Occasional Teaching Considerations
As stated in the Survival Skills for Occasional Teachers, by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, working as occasional teachers “offers the chance to exercise knowledge and creativity”, provides “the opportunity to experiment with different teaching strategies”. Interesting and challenging, it seems teaching as an occasional teacher would gives us the opportunity to broaden our horizons and meet many different and thought-provoking characters along the way. While this might be very rewarding as an individual, I wonder how it is perceived by our students.
The biggest surprise I had as I explored the modules about occasional teaching is the fact that we could and would be asked and considered able to teach other subjects than the ones we studied for. I think I would still be quite lost if assigned to teach Music or English. I feel like being specialized in our subjects is a good thing. It enables us to convey knowledge to our students with passion and exactitude. Having taught Visual Arts and studying to teach French as a Second Language, I feel quite confident about my ability to teach, interest and even captivate an audience, while discussing those subject areas I chose and love.
I realize the schools’ and school boards’ advantage of being able to ask anyone to teach any class: the students are always supervised and cared for by a responsible adult. Even the shortest leave of absence of a regular teacher is covered and thus Occasional teachers allow continuum in the classrooms. However I can’t help but thinking that I wouldn’t do my job properly if I wasn’t in fact teaching, if my students didn’t leave my classroom having acquired the slightest piece of knowledge. Teachers, occasional or not, shouldn’t be babysitters. And although the curriculum can be read and interpreted in a very large manner, even though many subjects are transverse, I don’t see how it would be acceptable to teach something else than what the regular teacher, and the school’s principal behind him, expects us to. And I don’t see how I could teach a subject I know nothing about, without being prepared and having done research on the matter.
Puzzled, I asked a Professional Learning Community online (Ontario Occasional Teachers on Facebook). Here are some of the positive answers I got:
- “You are not required to take calls for subjects for which you are not qualified. You are allowed to take these calls because it falls under an agreement to teach outside of subject based on need.”
- “When it comes to daily supply, in high school (I/S) students are often given independent work or group work that involves little teaching and more supervising. Using your music class example I've supplied when a music class has a composition assignment. They know what to do but you can ask questions of them to keep them focused, to become more knowledgeable about their subject, and to find out about their thought process so you can help them. Or they all have to practice a particular piece so it will be noisy but no conducting involved. Or they'll watch a movie about a famous musician. So you can see, you can totally handle it.”
- “I've been supplying between LTOs for 8 years now. My IS teachables are math and history but I have literally supplied in every subject area. This includes tech/manufacturing classes, music, art, hairdressing, horticulture (many many times), senior sciences, phys Ed, French immersion etc. As mentioned before, the teacher knows the supply may not be qualified in the area and leaves some sort of seat work (or a PowerPoint for them to copy, video etc). Sure there have been times I didn't know how to set up volleyball nets or how to pronounce something in organic chemistry but the students or other teachers in the department are always willing to help!”
I guess we can’t be prepared for exactly everything and sometimes we will learn as we go! Looking at each assignment like a new experience and a lesson to learn will help us grow as teachers and individuals. This course, through the study of the modules, the discussion board, the articles we were asked to review and the resources it made me aware of have helped me understand the working conditions of an occasional teacher in Ontario and lifted some of my reservations about it.