In school
Are you available by any chance, Mr Daniels? Christopher Daniels offers some reflections on emergency teachers I have been asked this question many times in connection with an immediate need for a History teacher by HMC or ISA schools, and, more rarely, state grammar schools. Evelyn Waugh’s Dr Fagan in Decline and Fall expressed it as ‘I have lost a master rather suddenly.’ I enjoy the varied challenges of these temporary posts and wish to set out some thoughts and advice to Heads and others in senior management who are in this situation. My examples are from real schools, but they are not, of course, identified. A clear starting point is that very few, if any, members of senior or middle management have been in this role of supply teacher in the onward and upward march of their careers. I do not hold this against them, but it makes it difficult for them to perceive the viewpoint of people like me. They, along with other colleagues, parents and above all students, can be quite suddenly deprived of a key member of staff: the reasons are varied and often desperately painful for all concerned. Unlike maternity and paternity leave or a sabbatical, where some planning time is available, these short or longer-term absences – sometimes from a serious illness or accident but often, let us say, from a faulty curriculum vitae, visa problems or a child protection allegation – can come from a clear blue sky. In one case where I helped out, two history teachers, including the Head of Department, had left the school in the Autumn term because they could no longer stand the bullying of the Head, or so one of them later told me. (They were not replaced by staff on regular contracts until the following September.) Schools often turn to recently retired colleagues, and this is a good idea because these folk know the ways of the institution and are also familiar to staff and many students. Where this is not feasible, schools may approach supply agencies, but independent schools are wary of the cost and unwilling to donate about one third of the agreed salary to an agency. HMC has its own list accessible to member schools, but here in Kent we also have Supply Teachers’ Direct started by award-winning Helen Thomson in 2016: schools negotiate directly with teachers who have been interviewed and vetted by Helen face to face with reference and DBS checks. Schools sometimes expect to find their perfect substitute teacher whatever the time of year or the immediate need. This is unlikely, as nearly all those worthy, highly qualified, (youngish?) teachers who, the School hopes, would apply for a substantive post are already in a job requiring them to give at least half a term’s notice, or are still at university. Schools who dither, spending time and money advertising in order to locate their ideal, run the risk of delaying too long my first essential, which is: Find a decent teacher as soon as you can, even if they are not the ideal you would normally appoint. The second essential is: Do not seek to replace them. When I was asked to join one school at the commencement of the Spring
term, I became the fourth teacher of some classes since September, and there was then a fifth, with a potential sixth being sought for September! This is really unacceptable for students. In most cases, students valued the teacher who had quite suddenly disappeared, they might even have chosen the subject as an option because of that person, even if that is a misguided form of decision making. What those students needed, and it was nearly always girls who felt the loss most, was a steady return to some kind of normality. But that very normality is the trickiest part of the substitute teacher’s task. The school’s location may require accommodation for the cover teacher, and that can vary considerably from a neat two-bedroom town house to whatever is available at that point of the academic year. One Head informed me that I looked like the sort of person who would expect quality accommodation, unlike another possible employer who suggested, perhaps tongue in cheek, my sharing with the gap year students, a comment deserving a Paddington hard stare. The entire ethos of the school may well be unfamiliar. At one school I was surprised at the beginning of a new term to see a different class in my room. Did I not know, they gleefully informed me, that the school timetable changes each term? Courses especially at GCSE/IGCSE and A level/IB may also be new to the teacher, with often less than a week of preparation before D-Day. As an historian with a plethora of options at A level – OCR has 58 examined units – this can be really challenging, and only occasionally is there the good fortune of teaching specialist units with which one has recent teaching, research or published experience or, as I once had, a unit of British history that was entirely within my lifetime. In one departmental review, a colleague expressed an interest in a 6th century China option: excellent potential for an able group but truly awesome for a temporary teacher! What can be done? My experience has been not to believe too many vague promises of significant assistance from a department. If their promises are meaningful then there will be plenty of guidance up front, perhaps even detailed lesson plans for the first fortnight to enable students to feel more comfortable with a new face. This is very helpful if the school requires lesson plans on SMART Notebook where there may be initial unfamiliarity. Schools should not assume that even teachers with long experience need no support and can quickly ‘find their feet’. A mentor is just as important for this post as for a regular member of staff, whatever the age or experience of the temporary teacher. I reckon that it takes me about two months before I have the confidence of classes that I am the real deal and am not going to leave them suddenly. One reason for this time-lag is that students wish to believe that ‘their’ teacher will return and that you are transitory. Heads usually cannot or choose not to release any
Autumn 2017
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