Blog: 2023-02-22

How to become a substitute teacher in Iowa

The key entry point is the school district's jobs page. For me that's ICCSD: https://iowacity.tedk12.com/hire/ViewJob.aspx?JobID=5103

> Valid Iowa Teaching Certificate, Substitute License or Substitute Authorization

Ok, so I need a substitute license.

So then I did some searching and landed on https://training.aealearningonline.org/index_login.php

I signed up and they said it'd be an overnight process to create an account. A few days later I can sign in and I found this course:

Iowa Substitute Teaching Authorization Course (Initial Authorization)

Somehow I ended up with a link to https://mylearning.stedi.org/your-profile/ where I bought a book for $32. I can't actually find where I got this link; signing up for the course on https://iowasubstitute.com is charging me $150 and the course looks different. Well I could use a book I guess. Though this stuff all seems dry and bureaucratic

And we're off... the course has a minimum time of 15 hours, with a maximum of 5 hours spent per day. Looks like the book is a wash

Edit: I emailed to cancel the book order and it looks like it'll be refunded