Today i got paid for one day of supply work I did last week...

£99.37!!!!

Yes, it's not masses, but it's pretty good for only a day! Last summer when I worked at the playscheme, I got not much over that for a week's work! Definitely worth the rush to get down to Coasham for 8.30am - it's such a nice feeling to be paid £100 for doing something I really enjoy.

This week was a slow week - only one afternoon - but next week I already have three afternoons booked in. And I've got my eye on a maternity cover post in a school jsut over the road...

On Wednesday I did my first day of supply teaching. I got a call at 7.30am from my agency, and I will still in bed, having been told that supply was slow in the first few weeks, and there was unlikely to be anything! The school was about a 40 minute drive from here, so I had to get ready very quickly - Ben was a star helping me out.

It was in a pretty deprived area just outside a large city, and I was teaching a year 3/4 class all day. I was left some vague planning, and no resources, so had to do a lot of improvisation, but I think I did really well. There were some children with behaviour issues, but they responded really well, and I didn't have any problems with the class at all. I completely made up a science lesson on light and shadows as the medium term plan was useless, and that went well - hopefully I dispelled a few misconceptions (such as 'a shadow is like a reflection but it doesn't have colour')! I also taught ICT in the afternoon, which was good.

I'm really proud of how well the day went - I'm now a proper supply teacher! I don't have anything booked in for next week (but it may come up) and have 3 afternoons for the following week - on one of which I will teaching a class I was a TA with 15 months ago!

Well, I guess that officially this is no longer my PGCE weblog - I'm well and truly a qualified teacher! My QTS and PGCE certificates arrived a couple of weeks ago... My PGCE one, issued on 17/7, is under my married name, and my QTS one, from 1/8, has my maiden name on it...! I'm hoping to get the QTS one re-issued... not quite sure what went wrong, as the GTC got my name from the University...!

Today I got a call from my wonderful teaching agency with my first bit of supply work... granted, it's not for a couple of weeks, but it's a start! I quite like the buzz of supply work - when I TAed for them, it was really exciting to get phone calls telling me where I was going next, and I got the same buzz today. I'm really happy to be supply teaching - it was a definite decision for me. We may be moving our of the area at some point (fingers crossed!) so it's great for me not to be tied down. I made a definite decision to supply... the one job I applied for and was interviewed for was definitely not for me (high pressure top school) and in a way I was glad to be told I had come 2nd. I know that the right job will come up at some point, but I'm in no rush - until then I'm very happy to hone my behaviour management skills as 'the supply teacher'!

I've got a few things together to take with me when I go supply-ing. The main one is my 'teaching box' which is full of stickers, prizes (thanks to The Works) and a load of laminated cards etc that I made that can be used for loads of different lessons. I also have a kids' brainteasers book that I had when I was young, which has some pretty cool stuff in it, and I'll be popping some of my PGCE lesson plans into a file as a 'just in case' - you never know when you might get into school and find you've been left with nothing to teach!

My friends who have jobs (4 out of the 7 of us) start with their new classes very soon - in fact, one of them started today! Oddly enough, 3 out of the 4 are teaching year 5 - my favourite year, and the year my supply gig I got today is for. They've been in their new classrooms for the past few weeks sorting stuff out. I look forward to having my own classroom, but with so much to do to get the house ready to sell, the last few weeks have been really useful on that front. Definitely no 'lady of leisure' for me!