The best advice for success in substitute teaching is to follow the regular teacher's plans while maintaining control of the classroom. There may be rare instances where a lesson plan is not available and you will have to ask for assistance from another teacher at the school or use one of the lessons in your own Substitute Success Kit. The great majority of the time you will have plenty to do by following the plans left by the classroom teacher. But that doesn't mean you just read off the lessons to the students and watch them work. Remember that you are a substitute teacher. Your unique talents, skills, interests, experiences and abilities are wonderful assets in the classroom. If you love to surf, you might find a way of sharing an experience with a class in discussing predictions about waves based on the tides, water and air temperature correlations or a simple math problem around the costs of surfing as a sport. If you have traveled to a country or region of the world students are studying, tell them one thing you learned from the experience. The key is to contribute what you can to bring a lesson to life without dominating the class with stories of little relevance to the objective. As you become more comfortable with your assignments, and especially if you accept a long-term assignment, you may find yourself doing more work in planning, designing parts of lessons and grading assignments. Remember that your responsibility is to provide a continuity of instruction. You can accomplish that by paying close attention to the regular teacher's plans, students' needs, and the rules and procedures of the school. Anything you can do to enhance those three areas will help you to be successful as a substitute teacher.