Leaving Behind Work

The thing about being a supply teacher is that you need to be left with work. Initially it might sound good to have a job where you walk in at nine in the morning and you have been left absolutely nothing to do. But having been left nothing to do, and having nothing to do are two different things.

Kids sense weakness. They know when their teachers are unsure about plans. When 30 kids come into a room and I don’t have every minute of the day mapped out, I will lose control of the class very quickly. Many kids will jump at the opportunity to act up, lie, cause trouble, or be cruel to others.

This happened to me twice last week. The second time was fine because the kids were young and I had some work I found on a desk. I got to the school early enough to plan out a post-recess lesson where the kids got to write a story. They were also a really well-behaved class and I only had them for the morning.

The other class was far different. It was my first time at the school. It seemed to be in a good neighborhood, but the kids were pretty troubled. I had kids with behavioral difficulties and one with what I suspect was ADHD. The teacher laid out a plan that, on first glance, seemed to cover the day. But every time I got to a new lesson I found that it lasted only five minutes…for an hour block. The morning crawled along with an enormous amount of tension in the room.

By noon one kid had lost it in the playground and had punched another in the mouth. He was sent home. The school had seven supply teachers that day and had to call a special assembly so that the headteacher (principal) could bawl out all the students – from grades two through six – for their attitudes. Immediately after lunch I had to kick two kids out of the room because no amount of logic, reasoning, posturing, negotiating, yelling, or threatening would make them listen to a single word I said. Once they left, things got marginally better.

I hadn’t had to kick kids out of the room yet, but it had to be done on that day. To save the majority of the class I needed to remove the disrespectful students. I did it as professionally as I could, but I wish it could have been done another way. Those two kids missed out and I know they weren’t bad kids. But I gave them enough chances.

As other teachers have said to me, some days just don’t go well. The important part of being a teacher is to shrug those days off and start fresh the next morning. You can’t really do this job otherwise.