Supply teaching - precarious at the best of times - has reached new levels of unpredictability.
It’s unsettling not knowing from one week to the next if schools will be open (thanks, BJ), whether I’ll be required to go into a school - and, if so, to do what? Will I be doing virtual lessons? Will I be manning the testing station, encouraging children to swab their tonsils with a sterilised cotton bud?
This week, I returned to school. It’s all very weird, and this in a time when weirdness has had to create a whole new scale just to keep up.
The first hurdle was getting my lateral flow test, to show I was safe to be on-site. This was a bit of a faff, to say the least, and I can only imagine the problems there are going to be when - if - a whole school has to be tested.
Coronavirus: As a supply teacher, I just sit there...
An hour after arriving, I was passed fit to work. If you can call it work. My new role was to sit in an IT suite “supervising” the vulnerable students and children of key workers. Their teachers, meanwhile, are all in their own homes, live-streaming the lessons.
Usually, I’d begin a cover lesson by taking the class through the work, to make sure everyone knows what to do. As I had a range of different year groups and classes, all doing different things, that wasn’t possible.
So I sat there. And I sat there.
Occasionally, I got bored enough to go and check that they were doing some work and not streaming slasher movies or playing Fortnite. They were, for the most part, all logged into Google Classroom and working away just fine.
Me coming around and making them take off their headphones only for them to tell me that they didn’t need my help seemed a bit counter-productive. So I went and sat down again.
I read the copy of A Christmas Carol that the English department had left lying around. That took up an hour and a half.
The children became a little less focused as the day wore on, which was hardly surprising. It struck me that sitting teenagers down in front of a computer for six hours with only a couple of short breaks, and expecting them to work for that entire time, was unrealistic. In fact, I’d go further and say it was bordering on cruel and unusual punishment.
Luckily for them, I’m not the kind of supply teacher who forces children to work at all costs. I tried to keep them off the slasher movies, but the afternoon session had a little more latitude built in.
A weird and distressing time
Things this time around feel a little different from my perspective, too. Throughout Covid-era schooling, I’ve tried to balance my own safety with the requirements of the job.
It’s not always possible to stay two metres away from the students. On occasion, I’ve marked books without the mandatory 72 hours quarantine period, and I didn’t previously wear a mask in the classroom.
This time, although there are only a handful of children, and they’ve been tested, it all feels more serious. I’m still stuck in a room with them all day long. This time, I wear a mask at all times. This time, I’m willing to have the regular battles about opening the windows.
“Sir, can I shut the window? It’s really cold.”
“No, you bloody can’t! Better cold than dead, kid.” Obviously, I don’t actually say that out loud, but it’s what I’m shouting in my head every time this happens. And it happens several times a day.
It’s a weird and distressing time for all of us in schools right now. Despite my own complaints, it’s probably worse for the students, whether they’re in school or at home.
Being stuck in this perpetual limbo between real school and virtual school is maybe the hardest thing of all. Same time again tomorrow, then. And bring a book.
The writer has recently taken up supply teaching after 20 years in a full-time teaching job
