One kid won’t do anything.
Head down, hood up, or just looking past you. The rest of the class is working. You’ve asked once and got nothing, and the room is watching to see what you do about it.
Say the task once, quietly, standing next to them rather than across the room. Then walk away and let it sit. Don’t stand there waiting for compliance — the audience is what turns this into something neither of you can back out of.
Why this happens
You have no idea what today is for this student. It might be this class, it might be the period before, it might have nothing to do with school. Whatever it is started before you arrived. A teacher who knows them can read which one it is and respond accordingly. You can’t, and acting as though you can is how quiet non-participation becomes a public confrontation. The goal isn’t to get them working. It’s to leave this no worse than you found it.
What to do
- Lower the audience. Move next to them, speak quietly, and don’t repeat it across the room.
- Make the ask small and specific. “Just the first question” is answerable. “You need to participate” isn’t.
- Give them a way back that doesn’t require an apology. Return in five minutes as though nothing happened.
- Accept partial. Anything on the page is a good outcome for one period with a stranger.
- Write down what you saw, not what you think it meant.
Say this
K–2
“You don’t have to start yet. I’ll come back in a minute.” At this age it usually isn’t refusal — it’s tiredness or a bad morning, and waiting fixes it more often than any prompt does.
3–8
“You don’t have to talk to me about it. Do the first one and I’ll leave you alone.” Then actually leave them alone. Following through is what makes the second ask work.
9–12
“I’m not going to make this a thing. The work’s there if you want it.” Once, quietly. Older students won’t perform compliance for a stranger, and asking them to in front of the room guarantees the answer is no.
Where the line is
- Yours: offering the work, more than once, without escalating.
- The office’s: a student who leaves the room, or anything that stops being about the work.
- The teacher’s: whether this is unusual and what it means. You don’t know, and a note that guesses is worse than one that reports.
If that doesn’t work
If they still have nothing at the end of the period, that’s an acceptable outcome for one day with a stranger. A substitute who turns a refusal into a confrontation costs the teacher far more than an unfinished worksheet does. If the student is disrupting others rather than opting out, that’s a different problem — it’s stopped being about the work and started being about the room.
In the note
Didn’t get started today. I checked in twice and left it there rather than making it a bigger deal than it was.
From Holding the room in The Sub’s Handbook.
Written by a substitute teacher, for substitute teachers. This is what’s worked in real classrooms — not official guidance, and not a substitute for your school’s policies or your district’s training. When something feels beyond you, it probably is: call the office. They’d rather hear from you early than late.
Open subin, the app the handbook comes from. Free to use.
Dan McSpirit is an active guest teacher and the author of The Sub’s Handbook. He built subin for the job he was doing at the time. More of his work is at danmcspirit.com.