Specials: art · music · PE · library

Specials teachers don't have a class. They have twelve.

A specials teacher sees a different class every 40 minutes, on a rotation — Day 1 through Day 6 — that deliberately ignores the weekday calendar. A sub packet for specials has to carry every class with its own roster and seating, say which rotation day today is, and leave work that survives a stranger: one-day projects and activities that don't touch the real project, the instruments, or the kiln. That is exactly what SubPacket stores.

The rotation problem

Your Monday is not a Monday — it's a Day 3, and after a snow day it might be a Day 3 again. Generic sub templates assume one class and a weekday schedule, which is why specials binders become phone books: a section per class, per grade, per rotation day. In SubPacket, each class is stored once with its bell, when it meets, its roster and seating; when you send a packet you tag the day — Rotation Day 1–6 — and the sub sees today's classes in order, not the whole binder.

Art: protect the work and the room

Art teachers are blunt about sub days: the real project stops. Supplies walk, pieces get "helped," and the good materials come out. The packet should say what is off-limits in plain language — which supplies are locked, what stays in the drying rack untouched — and leave a one-day project that needs paper, pencil and nothing you care about. Bank two or three of those per grade band: a drawing task for the littles, a design task for the older kids. Your seating grid matters double in a room where kids move — the sub needs to know who sits where before the stools start sliding.

Music: what a sub can run without your instruments

Most subs can't teach your ensemble, and shouldn't be handed your instruments to try. Bank the days that work without them: listening-and-response work, rhythm and notation worksheets with keys, a music-reading task. State the instrument rules outright in the packet — what never comes out for a sub — the same way the art room locks the kiln.

PE: space, equipment, safety

For PE the packet is mostly logistics: which space you have today (gym, field, blacktop — and the bad-weather version), what equipment is out and what stays locked, and two or three games or circuits a sub can run safely with a class they met four minutes ago. Dismissal from the gym is its own note — where your last class goes from there is not obvious to anyone.

Library & media: classes plus a service

Library teachers run scheduled classes and a working library at once. Your packet needs both: the classes on today's rotation with their work, and the service notes — whether classes check out books with a sub (and how), what happens to classes that arrive when you're out, and where the passes and the book drop are.

One setup, every class you teach

The Pass covers unlimited classes — built for specials rosters — and the monthly freshness check fits the rotation life: when a class's seats change or a new group rotates in, one sentence to Patty files it under the right class. The full list of what every packet carries is in the sub packet guide.

Quick questions