Diary Of A Supply Teacher: 'Nearly all of what she was saying sailed over their heads'

One does not expect much work after the summer, as teachers return to work relaxed and fit, so I was surprised to be contacted on the second day of the autumn term. A Catholic school faced with falling rolls and the prospect of closure had been praying for a miracle. God had obliged with an influx of Poles, but the school was less grateful than it should have been.

They were in special measures, and an inspection was due after three weeks. After one day, the staff felt that they could not hope to perform adequately in the face of new students who didn't speak English. Thus, the Poles would be taught separately, and I was brought in to assist the teacher with responsibility for ethnic minorities. I was offered three days' work, to enable them to take stock.

Having filled in time over the previous six months with an online Tefl course, this seemed like a tremendous opportunity. The teacher was delightful. Bouncy and charismatic, she commanded instant respect. The group, which also included two Portuguese and a Czech, warmed to her immediately, and despite being of all ages from 11 to 16, they seemed happy to be there and keen to learn.

But the school had other non-English speakers, who had entered in ones and twos and been given a lot of attention. Their language had improved, a result of also having to mix with native English speakers. The teacher had no experience of a large group with such limited vocabulary, and I became aware that nearly all of what she was saying was sailing happily over their heads. We got them to write down their names and addresses, but whether any of them grasped that they needed to know this in case they were stopped by the police is anyone's guess.

One or two were more fluent than the rest and translated (luckily, Czech is close enough to Polish for the sole Czech not to feel totally isolated), and my limited Spanish occasionally clarified things for the Portuguese. They appeared bright, but a Portuguese lad had come with a statement giving him a mental age of seven, and it appeared that one of the Poles might also have a learning difficulty. We clearly had a mammoth task on our hands.

Each student was given a green book (photocopied worksheets stapled together with a green sheet on the front) and this had to be completed and handed in to a higher authority. It included a collection of material, some taken from children's colouring books, and some complex grammatical exercises, and had to be finished quickly so they could move on to the blue book. It seemed horribly inappropriate.

Fortunately, some sixth sense prevented me from criticising, and I enquired neutrally where the books had come from. The teacher had produced them herself, and clearly hours of work had been involved. She had been a science teacher, and after an accident that left her unable to work in a lab, had been relocated to ethnic minorities, where she was coping against huge odds. I had enormous admiration for her, but my enthusiasm became tinged with panic.

Could we get through the next three weeks?

The writer is a supply teacher in the Midlands