Eish! London 20 - 22 April

Monday, 20 April

– the start of the school term and my supply teaching career

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” Georgia O’Keeffe

The next three days went by very quickly as I had my first taste of life as a supply teacher. Not a pleasant one to say the least… Perhaps it’s because I’m not used to the lifestyle, perhaps it’s because I come from such a different culture and schooling system or maybe it’s the temporary nature and context of the job. Whichever way I look at it, I don’t see too many good angles going on here, but time will tell.

Interestingly I was sent to primary schools for my first substitute days, that idea alone was rather scary because I’m a qualified and experienced high school (that’s secondary school in England) teacher and not a primary school teacher. InEngland, however, if you are qualified to teach high school, then you automatically qualify to teach primary school too; but if you are a primary teacher, then you can’t teach high school. I was thrilled that the number of schools I could work for had doubled without my having to do anything. A frightening thought, but I was going to go with it.

A general supply day works like this:

Call the agencies at 07h00 and they tell you if they have work for you or not. If they do, then they offer it to you and you agree to go; upon your agreement the agency will send you a text (an sms that you pray will arrive, because sometimes it doesn’t) with directions to get to the school and the school’s details. If they don’t have work for you, then you need to wait until they call you back with work for the day. Once you have work it’s time for an expedition on London’s public transport system starting with a walk to the tube station or bus stop (Traveller’s tip: make sure you are on the correct side of the road so that you catch the bus going in the direction you need to go in. The information on the bus stop pole is very helpful in this regard) in order to travel to another station or stop and then take another trip if necessary, and another and so on, until you are at the final stop; then it’s time to use your A-Z of London (this book shall be my lifeline!) to figure out where you got off the bus, what roads you are next to and what direction you need to move in. Then it’s a race against time, depending on how erratic the public transport modes have been that morning, to get to the school by 08h30.

Upon arriving at a primary school: some may welcomingly greet you, others will blatantly wish they didn’t have to ‘deal’ with you. You may meet the head or deputy of the school, you may not. You may get a map of the school, you may not. You may get a list of the rules, or not. You may be given the school’s discipline procedures and rewards system, or you may be left to your own trial and error system of classroom management. You may get a lesson plan / timetable, or not. You may have a full teaching day, or you may be blessed with a break. You may be given work that you have to do with the children (from someone’s barely decipherable scribbles to typed pages of explicit instructions), or not. You may have to do break duties and stay an extra hour or so to complete marking everything the children may have done, or you may not. You might get to stay with one class, or you might have to move between numerous classes (without walking or orientation time). You may be asked to release the children at the end of the day and make sure that they only leave with the right person (bearing in mind you have no idea who the child or their parents are; I still don’t understand this part of the job and I never have any idea who the children are leaving with), or someone may help you send them home… You never know what you may get, until it arrives. Looking at it like this, I guess you could say it’s a great analogy for life: You never know what you’re getting, until it arrives. Nevertheless, that pretty much sums up all the possible combinations of my working day as a supply teacher. It’s when you throw various degrees of insane children into the mix that it gets exciting, or life threatening, depending on how you look at it.

At the end of the day if you are someone who stresses easily and needs to be in control all the time, then I strongly, potently, absolutely, do not believe that this is a job you should consider taking up. Seriously, just don’t go there.

Naturally each day offered something new and interesting and a story that should be told. My first day, God and the blessing of a great teaching assistant (T.A.) got me through it! One learner was causing so much friction (shouting out, wandering around, and irritating others etc.) that the T.A. wanted to remove him. He disagreed with our opinion that his behaviour was bad and went to the back of the classroom to hug the wall. I spoke to him, he wouldn’t join the group, or move or leave. The T.A. then went back to him again to try and negotiate him into leaving. I then made the HUGE mistake of losing my cool and simply saying:

“If you don’t stop misbehaving and move away from this wall, then I will have to move you myself!”

The class of 9 year olds, who had been watching all this in eager anticipation, erupted: “Miss you can’t touch him! Miss you aren’t allowed to! Ahhhh Miss, you can’t say that!”

Right, a group of 9 year olds telling me what I can and can’t do; I remembered from my haze of jetlagged interviews that the agents had said that I was under no terms whatsoever to touch a child. I stepped away from the child, like an angry criminal stepping away “from the gun” or ‘from the guy I wanted to give a good beating to’, and went back to sit on the carpet in the “sharing circle”. The T.A. tried another vein of negotiation saying she was going to fetch another teacher. Obviously it was a big deal, because all the other 9 year olds made big eyes at each other. The culprit didn’t budge. The T.A. left and came back with another teacher who could’ve been ‘The Negotiator’ for the SWAT team; he didn’t touch the learner and managed to make it the learner’s decision to leave the classroom. The learner left, only to return later with slightly nullified behaviour, and that was it. It must have taken 10 to 15 minutes to get this child to leave and I was the only person who thought the whole scenario was ridiculous! The rest of the class lost all that learning time too. I didn’t touch him though; I learnt my first of many lessons of phenomenal patience. Like I said God was with me.

Tuesday, 21 April

Email from: Jonn
Subject: New CRB number
To: Shannan
Date: Tuesday, 21 April, 2009, 11:17

Greetings!

Okay I have changed your CRB form number on the system here. If you could also send me your new address and post code (I think I still have Jane’s one on here), then I can put that one on the system as well.

I’m glad you had a good time at the Globe; it takes some getting used to but still stuns me that on any given day I can see Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The London Eye, the laser at Greenwich Mean Time, Piccadilly Circus and the rest of it, hop on a double decker red bus or a black cab and all the rest of it – there are lots of things that are horrible about living here but when the sun is out and the city is there to be seen it’s a super place.

If you loved the Globe you would love going to Stratford Upon Avon – where he lived. You can take a tour of his house and see where he went to school and you can even go into the church where his grave is and that of Anne Hathaway as well. It’s a lovely little town as well; super to go and visit so if you can you should definitely hit it!

Regards

Jonn

Yes, going to Stratford-Upon-Avon would be fantastic; to go and actually do the touristy-Shakespeare thing. It’s on my to-do-before-I-leave list.

Wednesday, 22 April – South Africans Vote back home

Sms (text message) from my Mom: “Hi, just voted. Waited 40 mins. All stations are busy, which is good.” Apparently this year’s polls had the highest voter turnout inSouth Africa’s history; which was brilliant news.

I didn’t get that maternity cover interview today after all; the agency didn’t even contact me again, so I did a day of teaching instead. The day was a PPA day (I went to the internet to find the meaning of PPA: Planning, Preparation & Assessment) which meant I went into a class whilst the teacher used the free time to prepare for the rest of the week and take a break from the learners. Then in the afternoon I had a different class for a different teacher so she could have some breathing space too. Supply teacher’s aren’t entitled to any breathing space, sometimes you work all day and cover breaks as well. It does get incredibly exhausting by the third day of the week.

I was at the school at 08h15. It was eerie and quiet as no-one was around. Eventually I managed to get into the reception area as another teacher opened the door. After signing in (something you have to do to prove you were there, and for health and safety reasons, in case there is a fire. Although I’ve never seen anyone with the visitor’s log during a fire drill…) I was given the code for the toilet (teacher’s toilets often have safe style locks on them, so the children can’t get in) and pointed in the direction of the staff room. I sat lost in an empty room with one lady bustling around the photocopying machine, until the teacher I was helping arrived; she was shocked that I was there on time; apparently that’s not ‘normal’ for a supply. I was surprised; surely you need to be on time for work? How else would a supply teacher generate repeat work if they aren’t reliable? Anyway, the Year 4 teacher and I discussed the first lesson I would be taking and I was thrilled to be able to teach something I enjoy: English Poetry. Unfortunately my bubble was burst with the entrance of the flamboyant T.A. who let me know that she knew the children and everything very well and she would “sort it all out”.

“Don’t worry,” she told me in a nudge nudge, wink wink manner, “I know all the kids and I’ll sort them all out.”

I found her words and actions rather ambiguous, but the help sounded great. I decided to wait and see. Soon enough the ambiguity cleared itself up and it became more than clear that what she meant was: she believed she needed to be the disciplinarian in the classroom, and for me it was really unhelpful even though she certainly believed she was “sorting them out” and I needn’t “worry”. I would get the class quiet and listening to me and then she would start off yelling at this one to stop rocking on his chair, that one to stop drinking and another to stop doing something really unimportant and irrelevant that the child didn’t really need to stop doing for any particular reason; all the while she remained seated in her chair using only her voice to prove her presence and the importance of her role. I was very relieved to be done with the lesson, whilst she was proud that one of the twenty odd learners had actually listened to her. So frustrating!

My last lesson of the day, with another Year 4 class and a barely present T.A., was a religious studies lesson and the task was to write about aspects of their culture that they practiced at home. I discussed culture and tradition, traditional clothing, food, religious influences and the like. When I had finished with my explanations it was time to go into a plenary discussion around the views and practices of the learners in their everyday life.

“Could someone please tell me about the traditional food in your culture?”

Hands went up, I pointed to a young boy in the middle of the room, “Yes?” I asked him.

“Uncle Sam’s!” was his enthusiastic, confident answer.

I was confused, “Pardon? What’s that?” What kind of a meal is ‘Uncle Sam’s’?

“You know Miss, Uncle Sam’s, the chicken place.”

I was like a deer in headlights as the learners looked shocked that I was confused; looks that read: How could a human being not know about ‘Uncle Sam’s’?

As fast as it could (no pun intended!) my mind scanned through everything I had seen in my first few weeks inLondon, and then I made the connection. They were thinking of a local fast food chicken franchise as serving traditional food. I almost died! As an emergency I explained in exact detail what traditional food was all over again, this time they listened and weren’t messing around. Eventually the overall agreement was that traditional food was only for very special occasions when the learners had to eat some kind of funny foods that they couldn’t really describe or name; and that fast food was way better and they had it far more often than the traditional ‘stuff’. I couldn’t get my head around the fact they thought fast food was traditional food. It gnawed at me all the way home.

After sitting on tubes and buses and seeing (and unfortunately, nauseatingly, smelling) the take away rubbish everywhere I think it may be safe to say that the new global generation has decided on its new traditional food: Take Away. The thought depresses me immensely.