My mandatory casual teaching hacks

I was very fortunate in the breakdown of my first year in teaching.

On the back of COVID, I was employed in a school as a combined classroom teacher and a school-wide casual.

This was advantageous because it meant that I had a slightly lighter lesson load - and thus less prep in my first year - and allowed me to be exposed to casual teaching - and the important lessons it teaches fledgling teachers - in a familiar environment.

While I had the, frankly unfair, upper hand over other casual teachers since I was a staff member, there were a number of significant lessons which this unpredictable teaching schedule provided.

First, I picked up a lot of vital classroom management strategies.

The first was to use names.

Again, I had the advantage of having access to school systems, but when I began teaching I through that generic dissipations like “year 9” would suffice to get attention. 

It doesn’t.

Using names is the secret sauce.

And the best way to nail names as a casual teacher is to use the mandatory roll marking to identify students.

Ideally, if the roll has student photos attached the easier this will be, but as you mark the roll, you can insert the names of students into the blank template of the classroom.

At worst, this can be (at least in part) achieved over the course of the first activity during the lesson.

When you are armed with names, then the class runs a lot smoother.

Furthermore, the best advice I have gleaned about casual teaching is to start the lesson by writing all instructions on the board and number the things required during the lesson.

The reason for this is simple.

It is much easier to ask a student what number they are up to, or instruct them by simply using the number of the activities in the board to keep the class on track.

Better yet, if all the instructions are on the board, then you can allocate times when you either expect the, to have completed each task or when you will be going through the various activities.

Finally, all casual teachers should explicitly tell the class that they will be reporting on the lesson to the usual classroom teacher and informing the teacher precisely what work the students should have got through (which hopefully aligns with the amount of work which was left for the class).

Again, I had the advantage of being able to personally speak with the teacher if my usual summary email was not sufficient.