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By Amanda Wegner
Contributing writer
 Angie Thole and Tom Gilding |
When Angie Thole completed a one-day substitute teacher training from the WEA Professional Development Academy (PDA) in 2004, she thought she may never see her instructor again.
Boy, was she wrong. As fate would have it, Thole went on to get a teaching certificate, and that PDA instructor – Tom Gilding – is now her mentor at Burlington High School.
“I was very pleased when I found out Angie was going to be my student teacher,” Gilding said. “Pleased because I was glad she went into teaching and that she would bring her talents and enthusiasm to the classroom. I was then extremely happy for both her and our English department when I found out she got the job. She is an exciting addition to our school.”
And Thole’s take on it? “Working with Tom over the past couple of years has been great. After I took the sub class with him, I assumed I wouldn’t see him again…. Tom used to tell me, ‘once a student of mine, always a student of mine.’ And even though he’s my colleague now, I recognize that I still have a lot to learn from him and the rest of my department."
Luck or fate?
Thole said she knew she wanted to be a certified teacher even before she graduated from UW-Milwaukee with an English degree in 2004. “I just went about it in kind of an unconventional way,” she said.
Shortly after graduating, Thole moved to the Burlington area and decided to work as a substitute teacher. In Wisconsin, substitutes without teacher certification need a Substitute Teacher Permit and must receive training before entering the classroom. Thole enrolled in the WEA Professional Development Academy’s one-day Substitute Teacher Training in summer 2004. The leader of the training that day was Gilding, a veteran trainer with the program.
Thole’s semester-long stint as a substitute was energizing. “Subbing helped me zone in on the grade level that I thought I would be best suited to work with,” Thole said. “I got the opportunity to interact with students of all ages and really get to know the different developmental and grade levels.”
Thole enrolled at UW-Whitewater to pursue her teacher certification. Whether it was luck or fate, Thole – who graduated in 2006 and subbed for the 2006-07 school year – was hired by the Burlington district to join the high school English department headed by Gilding.
Not so unconventional
Though Gilding has three colleagues in the district who were once his student-teachers, Thole is the first he has had the opportunity to see through from “interested party” to “certified teacher.”
However, Debra Berndt, director of the Professional Development Academy, said, “while we haven’t conducted a follow-up survey in a few years, the earlier study and our current communications with students indicates that a good number of those who participate in our sub training are either actively pursuing teacher certification or are thinking seriously of a career in education.”
Participants with education degrees often take the course because “they see it as a very practical synopsis of everything they’ve been studying,”she said.
The course has become even more practical now that it is solely online at http://pdalearning.org; live courses, such as the one Thole took, are no longer offered.
Taught by veteran, National Board Certified teachers, the course covers everything from state requirements for substitutes to classroom management. PDA has offered the course since 1996 (and online since 2002), an outgrowth of 1995 law changes. With a shortage of certified teachers to work as substitutes, the state approved the hiring of noncertified subs, only requiring that this new crop of subs have a degree from an accredited university and “additional training.” That phrase was never defined, but PDA saw a need and stepped up.
“It was much too vague for our purposes,” Berndt said, “which is the primary reason we started doing this back in 1996. First and foremost, we were concerned that noncertified subs have at least a basic foundation in school safety, behavior management and instructional strategies so children would continue to be in secure and productive classrooms when their regular teacher was absent.”
With rolling registration and online convenience, participants sign up and can work anytime, from anywhere; it only takes 12 to 15 hours to complete. Berndt recommends future subs take the course before applying with districts. The course isn’t just for want-to-be subs, either. It’s a great bridge for teachers coming back to the classroom after an absence, recent college graduates who don’t have a permanent position, or substitutes wanting to hone their skills.
“The course is excellent in that it allows the students to get into real-case scenarios of classroom management and discipline procedures,” Gilding said. “They find out not only how experts would react to them, but how the experienced, ‘in the trenches’ instructor and their fellow students would react and handle things.”
And Thole, the not-so-green teacher after all her experience, shares a similar sentiment: “The training was extremely beneficial. It not only gave me great ideas for classroom management, but I met others who had some of the same questions and anxieties about subbing. … I would recommend the course for anyone thinking of becoming a part- or full-time sub.”
OnWEAC Resource Page on the Professional Development Academy
Posted October 3, 2007