Lights, Camera, Lessons: A Substitute’s Journey From Classroom to Casting Calls
By: Sarah MacDonald, STF Communications
The classroom is crowded. Some students struggle to focus. A few students don’t speak English fluently. There’s no education assistant. The teacher has a lot to handle, but she interacts warmly with the children and tries to give each one the attention they need.
This could be many a Saskatchewan classroom. It’s also a scene playing out in Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation’s new ad campaign, Education Works. And the teacher in the ad is not just an actor, but STF member Amy Seiferling, a substitute teacher with Regina Public Schools.
Amy Seiferling is a model and actor as well as a substitute teacher. She was cast in the STF’s 2025 ad campaign.
“I saw that they needed a teacher in the STF commercial, and I was like, ‘I’m going to get that job. I am so motivated! This is made for me!’” Seiferling recalls.
Seiferling happened to be subbing on the day she received the call-out for the role. When school was done for the day, she shot her audition tape right in the classroom, acting as though students were still there.
“When I sent in my audition to the client, I said I’m actually a teacher in Regina Public Schools. Please choose me because you know I would be an awesome fit for the job,” she says. “For both of my passions to come together in a natural and organic way, I feel like that just made the job so much better.”
Seiferling currently works as a substitute teacher so that she also has time to pursue work as a model and actor. But for six years, she was a full-time teacher, first as a Grade 7 and 8 French immersion teacher at École Massey Elementary School, and then as a Core French teacher at Jack Mackenzie Elementary School.
As a child growing up in Regina, Seiferling’s favourite subject was Core French, so she decided to pursue a Baccalauréat en éducation française (Bachelor of Education in French). She wasn’t fluent in French, so first she had to complete the University of Regina’s Certificate in French as a Second Language, which was an intensive one-year immersion program. She says she faced a lot of adversity because her French wasn’t as strong as other students’ French, but she persevered and had job offers upon graduating.
“When I was going through the process of what I wanted to do in life, being a teacher was one thing, and I wondered, ‘how can I secure my job as an educator?’ Having that French background did, in fact, secure me jobs. There’s a huge demand for French-speaking teachers,” she explains.
Seiferling loves teaching. Her favourite subject to teach is Core French, since she can relate very well to the students’ experiences studying French. But she also loves acting and modelling, so a few years ago she decided to get back into those two passions as well.
As well as the STF Education Works ad campaign, she has acted in several other commercials, including for the Regina Co-op, Surface Hair and Saskatchewan Polytechnic. She’s had background roles in a couple of movies filmed in Saskatchewan, including the recently released Die Alone, and has done runway modelling for bridal shows and for a YWCA fundraiser.
Modelling and acting have taken Seiferling abroad, too, including to Istanbul, Türkiye and Medellin, Colombia. In the summer of 2023, when she was still teaching full-time, she spent the summer modelling and acting for a Turkish agency.
“That I can combine travel and work is just the dream job for me,” says Seiferling.
In 2024 she decided to step back from teaching full-time and returned to Türkiye from September to December to model for clothing and accessory companies’ websites and in some high-fashion photoshoots. She doesn’t always get as much modelling work as she’d like when she is overseas, so she also puts her B.Ed. to good use and teaches English, both online and at an academy.
Seiferling loves being able to teach, act and model simultaneously. Substitute teaching allows her the flexibility to organize her day so that she can teach in the morning and do a modelling job in the afternoon. She also enjoys the variety of schools and students that she encounters, since subbing takes her all over Regina.
Whether she is modelling, acting or teaching, Seiferling says her different jobs are complementary. They all require being confident and poised, having strong communication skills to deliver lines or lessons, and being versatile and able to improvise.
When the Education Works ad went live in September, Seiferling was back in Regina substitute teaching, as well as modelling and acting. She hopes teachers and the public liked what they saw in the ad.
“I hope STF members see the ad and are proud to see that one of their own was a chosen representative for the job,” she says.
Her acting roles are usually lighthearted, even in horror films, but the Education Works ad was more serious.
She had to portray not only the joy of teaching, and the fun teachers have interacting and connecting with students, but also the struggles teachers and students in Saskatchewan face every day. Drawing on her own experience in the classroom, Seiferling tried hard to represent highs and lows of teaching, from the concern and dedication teachers have to the exhaustion they feel at the end of the day.
“I think what I want the public to take away from the ad is that teachers are very passionate and caring people and ultimately they want each student to be successful in the classroom,” she says. “I also hope that the public can see that teaching is a very challenging job and that we need continued support in the classroom.”
From Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Bulletin – Winter 2025