Substitute Teachers

In these present days of Teaching Assistants galore, classrooms are nicely awash with support for children, but it wasn’t so long ago that only having your regular teacher in class was the norm.

That said though, a sprinkling of substitute, cover or student teachers occasionally dipped in to the mix which usually meant absolute chaos would ensue within seconds of them entering the classroom.

They were often an odd sort weren't they? Horrendous dress sense, totally incapable of maintaining any kind of decent control over the class, and seemingly prepared to accept all kinds of personal abuse from those who fancied their chances against them.

"Yes, Barry Manilow DOES know..."

In fact, none of those who taught classes I was in seemed to exude any skills of note. Perhaps they should have watched what Sidney Poitier did in To Sir With Love?

My memory is usually pretty good, but it has failed me a little for this one, as there are quite a few such specimens that I can remember by appearance, but not by name! So out of fairness, and to promote anonymity, I've opted to revert to nicknames for all of the candidates below:

Alan

Let’s start by clarifying that Alan was actually a female, and was only known to us as ‘Alan’ as she looked like the brother of one of my best mates – who was called Alan!

Alan was a student teacher assigned to teach us French in Year 11 (5^th year) during the LAST TERM before we left to take our GCSE exams. The LAST TERM! Whoever made that decision wants their head examined… at a time when we needed that final push and support before leaving school, it’s no wonder so many people got low pass marks. On the whole, she was a very forgettable teacher, but  bless her she was memorable for trying to express ‘pain’ in French, by running around the classroom feigning tummy illness – for 20 minutes.

At least I think she was faking it…

Denny

So named because I think this chap was Danish. I could've gone with other food related links to Denmark, but was advised caution against being ignorantly racist!

Poor Denny seemed to lose the class before he'd even started. Another student teacher, he was brought in to teach German and miraculously managed to survive just about one term before moving on. Bright and breezy in his introduction, some of my more ruthless classmates started tearing him a new one almost immediately. The lessons immediately crumbled into a torrent of abuse towards him, his accent, his beard, his dress wear, his lack of authority etc. No amount of him shouting and literally screaming could stop the barrage of mocking coming his way.

Towards the end of his tenure, our class was split into two, in order to help him attempt to manage / teach a smaller group – which clearly didn't help our education. During these split sessions, one of the heads of year asked me to tell her what we'd learnt, so I honestly and openly told her ‘not much’ and that it would take a miracle for the majority of the students to ever turn and warm to him.

Coming towards the end of term, we were ‘lucky’ enough to have him cover a Design Technology lesson for us. During which some students wound him up so much that he literally threw a desk at a girl who had dared to laugh at him! He then sent her in to another room and about a minute later all we could hear was screaming. Evidently he had held her in an attempt to calm her down apparently, and she had retorted with 'get your hands off of me you b******!’ before running out and home.

And to cement the growing list of incidents, shortly after the above incident he had the tyres slashed on his Citroen 2CV Dolly by a 1st year student.

Unsurprisingly he didn't return in September, and we had a brand new female teacher in his place. She was a breath of fresh air, instantly liked by all, and didn’t receive one dot of abuse.

A footnote to this story though, is that she actually knew her predecessor rather well. She ended up being one of the best teachers I ever had, but to be fair, whoever his replacement was would have been almost angelic in comparison. Long after his departure, she told me how amazed she was at the series of events as she found him to be such a nice chap!

Trusting her assessment of him, I'm sure he was probably a nice guy – he just didn't get off to a good start for whatever reason and it got diabolically worse from there on in.

Hagar – But Not Horrible

“I used to teach in London.”

A fact he often reminded us about. Possibly it was coding for ‘don’t screw with me’, but he was generally alright in the way he handled the classes. He basically used to give as good as he got, and to that end he had a fair good rapport with most students. What we ever learnt was debatable though.

He opened himself up to abuse by declaring he was a Crystal Palace fan, which was a burden for one of my Crystal Palace supporting mates (coincidentally the brother of Alan above), as every time Hagar appeared before us, he’d make a beeline for him to discuss how the football was going.

Oh and apparently he also taught John Barnes. Just in case we’d forgotten from the last 50 times he’d told us.

'Digger' Barnes - not yesterday

I think he also used to lift share with another cover teacher who I think was nicknamed Charley Farley, or Farley’s Rusks or something similar? The name Rudolph rings a bell though, but that might be due to a red nose I recall him having. It distracted from the tweed suit.

The Twins: Cunning Linguist & Watoo Watoo

And finally, a brief mention for these two student teachers who popped up at Primary School.

The Cunning Linguist wasn’t popular amongst fellow teachers and children alike. This was compounded when I heard other teachers slagging him off just after he left. The nickname is because he often used to mispronounce the name of our lovely headmaster Mr.Cunliffe (RIP) to Mr.Cunnicliffe – which as a child I found funny, and as an adult I find mildly disturbing!

And finally, Watoo Watoo was just a friendly play on the family name of the preceding nice young student teacher who at least came back and visited us again.

Think how much our children are missing out on these delights!