Darren is an Irish trained teacher who has spent the last term on a Guaranteed Substitute Scheme in London with Protocol Education, he is now in a full-time post. In his debut blog, he reflects on moving to the UK to teach his first term and gives some tips and resources to anyone starting supply teaching in the UK.
I had been thinking about moving to the UK to teach for a while. I made the move in August and started working for Protocol in September. It’s now the beginning of December and I’m working full time in a lovely primary school in East London as a PPA cover teacher. For the first few months, however, I spent my mornings walking into unfamiliar classrooms, staring blankly as my brain was overloaded daily with new routines and policies and having my sanity pushed to the limit by pupils who delighted in taking full advantage of my greenness. Such is the life of the suppy teacher.
I wouldn’t like to give the impression that the last few months have been some kind of nightmare. I had some great days in some wonderful schools and met some amazing people, but it has been a very steep learning curve. I’m now approaching the end of my first full term here in England. While I look forward to going home for Christmas, I thought it would be nice to look back at everything I’ve learned over the last few months. Maybe I can pick out some tidbits of information that might help other teachers moving to the UK for the first time in January and setting off on the unsteady road of supply teaching.
1. Things will go wrong – Ask your students for help!
Ok! So you’ve walked into your first classroom, met with your point of contact for the school and picked up your plans for the day. Everything seems to be going quite well. But wait a second, while looking over the plans you discover that you don’t seem to have half the resources you’re going to need for today’s lessons. As you read further, you see that the plans only take you up to 2.45pm while the school day doesn’t end until 3.30pm. Just as you’re about to go looking for someone who can help, your students begin to enter the classroom. Some immediately start to inundate you with questions as to your identity and the whereabouts of their regular teacher while others simultaneously inform you that, for the first half hour each day, they must go to another room for additional learning support. You finally convince people that if they just take their seats long enough for you to do the register, you’ll deal with each of their problems in turn as soon as possible. That’s when you realise you haven’t been given a log-in for the school’s online register…
I’m exaggerating, obviously, for dramatic effect. All of these things have happened to me more than once over the last few months, but usually not at the same time. The point I’m trying to make is that, no matter how well you prepare and no matter how well the school prepares, there will always be times when things go wrong. This is where your ever-helpful students come in. While you might worry that asking the students for help in such matters is their perfect opportunity to dupe you, that any chance they get to leave your sights is a chance for them to misbehave, the fact is that most of your pupils will be very good-hearted and very eager to help.
They know the school’s routines and policies better than you and can advise you through your worries in real time. They usually know where to find other members of staff and and any resources you may be missing. What’s more, you’d be surprised how the simple words “I need someone who is sitting very sensibly and paying attention to do a message to the office for me” can make an entire room instantly return to their seats with their fingers on their lips. My advice would be to always make students put up their hands and to pick a single person to give you the help you need. If you just ask the group in general you will usually just get a wave of voices shouting back at you in disagreement with each other.
2. Have back-up resources/ideas prepared.
This is particularly important for Maths and Literacy as these are subjects that every class does every day. There will be times when plans have not been left for you and there will be times when students finish their work far earlier than was expected. It’s always a good idea to have back-ups to, at the very least, keep the class engaged for 10 minutes while you send a sensible pupil to the office for your plans.
For literacy, a good place to start would be to Google ‘Pie Corbett Starter Games’. This will provide you with a number of literacy games which you can download to a USB key and display on your interactive whiteboard if need be. You can also have a collection of word searches and crosswords relevant to each subject you may come across. For maths, there are plenty of times-table games which can be used with any year group. Just ask them which times tables they are currently learning and tailor the game accordingly. I would suggest looking up‘Around The World‘ and ‘Times Table Bingo’ as they have proven particularly popular for me.
Alternatively, when students have finished their work early while the rest of the class finishes up, you could ask them if they have any ongoing projects they would like to work on or if they have any ‘next steps’ they could do (where they review the comments their teacher has left on previous work and complete small follow up tasks). If all else fails, you could allow them to read quietly to themselves. In most schools, children will each have a book at a time that they are reading independently.
3. Familiarise yourself with the school and class routines as much as possible.
Each teacher and each class will have their own routines and systems. You can familiarise yourself with these quite early on after walking into a classroom. A simple look around the room can inform you of quite a lot.
There will usually be some kind of chart on the wall giving an indication of the class’ behaviour management system, this will probably have the students’ names written on pieces of paper and stuck on with Blue Tac. If they behave well they can be moved up on the chart and given some kind of reward, if they behave badly they can be moved down and be sanctioned.
There may also be wall charts informing you of book monitors and line monitors. There may be classroom rules which you can refer to and guided reading charts. If the students are already in a routine for lining up or have a set of rules they are expected to adhere to in the classroom it is good to stick to these and to make reference to them. It’s also a good idea to lay out one or two of your own golden rules at the beginning of the day. This helps to establish that, while some students may see you as a hapless supply teacher, you are in fact the authority figure in the room.
My own golden rule is usually something like “no one is, at any time, to leave their seat or speak out of turn to get the teacher’s attention. If you need anything, put up your hand and sit quietly and I will help you as soon as I can”. This helps to just keep general order in the class and allows me to help individual pupils after they have started working. It’s also a good idea to familiarise yourself quickly with things like the school’s policy on students going to the toilet during class, leaving the room to change their reading books or leaving to get a drink of water.
4. Have a quick look over marking concepts like ‘Next Steps’.
As a supply you will be expected to mark the students’ work at the end of the day. As someone said in a previous Protocol Education blog, this is the legacy you leave at a school. It’s what the class teacher sees of your lesson after they have returned. It would be good idea to familiarise yourself with the most common marking concepts like ‘Next Steps Marking‘ and ‘Two Stars and a Wish‘.
If you’re familiar with these you can quickly look back over the class teacher’s own markings, see what they are using and stick to it. This will benefit you later in terms of your reputation with schools and it will be valuable practice for when you start working at a school full time.
Most schools also allow for a system of verbal feedback to students. This is usually represented by placing a ‘verbal feedback’ stamp next to the work or simply writing the letters “VF” along with your initials and “supply”.
5. Accept from the start that you will make mistakes and enjoy learning from them.
The fact is that, no matter how much you read in advance, things are always going to go wrong. You will make mistakes and there will always be a learning curve. The point of it all is to enjoy learning from your mistakes and to take some solace in the fact that every mistake makes you a better teacher. Protocol Education provide a number of free CPD courses which can help you address most problems you may be having.
Working as a supply teacher puts you in touch with many experienced teachers from many different backgrounds who can be an invaluable source of advice. There are lots of teachers’ forums and websites that can help with some strangely specific problems you may be having, you’d be surprised how many teachers will have gone through these same problems before. Above all, don’t be too hard on yourself. No one expects you to be the perfect teacher from the moment you begin. You could be in this profession in 20 years time and still be learning and, while you may think you’re not up to things early on, inspiration can come at the unlikeliest of times.
I spent one afternoon in a classroom back in September feeling completely at a loss, 100% convinced that I would never get to grips with supply teaching and sure that my pupils that day would leave with the impression of me as a hapless, hopelessly inept teacher that they would thankfully never see again.
About 10 minutes before the end of the day, a student from the class approached me with a drawing she had done during the class’ Art lesson. She gave it to me and said it was a “thank you” for teaching them that day. A few minutes later, 2 more pupils from the class gave me items they had made… I now work full time in that same school and I’m truly happy that I stuck out my stint in supply teaching when I did. I’m still travelling up a very steep learning curve but these days I’m much happier to be there.
Check out Protocol Education and what they can offer teachers
Headteacher Prue Barnes – Teaching in East London from Protocol Education on Vimeo.
