Reflections on Relieving

While watching the short film, Manurewa, yesterday, I was reminded of my relieving/substituting days while visiting NZ during the American summer, NZ winter.  The liquor store featured in the film is only 100m from a school where I taught for just one day.   It was a tough school but I was somehow able to enjoy my day there.

I had always thought that relieving in schools would be the worst job a teacher could ask for.  Ever.  Yet somehow I was excited by the prospect when we made our first visit home after moving to the States.  The visit was about 4 months long and we wanted to make as much money as possible.  I ended up working the very day I got home.  Motivated by money and ten long months of nothingness which had dwindled my self esteem to the size of a pea.

I was almost shaky as the deputy principal showed me around - I wasn't sure that I could remember how to teach.  Luckily it was a sweet, small class of 8 year olds, who had some experience on the ukulele.  That became our treat at the end of the day - a class ukelele sing-along.  I learned from there to put on a confidant face and the confidence would catch me at the next corner.  Stickers and a sense of humour helped too.  

I don't know if not teaching has given me some perspective on being a teacher, helped calm my nerves. Or maybe that first honeymoon day in a classroom, when you can share stories about what you're doing, and show genuine interest in what they're doing, is enough to keep you mostly in the class's good books.  

I found that I could show up at a brand new school, at 8:20 in the morning.  I would spend the next 30 minutes rushing around, sometimes unable to find evidence of a daily timetable or prior work,  meet members of my class for the day, suss out the photocopier and reading materials, and be ready to teach until 3 by 8:50. 

I learned early on that relievers are often lumped with play ground duty.  These are normally the bane of the everyday teachers' existence, but I came to recognise it as a kind of reprieve for two reasons.  I didn't have to sit quietly in the corner of the staff room like a Nigel-Nobody as the other teachers try to get as much adult interaction with their friends as they could into the short break.  It became my preferred way of relating to my surrogate class, a time when I could find out their teacher's secrets for the rest of the day, and keep an eye on those 'naughty' behaviours that pop up with any reliever.