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.

Moving a pupil... "Miss I'm not doing anything!" "I agree you're not doing anything when you should be doing your work!"
(Naturally I'm moving them because they are generally dicking about at the expense of their work and the others around them)

Whilst it must be very difficult (for both the child and their parents) to have severe SEN, I think falling between two stools, as it were, must be very challenging in a different way.

Good for you though for making such a monumental effort to find the best school for your son.

It's awful that in so many schools they make a deliberate choice to play up because you don't have a hi visit vest and walkie talkie! Don't take it personally, it's unfortunately the psyche of a lot of British kids generally and I stand by this comment. Meanwhile having to struggle and feel powerless is so real and exhausting 😪

I've been the one who, as soon as I walked into the classroom to help, they went quiet. Then, doing supply, same me, reaction is yey got a sub, let's cause havoc. X x

Sorry you’ve not had a good day. You expressed some serious prejudice up the thread. Maybe this isn’t for you.

We have three cover supervisors - two have been doing it for years and one is a qualified teacher who, in her words, wants to walk out at 3pm and not plan or mark. They’re all fabulous - long standing so they know the kids, and we know the work will be completed. Supply teachers are another story hence we have three cover supervisors so we don’t have to rely on supply too often.

If you’re a decent science teacher other schools will fall over themselves to employ you - you could basically name your price and hours!

No one should be feeling like this in their job.. don't blame you for walking.
I'd be embarrassed if my sons behaved like this to teachers when they were at school.
Hope you feel ok.

So not accepting the 'cultural' antipathy towards women is now 'racist'? No one should be expected to tolerate such attitudes from anyone, irrespective of their 'culture'.

In my DC's school they had no real Spanish lessons since the start of the year as the cover teacher for Spanish doesn't know any Spanish. They all hate her as the lessons are boring (fuck knows what they do in them, she is actually a PE teacher so has no idea about any kind of language teaching). She is also quite heavy on removals and detentions - obvs the only way she can control the class.

Last year, they had a whole year of no proper English teacher - they had a sub teacher. Again, some useless person removing all the boys before every lesson started because "they were disruptive". Like, literally, every boy in the class. Before the lesson started.

I fucking hate this useless system. Its up to school to make sure if their staff is on maternity leave or ill they have a decent substitute - not some sub standard stand it. They should not be allowed to have someone unsuitable teaching subjects they know nothing about. Sorry, OP.

Totally agree. Although I can never forget the Head of English in one school telling the class ‘ I hate Shakespeare but we have to do it to pass the exam’.

The boys who are likely to behave in a reprehensible manner are those who come from a background rife with misogyny.

Before any more assumptions are made, in most cases in my teaching career, they were white and had male figures (sometimes present, sometimes absent) who were abusive towards their mothers. The boys in turn were abusive towards their mothers and their female teachers.

Some were Scottish, a few were English. A handful did come from minority backgrounds, but most did not.

I gave up my permanent post in my late 50s and returned when my husband died. I did my last supply stint over a year ago.

I was supposedly covering two days a week to help out until two new teachers arrived. The behavioural problems in the school had made the local press.

I was hit twice in one week. The first time, a boy ran into my class screaming for help at the end of a lesson. (He wasn't one of mine.) Short version - I had to get his attacker in a bear hug and walk him out the door whilst his victim cowered in a corner. I stood guard over the victim until back-up finally arrived.

It turned out that this wasn't the first time the victim had been attacked: the school simply hadn't dealt with it.

The other time, a quiet boy who had been subjected to bullying exploded. I'd put in referrals about the matter. Nothing had been done.

I could see that things were about to kick off and motioned the bully away. Unfortunately for me, the punch intended for the bully landed on my hand. (Could have been much worse.)

When the two new teachers arrived, one of them was super. Immediately engaged with one of the 'difficult' classes that I'd been working with. The kids were obviously relieved to get their 'own' teacher again.

The other permanent teacher arrived, making much of her experience and - in conversation with me was patronising, to say the least. (Of course, she wasn't to know how long I'd been teaching and managing in 'tough' schools.)

One week later, she had convinced the acting Head of Department that her 'difficult' class should be moved back onto my timetable the two days that I was in. The kids informed me.

When I complained about the lack of professionalism, the HoD blamed the class teacher; the class teacher blamed the HoD.

I declined and quit.

I figured that if the only folk willing to set a standard was one of the new teachers and a lowly supply teacher, then there was every chance of being hurt again - and I don't like being taken advantage of. (This 'difficult' department had been getting hold of my timetable and - without the cover manager's permission - had allocated my non-contacts to them, I found out.)

There were two departments in the school where discipline was pretty good, and they were both led by women who backed their teachers and whose teachers backed them. Unfortunately, I hardly got to work in those departments because the one where they had problems kept asking for me.

Yes, the SLT was weak.

I'm sick of the assumption that supply teachers having difficulty must be lacking in skill.

I’m an ex teacher. I agree with everything you’ve said.

I do this too. Its gruelling. Honestly don't go back. Indeed have lots of Jobs. My last school they threw stuff at the subs and smeared food on the teachers chair.

Why cant the behaviour change ? Are you saying that bad behaviour is part of life and therefore acceptable or inevitable? We should be tackling bad behaviour in all circumstances not just saying "oh that's OK it's just a stand in teacher so it's standard form to abuse them. Also why is it that you think that unless you can have a "water off a ducks back attitude" that you are not suitable as a teacher?

Whilst I agree that pupils should have a decent substitute, it should be bare minimum surely that children are respectful to whichever adult stands in front of them to teach.

I should also point out that as your DCs school experienced, there’s a shortage of teachers. And it’s getting worse because staff have no wish to be continually disrespected and worse on top (as evidenced on this thread).

Perhaps if the bare minimum of respect was in place, fewer teachers would leave?

I know it's not an entirely new problem. My husband is 70. He grew up in a reasonably OK lower middle class/working class area in SE London. One day a father came into the primary school classroom and punched the teacher (male). I expect there was some excuse such as picking on his son. Who knows the truth over 60 years later.

I also remember a friend of mine who taught in a very tough school in inner London telling me nearly 40 years ago that some boys in the class had pulled her chair away as she was sitting down so she would fall. She was pregnant at the time. Fortunately no harm came to her or the baby. She moved schools as soon as she could after that.

I will never forget touring our nearest school when my son was coming up to secondary transfer age, over 20 years ago. It was dispiriting in the extreme. We were taken into a classroom where the children were supposed to be having an MFL lesson. Not one child appeared to be doing any work. The teacher was standing in a daze - she actually looked as if she might be on strong medication. She was smiling inanely and the children were sitting on their desks chatting. And this was an official tour on an open day! What sort of classes were they avoiding taking us to? Could have been worse, but not at all what we wanted for our son, so he didn't go there. The bottle thrown down the stairwell at break time which hit one of our tour party didn't help either.

I still maintain that the children who turned up to mainstream schools were mostly not behaving in the ways described on this thread. A lot were not there because they were truanting and others were in special schools or Borstals, if you go back far enough. This left teachers free to teach. Trying to keep all children in mainstream has not served anybody well as far as I can see.

The issue is making assumptions about people’s culture based on their race - that’s racist, as the poster I was agreeing with pointed out.

Omg the reading comprehension skills of people on this thread are very poor. I did not say OP shouldn't be a teacher. I said she shouldn't be a cover supervisor in a school where the SMT do not have the behaviour under control. At such a school every single thing that OP could do just adds kudos to the miscreants. Every time another staff member is caled in or a detention is handed out or whatever, that makes the incident get promoted up the kids' league table of success in the legendary quest for most spectacular event in the ragging of cover supervisors. Walking out = kudos points, crying = kudos points, attempting to deal with it under the standard disciplinary structure = kudos points. There are very few people sufficiently unflappable to survive that kind of behaviour and frankly those people are generally far too valuable elsewhere to need to accept such a horrible situation. Why should anyone subject themselves to this? It is not OP's problem to tackle this and it's a good thing she had the self-respect to refuse to return next day. If the school need to get to the point where every single potential cover supervisor in the county refuses to work there before they can work out how to make changes then so be it, they should not be throwing people like OP to the lions on a daily basis because that's the cheapest option.

I have been a teacher for 30 years. Behaviour is a nightmare these days. Looking to get out. I work in FE and walked out of a class last week. I feel your pain.

You’ve got to toughen up and find tactics that work for you.

Children weigh up people very quickly and you need to find a way to command respect if you want to carry on in this profession.

At school 25 years ago we had a newly qualified science teacher. It was absolute carnage (not violent but constant disruption, no respect etc) I’m pretty sure he didn’t continue in the profession after that year.

My friends French teacher (they were in a higher set than me) got to the point of throwing a chair across the room because he couldn’t hack it anymore. This was an all girl school and not even one of the rougher local schools.

In regards to parents disciplining their children, in the earliest days of Nokia phones, two girls who were having a dispute rang their parents. Parents turned up with chains and bats and had to be taken away in a Riot van. It made the papers. Again, still not one of the rougher schools in our area.

So you can see that gentle parenting is hardly going to be the cause of disruption in schools as it wasn’t even a thing back then but disruption has always been a thing.

Be careful, OP. This can be one of the first signs of PTSD. Ask me how I know!

Make sure you put your well-being first in whatever decision you make going forward.

I’d really want you to email me if that were my DC. Awful behaviour.

I would have done the same. Our year 1 teacher taught us about the grim reality of knowing you have driven your teacher out of class. I remember we all sat in horror and said nothing until she came back in and we all apologised. I taught one teen how lucky she was to be able to go to school by having her base a school project on Joseph Kony. She never complained again about school and finished Year 12. It is often a total lack of understanding of how lucky our children are to be able to go to school instead of working in sweatshops, fields, rubbish dumps or drafted as child soldiers or married off as child brides. That and the uncontrolled bullying by certain children who cannot be expelled. It will not end well if teachers are treated this way.

So worrying

🙄

I think you need to expand on that statement. School staff spend hours in training as part of CPD on behaviour and de-escalation but if you have something new to share regarding how to command respect or toughen up in an abusive environment then feel free to share.