Guest Teachers & Educators

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Short Answer

“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”

  • G-Man, Half-Life 2 (2004)

Guest teachers are any individual partially, or fully, replacing you in a teacher role temporarily. They could teach topics you may not have licensure, certification, or availability to do yourself. They could also be anyone able to ensure students are accounted for when you’re unavailable.

Whether or not guest teachers are allowed is typically dependent on administrative approval, legal procedures, and background checks instead of only teacher approval.

Long Answer

Notice: This is not legal advice. It talks about things guest teachers typically need to go through before allowed to teach at a specific institution.

Imagine this scenario. You are a music teacher and you are friends with a famous artist, band, or other notable figure. You contacted them, they agreed to come over, and you have a date and time. Seems all good so far!

Not necessarily.

Potential Blockers to Guest Teachers

Legal Eligibility and Background Checks

Some laws restrict people with certain crimes around campuses. Ensure guests are allowed on campus and cleared before they visit. This may typically be handled by administration rather than educators and teachers.

  • One such law is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act at the federal level (2006).

Additionally, extensive background checks aren’t something you normally verify and conduct yourself. Federal authorities, principals, and other support staff do this for personnel in workplace settings. Some schools may have a verified adult list to allow select individuals to do extracurricular activities and/or a list to ban select individuals as well.

Administrative Approval

Your principal or dean must approve the visit. If it’s off-campus, it typically falls under field trip procedures and still requires their approval and acknowledgement to host.

Written Agreements

To mitigate ambiguity, create a written record of the session(s), and deal with any liabilities, you’ll want a written contract and/or form with some of the following:

  • Role(s)
  • Duration
  • Equipment needed
  • Student interactions with teachers/guests
  • Subject matter(s) taught
  • Accommodations needed
  • Monetary costs payable to guests, if any
  • Additional rules, stipulations, and expectations

Monetary Costs

Many guest teachers and presenters are adults and may request compensation for their work. If the payment(s) do not get handled, that may cause issues and cancel the guest teaching session. If they’re volunteering or doing it for free, then you don’t need to worry about this.

Got past all the checks! Now what?

Once all approvals are complete, verify and ensure all roles are clearly defined and met. If, on the agreed times of the session, you’re unsure what your role is and you’re present during the guest teacher session, then assume the following, at a minimum, are true until proven otherwise:

  • You’re present as the teacher of record and assume responsibility for the students
  • You ensure students follow the rules and procedures
  • You’ll need to be around to handle emergencies and unforeseen liabilities/events
  • You’ll have to remain around the students

You may have standard operating procedures, or SOPs, pre-defined as well. If so, you may be safe to defer to those for all other things to do during guest teacher sessions. These sessions are similar to standard classrooms and partly what you normally do as a teacher anyway.

The guest teacher is also bound by any rules they agreed to as well. If they do not follow them, you may have to deal with removing them from the campus and even get administration or law enforcement to impose legal consequences upon them.

If you want to get a guest teacher or presenter, it’s OK to do–and sometimes encouraged–but make sure you have everything squared away before the time(s) they’re present.

Substitute Teachers

Substitute teachers are teachers with either a teaching license or a substitute teaching license in your applicable state. In emergencies, those requirements could be waived or lowered, but also vary by state (Learning Policy Institute, 2025). For private schools, they could be vetted adults by administrative staff too (since private schools can be classified as private businesses in many jurisdictions).

Unlike other guest teachers, substitute teachers already establish formal job contracts with agencies or school districts, completed multiple background checks at state/federal level, and the blockers above are already taken care for you. Substitute teachers can replace you, at least temporarily, as a primary teacher/teacher of record depending on what the license and state allows. In most cases, they are called upon a day before/morning of a given day, rather than planned far in advance, but some substitute teachers may take on long-term coverage.

With a substitute teacher, you may safely assume some things until proven otherwise:

  1. They very likely do not know the same material as you.
  2. They will not have full access to the same software you do (e.g. classroom management and monitoring software)
    • Sometimes it is the facility’s rules and administration blocking access instead of any teacher(s).
  3. They may handle classroom management differently from you.
  4. They may not have the appropriate training to handle certain situations like the primary teacher can.
  5. They are on the educational staff’s side, not the student’s side.

A substitute teacher doesn’t have much power, so most managerial and authority is delegated to others to follow up on. They could issue some punishments on an educator’s behalf, provided they are permitted to do so by their contract’s terms and administration’s rules. However, how they can issue those punishments may be restricted. Some examples of what substitutes may be cleared to do regarding discipline:

  • Minor and moderate infractions: documenting issues in substitute-to-teacher notes to be handled at a later time
  • Physical issues: calling security
  • Major infractions: calling office / administration

Other times, a substitute teacher may record events as they occur and detail what happened, then defer it to the teacher of record or administration to handle further punishment from there. Coincidentally, and from personal experience, this lines up with days where students tend to act at their worst behavior around a person where if they say students were bad, those students were very likely actually bad. Just because a substitute teacher is there does NOT give permission to students to act up and assume there will be no consequences for their actions.

  • Probably the worst day(s) for younger students were days after students treated the subtitute teacher poorly. If students want to fool around, then they find out what happens soon after.
  • Even if the substitute teacher was horrible, almost always is the best course of action not to break rules anyways and don’t be an asshole!

If you’re the teacher of record and the substitute teacher does send you notes, I’d say take any note, good or bad, with a trust, but verify, attitude. You can follow up with “good” students about how the day went or verify with other staff about details for anything you’re suspect about. If it’s confirmed a day did not go well, some things you may be permitted to do, unless administration blocks it or it isn’t permitted by policy, includes:

  • Restricting recess time
  • Forcing written apology letters from students
  • Introducing a “quiet period”
  • Giving out zeros/reduced grades for assignments
  • Quizzes over the material covered on substitute teacher day(s)
  • A written conduct referral for specific student offenders
  • Class-wide or specific student punishments

Bibliography

  1. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-109publ248/html/PLAW-109publ248.htm

  2. Half-Life 2 [PC Version]. (2004, November 16). Valve.
    • Writer: Marc Laidlaw.
  3. Learning Policy Institute. (2025, July 16). An Overview of Teacher Shortages: 2025. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/overview-teacher-shortages-2025-factsheet

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