Three seasons into Education on the Rocks, we realized that we haven’t spent a moment talking about what happens when teachers aren’t in the classroom. Regardless of our educational experiences, we’ve all spent periods of entire days with substitute teachers. Often these teachers were nameless, their sole titles being any descriptor plus sub. The tired sub, the coffee-drinking sub, the newspaper-reading sub. We’re sure that you’re picturing someone from your educational past who came in to turn on the projector, press play on the VCR, insert the DVD, or started doing magic tricks to prepare for their night gig.

Today, because of increases in teacher absences, substitute teachers are in the news because the country has a shortage of people who can or want to do what we see as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, gig economy jobs in our culture. Today, we’re talking about what happens when the teacher’s gone and the sub’s in-charge and what happens when there aren’t enough subs to staff teacher absences, as we ask: “Is it the cool sub?”