Hi there. In this education post, I talk about supply teachers. I don't have anything in specific in mind when it comes to supply teachers so this post is a mixture of an overview on supply teachers and notes on them from observations as a former young student.
Topics
- Needing A Substitute To Cover
- The Supervisor Supply Teacher
- A Teaching Supply Teacher
- Longer Term Supply/Interim Teachers
- Some Supply Teachers Like To Tell Stories
Needing A Substitute To Cover
To have a teacher that is there at every school day for the school year is rare in my opinion. Teachers can get sick, get into accidents, take days off, attend conferences and such. In order for the teaching show to go on, a supply or substitute teacher is needed to carry out the education tasks for students.
Some other reasons why a teacher may be absent include:
- Teacher Who Also A Sports Coach And Attends Tournaments
- Maternity Leave
- Paternity Leave (I Had A University Professor Who Took Leave To Do Dad Duties)
- Jury Duty (I did not understand what this meant in grade 2.)
The Supervisor Supply Teacher
In my experiences, I found that a lot of supply teachers are of the supervisor type. They wouldn't really know the subject or course that the original teacher is teaching. The supervisor supply teacher would most likely follow the teacher's lesson plan and carry out the tasks. If you want to go that far, it is just "babysitting".
Tasks for the supply teacher can include:
- Watching A Movie / Documentary (Kind of common when I was young)
- Independent Work Of Reading And Doing Problems In English, History, Mathematics
- Working On A Project
A Teaching Supply Teacher
A better case than the supervisor supply teacher is a supply teacher who can teach the subject. This supply teacher could actually be a teacher from the school who teaches the same subject but for a different set of students.
The teaching supply teacher would follow the lesson plan set out by the original teacher. How the concepts and topics are taught can be different. Teaching quality can be better or worse than the original teacher. Also, the personality of the supply teacher can vary too.
Case - Calculus Supply Teacher Was "Better" Than The Main Teacher
In one of the previous posts on Generalist vs Specialist Teachers, I talked about the calculus teacher I had who came back from maternity leave. Her personality was not great and made us do the product rule for derivatives instead of quotient rule. Our one supply teacher (who was an older sister for someone in our grade at the time) was much better, knowledgeable, more patient and nicer (more feminine) than our main one.
Longer Term Supply/Interim Teachers
The main teacher may need more than one day off and would require a longer term substitute teacher. In grade seven, I do remember having an interim teacher for a few months until our main teacher came back from maternity leave. He was a good, friendly teacher overall and told us a few stories about his brother being in a fairly well known (at the time) Canadian rock band.
Some Supply Teachers Like To Tell Stories
There are a few supply teachers who like to tell some stories to students. This could be out of boredom or trying to entertain or something. One grade twelve supply teacher in my accounting class was talking about university entrance cases and averages for ten minutes. One extreme case I had is where a religion supply teacher from the department was pretty much telling "funny life stories" (non-religion topics) for the whole 90 minutes.
Luck Of The Draw
For students, it is all in the luck of the draw when it comes to getting teachers and supply teachers. Some are good, some are bad, some are nice, some are funny, some are mean and so on. One thing that students pick up over time is that everyone is different in their own ways.
