The sub packet guide

What to include in a sub packet.

A complete sub packet includes nine things: your day schedule, a seating chart, dismissal — who leaves how, and with whom, who each child is released to and who they must never be released to — the people notes (who can help, who can't sit together), the health lines that must be followed today on page one, where things are, tech logins and what to do when tech fails, your duties, the work itself with an early-finisher plan, and a way for the sub to report back to you. And one thing sits outside the packet: logging the absence itself, in your school's system, before its cutoff. That list comes from substitutes, not from template sellers — it is what they say they look for in the first five minutes, in roughly this order.

1. The day at a glance

One screenful before any detail: the date, which version of the day it is (an A day, a rotation day, an early dismissal), the schedule with times, and the single most important thing about today. Subs consistently say a long packet gets skimmed or skipped — the day has to be readable at a glance, with the detail behind it. If there is an assembly, a drill, or a schedule change today, it belongs at the very top, not buried in a notes field.

2. A seating chart the sub can actually use

The number-one request from substitutes, repeated everywhere they talk: an honest seating chart. It is how a stranger gets control of a room in the first five minutes — calling a student by name signals that bluffing won't work. Mark two or three reliable students the sub can ask for help. Keep names within your school's privacy rules: many teachers use first names or initials. What matters is that the chart matches the room as it is this month, not as it was in September.

3. Dismissal: the most dangerous fifteen minutes

Binder guides give dismissal its own page because it is the riskiest part of a sub's day: who rides which bus, who is a walker, who gets picked up and by whom, and any custody note the office has flagged. A sub can recover from a wobbly lesson; sending a child home the wrong way is different. Write dismissal per class and per student, in plain language, and keep it current — this is the page that goes stale fastest when a family's arrangements change. Name names where it matters most: who each child is released to, and who they must never be released to. And print the standing rule on the page itself — a same-day note from the school office overrides the packet, because plans change and the office hears it first.

Log the absence, too — before the cutoff

A packet is not an absence report. Almost every school logs absences in a system (Frontline and its cousins) with a cutoff — commonly between 6:00 and 6:30am, after which the office may not see your absence in time to staff it. The packet goes to the office and the sub; the absence still has to be logged in the system, by the cutoff. The strongest packets note the system and its closing time right on the teacher's own checklist, so a sick morning has two steps, not one forgotten one.

4. People notes: helpers, friction, and need-to-knows

Star your two or three reliable helpers — subs ask for them by name in every checklist. Note who should not sit together, who needs a check-in by mid-morning, and any pull-outs (who leaves, when, with whom). Medical and safety specifics belong in the packet only as far as your school's rules allow and the sub genuinely needs them to keep a student safe; the packet is a handover document, not a file on a child. The health lines a sub must follow today — where the EpiPen lives, the monitor phone that stays with a student because it is medical, the inhaler in the front pouch — belong on page one, in their own unmissable strip, not buried in a notes paragraph.

5. Where things are — and the tech fallback

Passes, the sub folder, copies, the nurse's extension, the nearest teacher who agreed to help. Then tech: which logins the sub needs, and — the part most packets forget — what to do when the tech fails. A sub locked out of the one program the lesson depends on will improvise, and the improvisation is what teachers come back angry about. One line ("paper copies are in the red folder") prevents it.

6. Your duties don't disappear when you're out

Bus duty, hall duty, lunch duty, morning greeting — if it's yours on a normal day, somebody has to cover it on a sub day, or it silently doesn't happen. District handbooks list the duty roster as a required binder item for exactly this reason. One line per duty, with the time and the place.

7. The work: real lesson, banked lesson, early finishers

For a planned absence, leave the real lesson — your sub can teach it if it's written to be taught by someone meeting the class today. For an emergency absence, leave a banked lesson that runs itself: self-contained, familiar in format, nothing new introduced. Always include more work than the period needs — the fastest finisher sets the pace of the room — and say where the answer keys live if the work is meant to be checked.

8. The "what to do if…" basics

Four short scripts: the fire alarm goes off (route and where to line up), a student is hurt or sick (who goes with them, to whom), behaviour escalates (the room or person you send them to), and the tech dies (the paper fallback). A sub will probably use none of them. The one day they need one, it has to be one line long and findable in seconds.

9. A way back: the report

Every serious sub binder ends with an end-of-day report page: what got done, what didn't, wins, questions, anything the teacher should know. Teachers say returning to silence — untouched copies, no note — is why they stop leaving real work. Ask for the note, and make it effortless to leave: a short form beats a blank sheet of paper.

Keeping it true

A packet's real enemy is staleness: seating changes every few weeks, rosters churn mid-year, full turnovers land at semester breaks. The maintenance rhythm binder experts recommend is a monthly light review and a full check at the start of each term. That is exactly the part nobody keeps up by hand — which is why SubPacket stores all nine items once, assembles the packet in one tap on the sick morning, and reminds you monthly to confirm it's still right.

Thinking a chatbot could hold all this instead? It can draft the words, but the class, the checking and the sending would still be yours — every time. The full comparison is in why not just use AI.

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