4. STORY AND COMMENTARY
4.1 The plan of this section
Rather than embark immediately on a thematic discussion based on my fieldnotes, this section begins with a brief synopsis of those four days, what I shall call the 'observation storyline'. The reason for first telling this story (however fragmentary) is to give the reader some sense of the sequence of events that Diane experienced on supply, and an opportunity to begin imagining what cumulative effect this might have on a supply teacher. In the second part of this section, I link the storyline to themes already mentioned earlier in the paper as well as some newly emerging ones, and suggest two overarching concepts of 'authority' and 'authorship' in understanding the subjective world of the supply teacher.
4.2 Observation storyline
When Diane was rung by Dick, the supply coordinator of Box Hill Comprehensive, on Sunday for Monday morning, Julie Dickinson, a History and English teacher had already been off work for 10 ten days due to stress, with no indication of when she might return. On the Monday morning, Diane asked the school secretary for keys to Julie's room, and was directed to the caretaker. At the end of the day, Diane marked the key to Julie's room with sellotape, thinking she would probably need it again. That evening, Dick rang to ask Diane for any days she could do that week, and she agreed to cover Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
On Tuesday, Diane arrived in time to ask someone where the caretaker's office was so that she might find the key to Julie's room. As for every supply day there, Dick provided her with a note detailing groups, subjects and rooms for that day; all lessons were marked down as being in Julie's teaching room. However, having been in the previous day, Diane knew that the English groups were in the middle of a public speaking competition; before first period, Diane had sought out Sarah Hopton, the Head of English, to ask where her group would be in period 2, and was informed that they would be in a lecture theatre. The first period (7A: History) was a set of worksheets that had been left by Bill, the Head of History (though he did not leave all the sheets mentioned on the cover note). With the foreknowledge of the room change for period 2 (Set 9: English), Diane was prepared when she redirected her group to the lecture theatre.
On Thursday, the cover note left for period 1 (7A: History) by Bill stated: "Continue work already started on [worksheets 1-3]. Those who finish should go on to [worksheet 4]." During the course of this lesson, several pupils asked for help, and Diane talked them through the work; she added historical facts (which may or may not have been accurate), and helped pupils to imagine the thought processes and motives of the historical figures under study.
The pupils moved around the room frequently, and there was a constant hum of conversation. Three quarters of the way into the lesson, Diane shouted, "Yr 7 sit down! Everyone look this way! Pens down! Everyone!" There was complete silence, and Diane then said very quietly, "For the next 5 minutes when you pick pens up I don't want to hear any talking. I can't take any more of this noise. Right." Talk began again. "No talking!" The class became fairly quiet again, and Diane began to mention names of pupils, threatening detention. Finally there was silence from the whole class.
The cover note for period 2 (8A: History) read "Start the exercise [about 18th century engravings] (on desk)." Diane had used this worksheet with another year 8 group on Monday, when a learning support assistant (Mrs Lane) was present. For the first ten minutes, Diane introduced the worksheet, drawing attention to the factual content, asking questions and eliciting answers about historical details, and highlighting parts of the work which Monday's group had found difficult. The worksheets do not contain all of the information necessary to answer the questions, and the pupils did not appear to have much background knowledge on what was a new topic. During this lesson, Diane offered a lot of her own interpretations of the content in discussing the work with individual pupils.
At one point, Diane moved Mark to another desk because he was disturbing other pupils. He then took someone's pencil case; Diane asked for it, and he hid it behind his back; eventually the pencil case was returned. Another boy had stopped working and was chatting to a neighbour; Diane checked his name by looking at the front of his exercise book. He smiled and said, "I'm George", to which Diane replied, "I know you aren't. Your book says Tim, and I know who George is."
As she left the staff room at the end of break, Diane noticed Sarah Hopton, and asked about the last two English periods; Sarah said that there were no cover notes, and she would come over to introduce both lessons.
Diane was confused by the cover note for period 3 because on Tuesday, the cover note for 9B had asked for the worksheets to be done in a different order, and she sensed that Bill did not know which class he was setting for, or, if the year 9 groups were interchangeable, then the sequence should be the same; in the end, Diane disregarded the note and instructed the class to do the same as Tuesday's group. Again, in coaching individuals, Diane introduced her own interpretations of the historical evidence given in the worksheets.
At the start of period 4, Sarah Hopton left a student teacher taking her lesson, and led Diane's lesson (Set 9: English) for the first 15 minutes, standing on the same spot, and maintaining silence from the pupils all that time except for when they answered questions. Sarah spoke slowly, dealing with each point systematically. She asked a lot of questions of the pupils to establish what topics they had covered, and explained that she would have to devise work in case Julie Dickinson was "away for a while". She said that she would give them a "one-off lesson on Elizabethan English."
"Mrs Ireland will take you through it." Sitting at the desk behind her, Diane grimaced at this.
Sarah turned to Diane. "How's your Elizabethan English?"
"I don't know any."
"Don't worry. It's quite straightforward."
Sarah went out to collect books and was back in five minutes, during which Diane and the class waited, chatting amongst themselves. On her return, Sarah taught the class for 40 minutes, during which there was complete silence except for answers to questions, and Diane sat following the book and Sarah's explanation. Finally, Sarah suggested pupils could make rough notes, and then set them a task: "Look at Shakespeare's English, see how it's different from modern English, and do the assignment writing about this". After briefly discussing the work for period 5 with Diane, Sarah left.
After that, despite calls by Diane to the whole class that they should be discussing the work, most of the class continued what I came to refer to in my notes as 'social chat', and less than a handful of the pupils attempted the work. At the end, and over the murmur of pupils' voices, on Diane's instruction for pupils to close books and hand them to the centre of the room, the class responded promptly.
For period 5 (7B: English), having taught this group earlier in the week, Diane picked up quickly on the stories they had been creating, and explained that the pupils should proofread before writing their next version. She discussed what proofreading was, interpolating in her instructions phrases like "Mrs Hopton wants you to ...".
In their conversation the previous lesson, Diane had said to Sarah that some of these pupils were near to finishing their stories. Sarah responded that they could copy a particular poem, adding, "That'll keep them busy". Diane reported to me that her immediate thought was "to what purpose?", but she said nothing at the time to Sarah. I asked why. "Two reasons. She's Head of English, and I assume she knows what she's doing. And she's just taught three quarters of my last lesson, so I didn't want to challenge her. "
I smiled. "So what? Why not challenge her?"
Diane smiled defensively. "Oh, stop analysing everything!"
Diane decided to make the poem exercise more interesting. Diane explained to those who had finished stories that they should all first copy the poem, and then she assigned a verse for each of them to learn for performance to rest of the class. A pupil asked, "Why are we doing this?" to which Diane replied "Because that's what Mrs Hopton asked you to do." Just before the end of the lesson, one of the girls told Diane she did not like her, and wished Julie Dickinson would return; Diane was hurt but said nothing.
On Friday, Sarah left a cover note for period 2 (Set 8: English). However, one boy complained they had done exactly the same activity the year before. Diane added the following message to the cover note and sent it to Sarah via a pupil: "They have done this exercise before and didn't feel they could do it again. (Including doing presentation!) Do I insist or is there an alternative?" Sarah returned the note with: "Sorry Diane. I'm fully engaged. Can you find something? Sarah."
Each time Diane chose an activity from the book, the pupils said they had done it, so she asked them to choose. They chose one with 'joke' pictures of action man characters for making storylines. Although there was a lot of talking throughout the lesson, a high proportion being 'social chat', most of the class got down to some form of work.
During break, Diane told Sarah about the comment made by the girl at the end of Thursday about missing Julie Dickinson. Diane pointed out that 7B has Julie for History and English, and were therefore missing five hours a week of their regular teacher.
Immediately after break, at the start of period 3 (7B English), Sarah entered the classroom and said she would have to find something for the children to do, and then left. Girls were sent to collect text books and all waited for five minutes, and everybody waited. When the girls returned, Diane said, "You've had 10 minutes, so now I expect you to listen very, very carefully." There was still chatter, and during her introduction, Diane quietened the pupils several times. "You are going to do this for Mrs Hopton over the next few lessons." Mrs Lane went out again when it was discovered the pupils did not have the rough books they would normally use for this kind of work.
The exercise was quite long and the instructions elaborate. Diane read it all out, pausing to ask the class about the meanings of certain words; the concentration of the pupils during this was patchy. Diane moved round the class checking everyone was working. After a while, sounding and looking irritated, Diane exclaimed, "Year 7, listen! A lot of you say you don't understand what to do. I would have appreciated if there had been a problem for some hands to go up." She then summarised the tasks again, and after that, from time to time, pupils approached her and Mrs Lane for help. During the lesson, the unhappy pupil from Tuesday afternoon commented to Diane that she preferred her to the supply teacher she had in music.
At the start of period 5 (Set 9: English), Sarah described the work to Diane, who then introduced it to the class. The pupils were to get into groups, read aloud 11 pages of a modernised 'Romeo and Juliet', and then write about it. This led onto quite a lot of noise and conversation, though some appeared to be doing the work. Most of the pupils claimed they had already done this work. Diane responded, "I don't know why you didn't tell Mrs Hopton that yesterday." At the end of the lesson, Diane borrowed an exercise book from a pupil so that Sarah could plan work for the following week.
The following Tuesday, both Diane and Sarah were present at the changeover of period 1 to 2. The group from period 1 was leaving noisily, and Sarah stopped and silenced them. Diane later told me she felt very undermined by this: "It was my class, and I let them get rowdy."
After talking to Diane, Sarah decided it would be better if Julie taught 'Romeo and Juliet', so went out to find some work. During the 15 minutes wait, the class chatted. Sarah returned and set them a one-off lesson on 'The Apostrophe', saying, "I'm not going to teach you this. Mrs Ireland is perfectly capable of teaching this." Diane grimaced at this, but later told me that this comment partially repaired the damage from the blow to her self-esteem at the start of the lesson. Sarah then proceeded to explain various aspects of the work, and the standards she expected, while acknowledging that the work was a little boring.
Diane reported to me that she felt "dreadful and panic-stricken" when Sarah left; she did not know Sarah was going to leave at that moment, and felt she had to start teaching immediately because Sarah had 'set her up as an expert'. Diane did not feel confident about teaching grammar, so referred to the group a lot as she introduced the exercise (which she had seen only seconds earlier).
For the rest of the lesson, Diane's main activity was to move round groups to stop 'social chat', pupils working on their French prep, and other activities unrelated to the English. Diane looked frustrated (sighing and shaking her head), and told me at lunchtime that this was because she felt she was "failing", "not getting them to do what I want", and was "annoyed, because I don't have the energy."
The first line on the cover note for period 4 (9A: History) read, "Complete [worksheet 'x'] (surely everyone has by now?!)" with instructions to continue with more worksheets. The cover note for period 5 (7B: History) asked the pupils to continue with [worksheet 'y']. However, this group had not finished worksheets not even mentioned in the cover note, so Diane ignored the note and set the group to finish these first.