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Dereck - New Zealand Teacher
As a long term supply teacher your day consists of everything that you're used to at school back home.
Your day begins with the early rise from slumber to contend with your housemates for the shower. The city is a big place but once you have mastered your route on the Tube to school this becomes part of your lifestyle. You will become accustomed to reading the free morning papers, listening to your iPod and fighting men and women in suits for the last remaining seat on the soon to be packed tube carriage.
Once you're at school it really isn't that different from back home. Most schools will have a quick morning briefing outlining the day (visitors, events etc) this is a good time to have a gossip and catch up on the latest episode of Desperate Housewives or X-Factor.
Children generally line up in one area with their parents until the teacher takes them into the class. For children the school day begins at 8:50 and runs until about 10:30 for morning break. The beginning of the day will involve Mathematics for an hour and some circle/discussion time. After morning break the children line up again and will come in for their literacy hour. Lunch will begin anywhere between Midday and 12:30pm where the kids will move to the dinner hall for Lunch (or dinner as it's known here) for a hot meal prepared by the school. If you are lucky enough to find a Jamie Oliver school, teachers can also reap the benefits of a tasty meal for a mere couple of pounds.
After lunch is time for a range of other curriculum areas. Often started with quiet reading time in this time you will cover a range of subjects which could include PE, History, Science, Religious Education, Geography and many more. The school day in the UK finishes at around 3:30pm when the children are accompanied out of the class and greeted by their parents. You wait until all are accounted for.
After school is time for staff meetings, planning meetings, marking, planning and having a pint at the local pub.
Haydn - Australian Teacher
Is it really that early? The phone is ringing and I unhurriedly pick it up. ‘Hello, Teaching Personnel, you alright?' When people ask me this in England it still throws me and I find myself thinking for a few seconds if I really am all right? The recruitment consultant then continues in their ever so cheery manner ‘so I've got this fantastic school for you to go to today'. They tell me about it and where it is and what I'll be teaching. The good thing about Teaching Personnel is that when they say a school is good, they mean it. So I have no hesitation in taking all the information down and getting prepared for school. This may mean gathering some resources that I have or thinking of some fun activities that I could do with the students, getting suited and booted and heading out the door. But not before I check the TfL website for the best travel route.
I arrive at school at the time I was asked to be there, usually around 8.15am, maybe a little bit earlier just to give me extra time to get used to the surroundings. The lady in Charge of Supply meets me in the office and gives me the run down of what I'll be doing during the day. For most of the day I'll be with a Grade 5 class, but I do have to cover PPA time while they are doing music. The KS2 curriculum is much the same as any Australian Curriculum in that they are thematically based, so I have no trouble getting my head around what I have to teach. The day runs smoothly, barring a few little behaviour management issues, but that's normal... and really, it makes the day a little less boring when I get to put into practice all that stuff I learnt during university and thought I'd never use again.
Lunch is great in most English schools because you can get a hot lunch from the school cafeteria, and most of time it is cheaper than M&S and Sainsbury's. I have a chat to a few of the other teachers and find out that there are a few Australians so we share the usual stories of where we've been travelling, where we're going travelling and how cr*p the weather is.
At the end of the school day, I get the students homework prepared for them and then when the bell goes, wait around until the parents have come and picked up their kids. The school is much happier that I spend that extra few minutes waiting around and I reckon that they would be more willing to have me back.
On my way home I give Teaching Personnel a call and let them know how the day went and told them that I really liked the school. My consultant tells me that they actually received a call from the school earlier in the day and said that they were really pleased with me, so I'll probably get to go back in the future.