher. I said, “I’m a real person who teaches.” That seemed enough.
By the third visit, something had shifted. They weren’t testing me as much. They were used to my voice. They knew I would actually keep my word—if I said we’d have a quick break after math, we did. If I said I’d read the chapter aloud, I read the whole thing. The small consistencies added up.
So when Maya said “You again,” I felt a quiet kind of win. Later that morning, during a writing block, she raised her hand. I walked over. She said, “Can you check this? It’s not done. It’s just the beginning.” I asked if she wanted me to listen and tell her if the beginning made sense. She nodded. She read four sentences about a dog named Rocky who liked to escape the yard. When she stopped, I said, “I want to know what happens after he digs under the fence.” She looked at me for a second. “I’ll write that part now.” That was the other milestone.
The thing about being a substitute is that you don’t get to see the long arc. I don’t know what Rocky did after escaping the fence. But I saw her hand go up, and I understood something that is easy for regular teachers—and even parents—to forget: milestones don’t always look like growth charts or reading levels. Sometimes a milestone is just a child deciding to let a new adult in.
There are practical pieces to this too. I started carrying a small laminated seating chart. That sounds boring, but it changed everything. Instead of calling out “Can I have everyone’s attention?” I could say, “Tyrell, I need you back at your desk.” Just using a student’s name is a low-friction way to build trust. It tells them you see them as a person, not just a body in the room. I also started writing the day’s schedule on the board myself, even if the teacher had left one. It made the day feel predictable. Kids relax when they know what’s coming, especially when the regular routine is already interrupted by a stranger standing at the front of the room.
But the bigger shift was in my own approach. I stopped trying to convince the class that I was in charge and started trying to convince them that it was safe to work with me. There’s a difference. When you’re a substitute, the usual authority cues—the familiarity, the established rules, the backstory—are missing. You can’t rely on them. You have to make yourself real to the kids in front of you. The way I do that is by saying the obvious out loud: “I know this is different. I don’t love being new in a place either.” Then I let them see me work. I do the first writing task with them. I put my own math mistakes on the board. I don’t pretend to know a four-step multiplication trick I’ve never actually used. Children sense when an adult is performing competence. When you let them see the struggle, they’re far more willing to help you help them.
Cameron, the boy from the first time, was sitting with his hood half-up this time. He didn’t cause any trouble. He opened his math workbook and did the problems with the rest of the group. At one point, he asked if I could watch him work through a problem because he wasn’t sure if he got it right. I pulled up a chair. The problem was long division, which none of us loved. We went through it step by step. He got it right, but he said, “I only did it because you stayed.” I’m not sure that’s entirely true. But I knew what he meant. A small amount of attention, repeated, becomes a new pattern.
At the end of the day, the classroom teacher still wasn’t there. I left a note on the desk: “Good day. Cameron worked through the long division. Maya read her writing out loud. The class earned the extra recess.” I also texted the grade-level team, because they’d been checking in on me: “The sub hit another milestone. Yay all of us.” They sent back a thumbs-up emoji and a picture of a candy jar. It wasn’t profound. But it was nice to have someone to tell.
I don’t think this means I’ve figured out substitute teaching. Next week I’ll be in a different classroom, with a different set of names and routines. Maybe the kids there won’t even look up when I introduce myself. That’s fine. Milestones like this one don’t carry over. They don’t make the next classroom easier. But they do stick in your head for a little while, like a hand-drawn diagram of a dog’s escape route. Maya will probably forget my name by the time she gets to fifth grade. I’ll remember Rocky, though, waiting under the fence.
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