Four month out of six unpaid from the salt mine.
Emergency teaching experiences amount to six high schools, two special schools and one primary school.
Phone calls from teaching agency: 103.
Days Sir refused to answer the phone: 7.
House moves: 1.
Holidays: 1.
Wedding: 1.
Boxes destroyed for recycling: 54.
Nights spent awake with the cat and the fish: 23.
Days off spent staring at the garden/wall/open page of a book: unrecorded.
The official press release will state that Sir had a good rest over the second half of the year, moved into the suburbs and prepared for the inevitable return to work in January 2010.
Reality: Emergency teaching really sucks balls. Apart from the expected inconvenience of the early morning phone call, the mystery flight type caffeinated morning drive and the ratty testy kids... it was the other teachers that made it absolutely horrid. Sir was blown away by behaviour that ranged from being passively ignored to being cornered and questioned about her ethnic background, classroom management experience, wages and appearance. Emergency teachers are assumed to be either stoopid, incompetent or graduates with no experience. Whatever.
Luckily for Sir, there is an ongoing position waiting in the heart of the West next year. Despite the salt mine shambles that Sir heard about in the St Albans KFL from an unexpected run in with a colleague, relief floods her synapses where the helplessness of the young graduate or the UK working visa has been palpable. Desperation shows on their faces and grows as the days to terms end grow fewer and longer. Time to go home? Soon.
