SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS: PINCH-HTTING IS THEIR SPECIALTY

Substitute teacher Tim Davis gave the daily lesson to juniors in American history class at Cape Girardeau Central High School.

Try to recall Newton's laws of motion. Can't? Now imagine getting a call at 6 a.m. asking you to teach an advanced physics class in an hour.

You see what substitute teachers sometimes face.

"I would not call substitute teaching a perfect situation because you're not always going to be in the area that you're trained for," said Cape Girardeau public schools assistant superintendent Bill Biggerstaff.

"Oftentimes you go into a situation and you don't know anyone in the class. So it's like the first day of school. That's uncomfortable even for seasoned veterans, sometimes," he said.

Yet, Cape Girardeau's 10 public schools together maintain a list of 70 to 80 names of available substitute teachers. Biggerstaff said his office files five to 10 new applications each week. On a given day, 10 to 15 substitutes are teaching in the district.

The substitute teaching corps in Cape Girardeau is a motley crew.

There are college students who have a couple free days a week. There are people like Tim Daly, who has a college degree and a night job, and is taking a year off from school before enrolling in graduate school. And there are people like Shannon Anders, who taught for more than 30 years, retired, and substitutes because of "a love for teaching, a love for the kids" that won't allow her to stay away from school.

One must have 60 hours of college credit in any discipline to be a substitute teacher. People with 60 credit hours are eligible for a certificate that allows them to teach 45 days. Someone with 90 credit hours can apply for a 90-day certificate, and those with a teaching certificate are eligible to teach an unlimited number of days.

Those with the required credit hours fill out an application and provide a college transcript and copies of employment eligibility verification such as a driver's license. The information is sent to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in Jefferson City, where applications are screened.

Those selected receive a certificate about two weeks later. Then they contact the district to have their names placed on its list. They can specify which grades, subjects and days they would prefer, but "the more available they are the more they are going to be employed," Biggerstaff said.

Pay in Cape Girardeau public schools is $45 a day.

"It's not a job," Anders said, "you'll ever make a whole lot of money with -- Cape's system pays less than any around here, I think -- but it's worthwhile. I enjoy it. It keeps me young."

Daly is young, and that presents him with different challenges.

The students probe you with questions, he said. "They want to know your first name, they want to know your age."

Anders and Daly each sub regularly at Cape Girardeau Central High School, which makes their job easier.

"You get to know the teachers," Daly said, "and you get to know the students by name. And if a substitute knows a student by name, they act a lot differently."

Said Anders: "That's half the battle if you can call their name."

But each said problems are very few.

"I think perhaps it has been that way in the past sometimes," said Anders, who has substituted for 10 years, "and occasionally you do run into a class that's really hard to control. But more often than not they are really nice to you, they appreciate you being there to try to help them further their education, and they don't give you a rough time. And if you get along with most of them, they'll police the rest."

Or help teach a calculus or chemistry class. Although Biggerstaff said the duties of a substitute are the same as the regular teacher, and "we would not view it in our district as a baby-sitting situation," Anders said that can't always happen.

Sometimes all she can do is show a video or hand out a worksheet.

"Sometimes I don't know the subject," she said, "and I admit that I don't know the subject."

The regular teachers allow for students to help each other and work together sometimes," she said. "I don't try to fake my way through because they'll see right through you."