I’m a Cover Supervisor and I just walked out.

[tellmesomethingtrue]

At the end of my tether. Pupils have been shouting at me, arguing with me for 3 hours straight today. I’ve told HR that I can’t cope with the final lesson and I’ve gone to sit in my car. I welcome the classes pleasantly, I am organised and the kids know me. Just because “I’m a sub” they are disrespectful and just awful. As soon as another teacher comes in to support me, the kids are fine. Today, I’ve sent 9 pupils to work elsewhere and called SLT three times. On the verge of (another) panic attack, enough is enough. I don’t think employment should be like this. Usually half the class are absolutely fine, do the right thing and work. Surely their parents would be mortified.

Don't blame you. All the hassle of teaching without the pay.

Hope you're ok x

It isn't fair on you and it isn't fair on the students who want to learn. Something has to change. I don't blame you for walking out

I also don’t blame you! Sounds horrific.

Hope you are ok. Teaching is hard but being a cover supervisor is worse as the kids see you as a sub who they don’t need to listen to.

How long have you been at the school and are SLT supportive?

Thanks. I’ve just completely shut down and had a micro nap in my car. This is my second year but I’m a seasoned teacher. SLT are supportive in the sense that I can send out a call during a lesson and one will show up, and it’s a good school. I’ve half a mind to email all their parents.

I'd suggest a talk to kids by SLT then SLT write home explaining why the students needed the talk.
Can you identify the key players?

We get a personal rmail from the teaxher if our child has been disruptive. They will explain what they have done and what they tried to remedy and then ask we sort it out and talk to them.
I think this is good communication from the school. I absolutely want to know if my child is acting up. Fortunately it has always been low level disruption (talking, singing, falling off a chair on purpose) but it means we can nip it in the bud.
I would ask if you ca draft an email to the parents to outline the issues and with back up from the hwad of year that there will be next steps if the kids in question don't sort themselves out.

It's clearly not a suitable role for you and (not meaning this at all critically) you are entirely unsuitable for the cover supervisor role (unless perhaps at a very strict private school where there are no behaviour issues).

Being horrible to the Cover Teacher is more deeply embedded into the national psyche than football. I don't like it, and don't condone it, but it's not going to change.
Cover supervisors can only survive if the pupils' horrible behaviour is like water off a duck's back to them. If that doesn't sound like you then it is quite right for you to not put yourself in that situation. Look after yourself, you do not owe the school anything, they cannot demand more of you than you are willing to give.

Such a shame. I remember in primary school loving our supply teachers. We looked forward to them being there. I take it this is senior school?

A lady at my church did this job
It was a thankless task. Expected to act as a teacher on half the pay or less, and was treated like dirt by bratty disrespectful children. And there were rarely any consequences.

Poor behaviour should never be ‘water off a duck’s back.’ There should be a school-wide behaviour policy which addresses this and it should be enforced consistently. I know that this isn’t always the case, but accepting poor behaviour is one of the reasons it continues.

Good for you!

Unfortunately, my experience of parents of those types of children is that they either don't believe they act that way, or think they do act that way but it's not a big deal and the teachers are making a fuss over nothing, or that it's your fault they act that way and nothing to do with them.

One Y6 boy I taught announced proudly to the class that women shouldn't be in positions of leadership because they weren't as intelligent as men and then refused to engage in the rest of the lesson (about the roles taken on by women in WW1). When I told his parents, his mother laughed and said he was just joking, he didn't really think that, and his father said should have made the lesson more engaging for boys because obviously they weren't going to listen if it was all about women. (Before any assumptions are made, this was a white British, middle class family in the Home Counties, both parents in professional roles).

Another one got in trouble for using homophobic language in one of my lessons and I agreed with him to smooth out the issue with his Mum at breaktime. By the time I called her, it transpired that he had sneaked off school premises to tell her his side of the story and I got a barrage of abuse about how I was picking on him because I didn't like him. There were no further consequences for the boy, and the (male) head said that I needed to do more to build a positive relationship with the child and prove I liked him.

These same boys would now be completing secondary school and I have no doubt their behaviour and attitudes have only escalated.

I could tell 100 more stories about boys (and girls, but not as many) who were already displaying shocking behaviour but being coddled and enabled by their parents before leaving primary school.

In my experience, many parents won’t be sad, as they couldn’t care less. Perhaps you need to think about a different school/ age range. Good luck!

Op I have my third and final dc in secondary school upper years now and if I had an email from a teacher to say this was happening I would be reading them the riot act.

regardless of whether your a sub or not doesn’t give them the allowance to behave so disrespectfully to another human being.

I really would be annoyed with them and would be telling them so

I went to a nice school 30 years ago but the kids were brutally unkind to the subs. I used to feel so sorry for them. The second a “proper” teacher walked in they’d behave. It must have been gutting for the subs.

A pack of teenagers is a terrifying thing to confront and I do not blame you at all. Teenagers can be horrible, not even civilised.

My son went to a selective Grammar School and said the kids behaved like this to temporary teachers all the time and he found it really awkward and didn't know what to do. He says often they would leave crying and some said they refused to ever teach at that school again. Disgusting behaviour.

I didn't say it should be like this but there is no school-wide behaviour policy or sharply worded email to parents or 1:1 with the head teacher that will ever put an end to the national sport of "how far do we need to go in order to make the Cover Teacher cry?" - the meetings and emails and other consequences are all integrated into the points-scoring system within the game. This isn't nice, and it isn't good. It's quite right for schools to try to tackle it because the more they can do against it, it helps stop it spiralling to even worse, but that doesn't mean that OP should subject herself to being the metaphorical punchbag in the midst of it.

Agree that she shouldn’t be subjected to this behaviour. It does anger me, having worked in schools and seen this happen, it’s very hard to gain authority as a cover teacher.

I remember having supplies in secondary school. No one respected them at all.

This reminds me over 40 years ago, when I was newly employed to teach part-time in the local comprehensive. There were always lessons on staff timetables when we were allocated to cover classes for absent colleagues, if there were any.

As long as there was one student in the class who recognised you, you were fine. I remember going to one class to cover the second half of a double lesson. As I went in the older teacher leaving, who I did not know, said to me,”Lamb to the slaughter.” I kept them all in the classroom and fairly quiet for the whole lesson, but it was not optimal.

Although my own classes were fine - they covered the whole range of ages and abilities between them - I would not have been the right person to teach there on daily supply, or work as a cover supervisor.

I’ve done the job and it is thankless and gruelling. I don’t blame you for walking g out. It’s time schools stopped using cover supervisors and brought back supply teachers . At least they are trained .

OP, I feel for you - and sadly, this is not a new thing, either. I’ve seen good cover teachers and supply teachers absolutely bullied (there is no other word) by awful children - to the point that I wondered why they didn’t just walk out, the classes were so awful. Glad that you decided that life’s too short, and didn’t put up with it.

No-one is trained to manage behaviour on the scale that it is now. I'm not sure there is any such training, outside of the military. Teachers are trained to teach, not withstand hours of abuse.

We had that when I was at school. A substitute teacher ran out of the class crying because of some of the students’ behaviour. The same 3 or 4 in the non setted classes, every time. I was 14 or so and I felt so sorry for her. I bet it’s even worse today, I can’t imagine. Sorry op - and you say it’s a ‘good school’. I wonder what bad looks like.