There are certain pieces of information that are useful to an instrumental teacher.
Term dates are useful.
Changes to the school day are useful.
Knowing that Year 8 are spending Tuesday at a castle is particularly useful if you have six Year 8 pupils on a Tuesday.
Unfortunately, this information doesn’t always make it as far as the visiting music teacher.
Ah. Right.
You arrive at school.
You sign in.
You get to your teaching room, unpack everything and prepare for the first pupil.
The lesson time arrives.
No pupil.
Five minutes pass.
Still no pupil.
Eventually you find somebody who knows where they are.
“Oh. Year 7 are on a school trip today.”
Of course they are.
“Did nobody tell you?”
No.
Nobody told me.
This would have been excellent information to have yesterday.
Or this morning.
Or indeed at any point before I drove here.
There Are Many Variations
It isn’t always a school trip.
Sometimes they’re doing an exam.
Sometimes they’re in an assembly.
Sometimes they’re rehearsing for something.
Sometimes it’s sports day.
Sometimes there’s a photograph.
Sometimes the entire year group has disappeared to do an activity that everybody in the school seems to know about except you.
And occasionally the pupil is definitely in school.
Nobody knows where.
You ask Reception.
They don’t know.
You ask the Music Department.
They don’t know.
You check the classroom they’re supposed to be in.
They aren’t there.
At this point I generally assume they’ve entered another dimension and move on to the next pupil.
Of course, the missing pupil doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing left to do. There may be registers to update, lessons to rearrange and emails to send. It’s another example of something I discussed in The Lesson Doesn’t End When The Pupil Leaves The Room: the actual teaching is only part of the job.
The Room Has Gone Too
Pupils aren’t the only things that disappear.
Teaching rooms do as well.
You arrive to discover that the room you normally teach in is being used for an exam.
Or a meeting.
Or storage.
Or somebody has simply locked it and nobody can find the key.
Occasionally you open the door to find twenty-five people already sitting in there doing something that very clearly isn’t an instrumental lesson.
So you begin the traditional visiting-teacher activity of wandering around the Music Department carrying several bags and asking:
“Is there anywhere I can teach?”
Eventually somebody finds you a room.
It contains three chairs, a broken music stand and very little else.
Nearly there.
My Personal Favourite
I have, however, managed to take this to its logical conclusion.
I once drove all the way to a school to teach for the day.
The car park seemed unusually quiet.
The corridors seemed unusually quiet.
In fact, everything seemed unusually quiet.
There was a good reason for this.
It was an INSET day.
There were no pupils.
None.
I had successfully arrived at a school to teach children on a day when the school had specifically arranged for there to be no children in it.
I can’t really blame a pupil for that one.
Although I would have appreciated an email.
Of course, finding the pupil is only part of the adventure. There’s also the question of where you’re supposed to teach them. I’ve written about some of the more interesting possibilities in The Strange Places Schools Put Music Teachers. Apparently, a cupboard is sometimes considered a perfectly reasonable teaching environment.
You’re Part Of The School. Sort Of.
This is one of the odd things about being a visiting instrumental teacher.
You can teach at the same school every week for years.
You know the staff.
You know the pupils.
You know which door doesn’t open properly and which photocopier should never be approached unless absolutely necessary.
You’re part of the school.
Except you’re also slightly outside it.
It’s a peculiar arrangement, and one that works much better when visiting teachers and the Music Department communicate properly. I’ve written about some of the small things that can make an enormous difference in Your Instrumental Teachers Need To Know.
You’re not necessarily in the morning briefing.
You might not be on every staff email.
Nobody thinks to tell you that Period 4 has been moved, Year 9 are in the theatre or the entire school is finishing at lunchtime.
Everyone who works there every day knows what’s happening.
You arrive on Wednesday carrying your teaching stuff and absolutely no idea.
Technology Has Helped. Mostly.
Schools are generally much better at communicating this stuff than they used to be.
Calendars help.
Email helps.
Online school systems help.
Having a decent system for organising your own pupils and lessons helps too. If you’re still relying on a collection of notebooks, spreadsheets and increasingly desperate scraps of paper, I’ve put together a free management system for instrumental music teachers using Google Drive.
Sometimes I even know about the school trip before I arrive.
This feels luxurious.
But there will always be something.
A last-minute rehearsal.
An unexpected assembly.
A pupil who has been taken out of lessons for something nobody can quite identify.
And that’s fine. Schools are busy places. Things happen.
I don’t expect somebody to reorganise sports day because Chloe has an instrumental lesson at 11.30.
It would just be quite useful to know that Chloe won’t be there.
See You Next Week
Eventually you get used to it.
You learn to check calendars.
You ask questions.
You develop a slightly suspicious attitude towards unusually empty corridors.
And when a pupil doesn’t appear, you don’t immediately assume they’ve forgotten their lesson.
They might be in an exam.
They might be at a football match.
They might be visiting a castle.
Or you might be standing in an empty school on an INSET day.
It’s always worth checking.