Home Truths

Sophia Waugh

I’ve been almost a term in my new school, and everything’s settling down nicely. I still occasionally get lost – the whole school is built around a courtyard, but give me a choice between left or right and I’ll always take the wrong one and end up in science rather than history. You can tell the difference by the smell.

Anyone who says they go into teaching because they ‘like kids’ is talking bunkum. Children, like adults and dogs and gerbils and furniture, vary in likeability and style. But there is no doubt that if you have an ability to get on with ‘kids’, to treat them with understanding and respect, you are more likely to do well in the job. You are not there to be liked, but if they do like you there is more chance that they will work for you.

So it is not surprising that after a month or two, when children begin to get the measure of you, their behaviour changes. On the whole I am pretty good at getting children onside. Despite having brought forth girl-children only, I have a good success rate with naughty boys. And some of those naughty boys are beginning to show me respect, or liking, or fear, or whatever emotion it is that makes them turn up and smile and try to work.

I was beginning to congratulate myself on how this was going until a young man said to me, somewhat cautiously, ‘Miss, are you supply?’ The English department last year did suffer quite a few changes – which inevitably leads to an element of disenchantment and bad behaviour among children – so I reassured him that I was here to stay. I did not get the reaction I’d anticipated. Rather than a broad smile and a ‘leap into learning’ as my last deputy head used to carol around the corridors, his shoulders slumped and he looked infinitely world-weary. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. He announced that he’d noticed I was around a lot (I haven’t missed a day yet), but that he preferred ‘supplies’ as they let you ‘get away with’ more. The combination of my presence and my impatience with bad behaviour had made him begin to suspect that the game was up. It has worked, and he’s working harder, but it did make me think about the life of a supply teacher.

We full-time teachers think they have it easy – no planning, no marking, swan in and out, easy pay for a light day’s work. Babysitting, innit? But actually it can be hell. The only supply teaching I ever did was when I took a sabbatical to write my book, and then I did it at the school I worked at, so there were no problems. But most supply teachers see the absolute worst of every class. Every child, even the goodiest of all two-shoes, sees a cover teacher as an opportunity to slack. If they are not downright rude, they are idle. At their worst they are aggressive, confrontational and verge on the point of rioting. One supply (male) was almost in tears the other day because a class had stolen his coat. They said they’d ‘moved’ it slightly, but whatever the truth of Coatgate he was made to feel that he was being bullied – by a bunch of thirteenyear-olds.

William Golding was a teacher; only a teacher could have written Lord of the Flies because only a teacher really sees the darkest side of the little cherubs you send off with a wave every morning. I suspect that he might have had a stint as a supply teacher. The evil glee that lights up a class’s eyes as it sees a teacher with a visitor badge can strike fear into the strongest of men.

So despite the planning and marking, the long days and the paperwork, I’ll always stick with a job in a school. You avoid the worst and you have the best of the children – the relationships, the lightning flash moments of understanding, the moments of change and trust.

Even at this time of year it’s a good job.