Career options: TA with PGCE, but toxic boss

[herbaceous]

Hello there. I wonder whether you wise people could give me any advice on my future direction. I have simultaneously too many and too few options.

Brief bit of background. After a 20-year career in journalism, I retrained as an adult education teacher in 2015, gaining a PGCE in adult literacy and ESOL. After a brief but utterly demoralising stint in adult ed (loved the teaching, hated the reams and reams of pointless admin and total lack of funding) I became a TA, teaching interventions to EAL children in a big comprehensive. It was great, but intense.

We moved to a different city a couple of years ago, and after a while I got invited by a friend to apply to be a TA in the SEN dept. Got the job, and there was talk of me taking on literacy interventions etc. This hasn't happened, and looks like it never will. Boss is also a mind-f|@@k, telling me one thing one day, another the next, total lack of information yet public dressing downs for doing the wrong thing. Yet will be super-chummy the next minute. She is similarly difficult with everyone else, and in the 18 months I've been there, six of the 20 TAs have left.

I too want to leave. It's miserable, and I'm not learning anything new or using my brain or skills. I'm on a month's notice, so could resign now and be free the start of next term.

But what to do? There are no adult ed jobs, and I kind of want more than 'just' being a babysitting-type TA. I'd like to do private tutoring, based on literacy or supporting SEN students to gain confidence, but is there a market for that?

What with Covid and everything, all schools are suffering, and any private tuition is online, so I'd have to teach myself all that as well. I don't have QTS, but could gain QTLS (if it's worth the hassle). Or do some further SEN training, for example in dyslexia.

Any ideas?

[herbaceous]

... meant to say that leaving and doing supply TAing while waiting for either a suitable vacancy or my tutoring to take off is another option!

[monkeysox]

Do supply teaching get paid more. You have a pgce .

[herbaceous]

I'm a bit scared of supply teaching. Some secondary classes eat supply teachers alive.

But maybe I should just grow a pair.

[monkeysox]

You won't know until you try. Sense of humour and "not my zoo not my monkeys" is enough to survive day to day .
You have a pair of boobs you don't need balls

[Varjakpaw]

I'm primary, but supply teachers are in such short supply at the moment that we had to have one in last week who was on our "never cross our threshold again" list.

Plus, I actually don't know of any "babysitting type TAs". The years of those are long gone. All those in our school are highly trained in a broad range of SEN and spend all their time on interventions the teaching staff don't have the knowledge or capacity to carry out. This may of course vary by region.

[herbaceous]

I would LOVE to do interventions. But despite being promised that would be my role, I am just doing in-class support - and shepherding the highest-needs children round the school so they don't cause trouble.

I had a mild revelation in bed this morning that being a diver supervisor could be good, and doing supply for a while would be great experience for that.

The 'not my monkeys' mindset must indeed be just what I need.

From what I've seen of supply teachers, as long as you know the behaviour management policy, how to work the register system and how to quickly spot the trouble-makers you're Ok.

I do feel for them in our school - nine of the classrooms have pens, paper or books in them.

[herbaceous]

None, not nine. Having just nine equipped classrooms would be random.

[cherrypiepie]

I would do supply for a bit in the current climate - it would vary from £100-130 a day in secondary depending on where you are based and the agency has contacted me 3 times in the last few weeks. I have a four day contract abs could work the extra day in y own school if need too so don't need to go back the agency.

I did supply between contracts last year and loved it.

The expectation for supply teachers are very low. Keep them in the classroom, keep them relatively quiet and don't cause any extra work for the staff. Know when to call for help.

Smile politely at the receptionist and just use your wit. Show lots of bbc class clips when relavent.