Educate the Next Generation and Earn Money: Substitute Teaching

The other day I wrote about how mystery shopping won’t make you a millionaire, but today I wanted to write about a different side hustle that does have the potential to rake in some real cash – substitute teaching. If you work 9-5 Monday-Friday, you’re out of luck in this category, but if you have more leeway with your hours or work evenings and weekends, this could be a great side hustle for you. What do you need to become a substitute teacher? That varies from state to state. I’ve subbed in two states, New Jersey and Virginia. In New Jersey you had to pass a background check, get fingerprinted, have a letter of recommendation and you must have completed 60 college credits. In my case, between AP courses in high school and a heavy course load my first semester of college, I had all the required things by my second semester of college. Usually, you’ll take that info to the county board of education to apply. In New Jersey, you have to get a substitute teaching license, which you obtain by turning in all those above documents and paying the fee $125. The average pay for a day substitute teaching was $90, but in some of the inner city areas it was as high as $120. In Virginia, you needed the same things but instead of 60 college credits, you have to have a Bachelor’s degree (in anything). There was also no substitute teaching license that you had to pay for, but you did have to go to a full day orientation about how to be a substitute teacher, which was honestly quite helpful as someone with no teaching experience. I wish I’d started in Virginia first. On the flip side, the pay in Virginia starts around $59 a day. Picture this:18 year old Mel going in to sub at the junior high school she had graduated from a whopping four and a half years earlier. I check in for my first day ever of substituting at the main office, am given an orientation packet and sent up to my homeroom. I call roll and send a kid down to the office with it. The TV comes on for the morning announcements, the kids all settle in and I crack open the orientation packet. About 2 pages into reading it, one kid starts screaming at another, the other throws his bookbag at the first, a fist fight starts, and kid number 1 picked up a desk and throws it at kid number 2 – all of this occurred within roughly 30 seconds. As I had not gotten to the page on fist fights in my orientation manual yet, I ran to the homeroom teacher next door – an actual trained professional – who helped me pry the kids apart and get them to the principal’s office. And that was my introduction to substitute teaching. I am totally prepared to referee professional wrestling matches now. Ugh. At least I made $90.

  The cons to substitute teaching include inadequate training in many states. They pretty much just throw you in and you sink or swim. However, some states do have good orientation programs (such as Virginia, where we covered what to do in the event of a fight before ever stepping foot in a classroom). The money really does vary state by state, since I started subbing in New Jersey at $90 a day, I had very little patience for crazy children and crappy lesson plans in Virginia at $59 a day when I was in grad school. Oddly enough, you’d expect New Jersey kids to be worse (I would anyway), but the Virginia kids were way harder control. You’re also going to have to front some fees to get started, although the pay makes it worth it (finger printing and licensure in some states). I was never a fan of not really knowing if I’d be working that day, until a phone call woke me up at 5:30 AM. On top of this, several states require you to have a teaching license and specific degrees to even substitute teach, so this would not be a good side hustle in those states (like California). Although there do seem to often be ways around this, at least temporarily, if you have connections with the school board. The main pro for me was flexibility. In Virginia the entire system was automated. I could enter what days I wanted to work and what grade levels I preferred or wouldn’t accept and the computer would call me at 5:30 AM if I got a job that day. If I didn’t want the job, I just wouldn’t pick up the phone (or I could’ve logged into the system and turned the notification off for that day). On the flip side, in New Jersey that system was a human being who got angry if you told her you could sub Tuesdays and then didn’t pick up the phone. I would have to call and leave a message on her answering machine the night before if I didn’t want to work the next day. But even that isn’t a big hassle, so I still think it was a pretty sweet job to be able to do at the top of summer vacation and during spring and winter break. The pay in New Jersey seemed good to me, and honestly, for cost of living in Virginia, the pay was good there too. I also liked that I could pick which age groups I wanted to work with. I started out working them all, and when I needed the work, I would take any restrictions off my settings, but my ideal group was high schoolers. Most subs I’ve met either love the little kids or want the hassle free (usually) day with the older kids. I prefer the latter, but if you really like teaching, you’ll do more of it with the little kids. High school teachers leave tests and dittos, elementary school teachers usually assume you can read to kids, color, help them fill out basic math sheets (although whatever that new math stuff is… I never understood it), etc. so you get real lesson plans from them. Sometimes it makes the day pass a lot quicker. If you’re interested in learning more about the qualifications to substitute teach in your state, you can check out this list of education requirements. A quick Google will give you even more info about your state substitute teaching programs.