EXPOSED
The core job is being a responsible adult body in a room with 25 minors: taking attendance, keeping order, walking students to the nurse, following a lesson plan someone else wrote. None of that is text-on-a-screen work, and no robot supervises a middle-school hallway, so AI barely touches the day. The exposure is different in kind — the plan-writing and worksheet-generating layer is already AI'd, most states require only a permit rather than a full license, and districts can substitute cheaper coverage models (larger combined rooms, paraprofessional pooling, asynchronous district-provided video lessons) that compress how many sub-days exist.
Tasks largely resist digitisation. Delivering someone else's lesson to a room of 25 seventh-graders, breaking up a shoving match, and getting signatures on a fire-drill roster are tasks no model performs; the 14 rather than 18 reflects that the paper layer of the day — worksheet generation, sub notes, fill-in busywork, grading the packet you handed out — is already being produced by AI before you walk in.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. You are physically in the building for the full bell schedule: hallway and cafeteria duty, walking a nosebleed to the health office, standing between two kids, unlocking a classroom in a school you've never entered — 16 not 20 only because it's a controlled indoor site rather than a rooftop or a rig floor.
Certification preferred, not legally required. Most states issue substitutes an emergency permit or 30-day authorization on a bachelor's degree or fewer credits, not a teaching license, and the principal or teacher of record owns instructional accountability — the 7 comes from the fingerprint/background clearance and mandatory-reporter duty under state child-abuse statutes, which are real personal obligations you cannot delegate.
Some relationship component. The assignment is often a same-morning phone call to a name on a district list, and students know you're temporary; the 9 rather than 3 reflects that building secretaries and principals request specific subs by name and steady requesters get the calls, so your reputation inside two or three schools does determine whether you work.
Meaningful discretion. You mostly execute a plan left on the desk and follow the district discipline flowchart, but you decide alone whether a student leaves the room, whether behavior gets written up, and whether something a kid says triggers a report — genuine calls, made without knowing the child's history, which is what keeps it at 7 rather than in the low teens.
Childcare Workers SAFE
Has AI actually changed your work?