Entry #13: A Day in the Life of Mrs. Supply-Teacher.

The following story, although based on true events, is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

Mrs. Supply-Teacher wakes up to her alarm clock at 7:00 am and drags herself out of bed. She gets ready with both the purpose of somebody going to work, and the feeling of someone who is only pretending. She sits down on the couch with her mobile phone beside her and stares at it, forcing herself to want it to ring, although in the back of her mind she’d rather it didn’t. This feeling is unbearable, she thinks to herself, and every morning it’s the same. The feeling of not knowing whether the silence of the early morning is about to be broken by the news of a day of work , or if she will sit there for the next hour, then get changed out of her work clothes, put her lunch in the fridge, and look out at a long day stretching ahead of her.

More often than not, the call never comes. At 8:05 she wonders whether she would even like to receive a call anymore, and debates with the moral consequences of just switching off the phone and deciding her fate for herself. A call after 8:05 would mean mad rushing to get out the door as quickly as possible, finding out which bus to take and where to take it from, and arriving at the school after the students have already come in for the morning and magically knowing exactly what it is you’re supposed to be doing. However, another day of work is another day of pay, and how can she turn down a day of pay? Most days, she does just end up switching off the phone.

This morning the call comes. The disgruntled male voice on the other end tells her that he needs her to go to a school for a day, but not that day, a day that is actually not until the following week. He never asks if she would be available for a certain day, he tells. She smiles thinly and says that she will be there, hangs up the phone, and is at least thankful that she has some time to figure out where the school is, plan her route accordingly, and be able to arrive well in advance to look over the day’s plans and prepare herself.

This forward thinking doesn’t always prove to be all that helpful. On her day of work, Mrs. Supply-Teacher arrives at the school early and is ushered in by the secretary to a Year 2 classroom, although she had been told she would be teaching a Year 5 class. After looking around for a good twenty minutes, she can find no indication that the regular classroom teacher had any idea they would be absent that day. Although he must have, since they called her about this placement over a week ago. There’s no note for her, no plan of the day, not even a schedule of when the students come in or what subjects start when. All she can find is a chart hanging on the wall that has all the days of the week along one side and all the subjects along the other. Written in the small 3cm x 3 cm box is one sentence. The one for maths reads: “Students will learn number bonds for 100”. Mrs. Supply-Teacher reads it over a few times. This is literally all the direction she is given to fill an hour long maths lesson. She takes the “planning” over to the other Year 2 teacher, hoping that they can fill her in.

She finds the other teacher to be helpful and she explains to her what the classes will be doing that day. The great thing is that every class in the same year should be doing the same thing on the same day, so the other teacher walks her through the lesson, and even makes up a schedule of the day for her to follow. Despite her help, however, Mrs. Supply-Teacher is still left wondering how she will fill all the time in the day with what she has been given.

At exactly two minutes to nine o’clock, all the teachers file down the hall and out into the playground. One is carrying one of those old school bells, and as she rings it, signals the start of the day. There are no bells at this school, so teachers have to keep an eye on the clock and know exactly when to release students. The students dash to their designated queues and stand silently waiting for their teacher to come collect them and head inside for another school day.

Coats are hung on hooks that line a small vestibule beside the doors, called the cloakroom. All the students head through the gymnasium to get to their classrooms, as the wide hallway actually doubles as the gymnasium. They pile into the classroom, and take a seat on the carpet at the front of the room. Even year sixes sit on the carpet. Attendance is taken – the register – on the computer and submitted electronically, as all the students respond not with the usual “here” but with “Hello, I hope you have a nice day”. The class starts to get a little bit noisy as Mrs. Supply-Teacher stumbles through their many names, so she makes an announcement: “Right. I’m looking for children who are sitting really nicely that I can move over to the happy side”. This is a form of classroom management that she has seen in every school she has been in so far. Immediately, the keeners cross their legs, sit up straight and put one finger to their lips, the universal sign among British schoolchildren that they are ready and listening. The teacher makes her way over to a whiteboard with all the students’ names stuck along a vertical line going down the middle and starts moving names to go under the big yellow happy face. Any students still being unruly are moved over to the side with the sad face, despite their protests.

The questions invariably begin. “Where are you from? Are you from America?” They all start asking. Mrs. Supply-teacher decides to play her favourite game – having them all make a guess at what country she comes from. Some guesses are surprising: “Australia? New Zealand? South Africa? Wales!” but some always guess correctly. If she has some time to kill, which she usually does, this leads into a short talk about what it’s like back in Canada and answering all the questions that follow. When there is a globe or a world map in the classroom, she asks if anyone knows where Canada is, to which one student always replies that it is in America. She says that at the end of the day, all the children who are on the happy side will receive a special prize that she has brought with her all the way from Canada. She keeps a stash of Canadian pennies and pins of the Canadian flag in her bag.

The first order of the day is the school assembly. Instead of the usual singing of the national anthem and school announcements over the PA system that she is used to back in Canada, all the children file out into the hall/gymnasium. Here, the students listen to any announcements given by the teachers, and are lead in rousing renditions of songs that are unknown to Mrs. Supply-Teacher, who watches and reads along with the words. All of them have an underlying theme of having a great day, behaving well, and making the most of everything, although there is another interesting theme that is shocking to a teacher from Canada. Most of the songs openly talk about God, with one even directly mentioning the day on which the Lord Jesus shall return to Earth. She bewilderedly sneaks a glance at the smattering of Muslim students in the crowd, who are singing along with everyone else. The teacher who is leading the assembly then leads the students in a corporate prayer.

As the morning lessons get underway, Mrs. Supply-teacher does her best to stretch out the lesson about number bonds, trying to come up with dynamic ways to teach the students how to figure out what number and 35 makes 100. While she is standing there teaching in front of the class, two students get up off the floor and march over to her. In mid sentence, one loudly proclaims that the other student was hitting her. Mrs. Supply-Teacher stands there with her mouth open. The other student always replies the same way that every kid, no matter what age, replies in this situation: “No, I never!” This then leads to an argument and finger pointing, with additional input from other students still on the carpet. She wonders in what circumstance any teacher could allow students to think that it was permissible to just stand up while they were teaching and interrupt like this.

She then divides up the students to sit at tables based on their ability level for that subject, and goes about the confusing task of explaining to the highs, middles, and lows what their activity is for the remainder of the lesson. The lows have been given the mundane task of colouring in the matching numbers pairs that make 10. The highs have some much more complicated work to do with number lines and large numbers that they are finished within five minutes. The lows have barely gotten around to writing their name on their page. Some look up at her with innocent eyes and bluntly tell her that they don’t know how to read or write, and she believes them. Finally break time comes, also known as play time, never as recess. Students fight over who gets to carry out the box full of bananas that are provided by the school for break time every day.

After break, just like every morning, is literacy, which Mrs. Supply-Teacher also makes her way through as best as she can. She runs around trying to sort out all the ability groups, answering to a multitude of “Miss! Miss!” as the students try to get her attention. I’m a Mrs., she thinks in the back of her mind, but she knows that they even refer to male teachers as “Miss”, so she just goes along with it. They ask her where they should put their completed work, and she searches the room until she sees a red bin labeled “Completed Work” and tells them to put it in there. They look at her with wide eyes, as she has just instructed them to throw their work in the bin, which of course is the garbage. Finally it is lunch time. Actually, it is dinner time, as that is what the meal in the middle of the day is called in schools. The students line up according to who has a packed dinner, who is getting a school dinner, and who is home dinners. The dinner ladies come to collect them and take them away, leaving Mrs. Supply-Teacher to figure out what she is supposed to be doing for the rest of the day.

After dinner it turns out that the class has a PE lesson with another teacher. Mrs. Supply-Teacher’s task is to get them ready then make the switch, leading the other class who just had PE back to their classroom to get changed back into their school uniforms. The children collect their pump bags or kit bags, and as there are no change rooms, the girls begin undressing themselves in the classroom, while the boys stand out in the hall to get changed. Any younger and they would all be changing in the classroom together. Mrs. Supply-Teacher catches herself almost instructing them to take off their pants, which to a British kid means underwear, but thankfully remembers to use the proper term, trousers.

For the last lesson of the day, Mrs. Supply-Teacher is asked to move upstairs and teach a Year 6 class Science. Their science lesson for the day involves watching a DVD that is not nearly as exciting as Bill Nye, then being given a photocopied worksheet to literally copy, word for word, into their notebooks. She is surprised that she doesn’t have more problems, given the ridiculousness of the task. At the end of the day, all the Year sixes gather onto a carpet outside their classrooms and listen to a novel read by one of the other teachers. Then it is home time, and only if it is a Friday do the students leave with homework. Homework is a separate assignment given to them that day to be completed for Monday. Other than that work, they do not have to complete anything at home for the rest of the week.

After the children have left, Mrs. Supply-Teacher sets about the dreaded task of marking each and every thing that the students completed that day, which includes writing inane comments in the Year sixes notebooks about how well they were able to copy out the diagrams from the sheet. As she is leaving, the school is dark and the caretakers are the only other people about. She was paid well for the her day of work, but she feels so frazzled and exhausted, and has a new found appreciation for teachers do this for years or even make careers out of being supply teachers. She is eagerly awaiting the day when she can drop the “supply” from her name.