The Supply Teacher's Survival Kit (From a Teacher Who Became a Founder)

Supply teaching is one of the hardest jobs in education. You walk into a room of 30 students who don't know you, have no reason to trust you, and have spent the morning finding out which buttons to press.

I did it for years. Here's what I learned.

The first 60 seconds are everything

Students make up their minds about a supply teacher in the first minute. Not the first lesson, the first minute. Everything after that is either confirming or reversing that initial impression.

The worst thing you can do in that first minute: try to establish authority through rules, warnings, or threats. It signals that you're on the defensive. Students read it immediately.

The best thing you can do: start something they want to be part of.

Games are not a reward, they're a tool

The games I used as a supply teacher weren't rewards for good behaviour. They were my opening move. I'd walk in, introduce myself in one sentence, and say "before we start, we're going to play a quick game."

Three things happened when I did this consistently: students engaged immediately (games require participation, which breaks the passive observer stance), I established energy and tone before they could, and I got to see how they interacted, which told me everything about the class dynamics before the actual lesson started.

The games that work best for supply

Not all games are supply-appropriate. You want games that:

• Have rules you can explain in 30 seconds
• Don't require equipment or setup
• Work for any age group
• Don't rely on students knowing each other
• Create laughter without creating chaos

This is exactly what ClassBreak was designed around. When I was building it, "would a supply teacher be able to run this cold, in 30 seconds, with a class they've never met?" was the test every game had to pass.

What to do when the plan falls apart

The lesson plan the regular teacher left is often wrong, wrong timing, wrong assumptions about what the class already knows, or just a PDF that says "continue reading chapter 5" with no further context.

Have a back pocket: three or four games you know so well you can run them without thinking. When the plan falls apart, the game buys you the time and goodwill to figure out what to do next.

The long game

Supply teaching taught me more about classroom dynamics than any teaching qualification. Every day was a new class, a new challenge, a new chance to see what actually worked.

The thing that worked most consistently? Making the first five minutes feel like play. Everything else follows from that.