How Shane Beamer's Substitute Teaching Stint Influenced His Coaching

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Shane Beamer compared it to being at a firehouse.

He spent many early mornings in the spring of 2000 sitting around his Blacksburg apartment, waiting for the phone call.

“My roommates hated me because my phone would ring every morning,” Beamer told GamecockScoop. “A lot of times that phone would just start ringing in the morning, and you knew what it was.”

It was not the shrieking bell of a firehouse, but it represented a similar, immediate call to action.

Half a year preceding his first job in college football and over two decades before becoming a head coach, Beamer spent five months working at schools leading very different groups.

South Carolina’s head football coach was a substitute teacher in Montgomery County, Va., working primarily with elementary and high school classes for the spring semester.

“I graduated in December of 1999,” Beamer remembered. “Then we [Virginia Tech] played in the National Championship Game, and then at that point, I needed to try to get hired as a GA to get into coaching. I got an opportunity at Georgia Tech but wasn’t starting until the summer, so basically I had a lease with three teammates in the spring. My parents were like, ‘you’re not going to do nothing.’”

“Not doing nothing” was vague. He knew what he needed. Something he was passionate about, and ideally, a passion somehow related to his coaching goals. The connection with teaching was logical. He was always interested in working with kids, whether helping with the Special Ed program as a Blacksburg High School student or as an assistant coach on his little sister’s tee ball team.

His father, Frank, taught math for two years at Radford High School before starting his Hall of Fame coaching career, and his mother, Cheryl, had her own substitute teaching stint.

He had teaching in his blood, and the gap in his life created an opportunity for a unique experience.

“We knew he was either going to work with Special Ed kids or get into coaching,” Cheryl told GamecockScoop. “The gentleman that was over Special Ed at the high school, Shane really liked him. He passed away now, but he really liked him. Shane had one of the kids, he would pick him up and take him bowling. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had worked at a high school to work with students and coach.”

Montgomery County Public Schools did not assign its substitutes to a school, grade level, or subject. If a full-time teacher was unavailable, they called the replacement regardless of circumstance. Before personal cell phones were standard, it meant waiting around by a landline early in the morning to learn if, where, and most crucially, who you would be assigned.

Every time the phone lit up, an incoming call represented a roll of the dice. Outcomes landed anywhere from a kindergarten class to a 12th-grade room, teaching material from all sides of the academic spectrum.

And once the daily grind started, the similarities between his temporary profession and his future permanent one were evident.

“When you’re coaching, you’re teaching,” Frank told GamecockScoop. “It’s kind of a different way of teaching or a different thing you’re teaching, but how successful you are depends on how well you taught. I think there’s a lot of the same.”

Life as a college football player meant a regimented schedule, something Beamer had been fond of since he helped orchestrate his father’s weekend schedules for road trips at Murray State. Mostly, you knew what to expect, when, and how it would happen as a player. Week-to-week consistency is a staple for head coaches everywhere trying to create game-week routines, and the Beamers were no exception.

“He takes notes and really is very organized,” Cheryl said. “He would get Frank’s itineraries to have a gameplan for the weekend, and when they were going to eat and everything, it was amazing. He’s been preparing for this his whole life.”

And then there was substitute teaching, where variables were the order of the day. For a 22-year-old stepping out of a helmet and pads at Lane Stadium just months prior, entering a classroom was a whirlwind. One he came to appreciate over time as the new situations came thick and fast.

Some days it meant scrambling together a lesson plan at the last minute, like a quarterback trying to call plays in a two-minute drill. Other times, survival hinged on a working VCR and a tape.

“When you’re uncomfortable you’re continuing to grow,” Beamer said. “I’d say I’m more comfortable in this chair now and this role because you have a better idea of what to expect. But I don’t think you ever get comfortable or accustomed to that, and that’s okay.”

Teaching style, flow, and schedules had to be flexible. It became about making adjustments on the fly to do right by the students in the classrooms and extract some life lessons to carry into what he hoped would be a long coaching career.

The checks and balances of managing over 100 players are just an extension of doing the same in classrooms of 20-30 kids daily. Playbooks are like lesson plans. Grabbing control of a team meeting requires the same command as unfurling a lesson plan.

“Every day is different,” Beamer said. “One day you’re substitute teaching in a third grade class and the next day you’re at a high school. Certainly, you can say that now being in the chair that I’m in as a head coach. Every day in this role is different.”

A walk on South Carolina’s practice field is a window into an energetic operation. The music is constantly blaring. You see a boisterous coaching staff always on the front lines of action. Players pop off breakdancing during the stretch period.

The nature of Beamer’s practices continuously evolves as the seasonal tenor and roster composition changes, but the principle is constant. It goes back to a critical belief he has always had teaching, that an upbeat approach to learning was the best way to keep a constantly rotating collection of kids engaged.

“He’s really good around young people,” Frank said. “He’s lively, he’s out there a little bit, probably out there a little bit more than I was. It’s all good, that’s who he is. He enjoys things with his players a little bit more than I ever did, but I think that’s all good and I think most of them appreciate him for being who he is and being authentic.”

Like his father, he went straight from teaching to a GA position and never looked back. It took four years to earn his first full-time job on Sylvester Croom’s staff at Mississippi State and four more stops before finally achieving the head coach position.

Every student he ever taught is now comfortably older than any of his current players, and the days of math and history taking up his whiteboard have faded in favor of blocking and tackling assignments.

His substitute days are a distant memory. The teaching, however, will never fade.

“As a coach, it’s all about connecting with people,” Beamer said. “It’s all about inspiring learning. Teaching is coaching and teaching is inspiring learning.”

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