The Precarious Life of a Supply Teacher

Supply teaching looks simple from the outside. You get a call, you go in, you teach. But in reality it’s one of the most precarious jobs in education. You’re expected to walk into chaos, perform instantly, adapt to unfamiliar systems, manage children you’ve never met, and leave no trace of the strain.

I once arrived late to a school because the agency called me at 7:15am  for a long commute. No timetable. No resources. No chance to even use the toilet before teaching. I was handed exam marking, complex maths marking without a mark scheme, and an unfamiliar science lesson. My lunch disappeared into unpaid labour. A teaching assistant monitored me like an inspector and later complained I used my phone (which I had no option but to use as a calculator — with her permission).

For a supply teacher, one complaint can feel existential. No union protection. No continuity. No voice.

Later I learned the headteacher begged for me to come back. The complaint came from someone known for targeting supply staff. But the shock stayed in my body long after the facts were resolved.

That’s the background stress many of us carry silently: doing professional work in unstable conditions, knowing your livelihood can hinge on one hostile opinion.

Saturn Return, DBS Checks, and Emotional Debt

Transiting Saturn has been back and forth over its natal place in my chart — the astrological marker of adulthood’s second gate: responsibility, boundaries, and reality. And I still have one conjunction to go.

I paid for my annual DBS check — the background clearance teachers must renew — even when money was tight. £70 doesn’t sound like much until you’re living contract to contract. Then my mother turned eighty and said casually, “Don’t worry about coming. I’ll probably be dead by next Christmas.”

So I rearranged my life. My DBS would be waiting for me when I come home.

I planned a work-focused trip to Toronto, folded in family time in Detroit, built lectures, meetings, recordings, and teaching around it. I turned emotional obligation into logistical clarity. Business. Family. Purpose.

The trip was wonderful. Canadian astrologers. Old friends. A puppy. Niagara Falls. Ten Saturn-return lessons drafted. A book nearly finished.

But transitions are where the nervous system cracks.

Coming Home to Chaos

I hate flying west to east. Customs always rattles me. I arrived exhausted — and immediately received a call from my flatmate:

“There’s a leak. The roof is collapsing. Emergency contractors are coming.”

I hadn’t unpacked. I’d barely slept. And suddenly strangers were in my home at dawn, tracking mud through the flat, erecting scaffolding, issuing dramatic warnings.

Then came the salesman.

Pushy. Arrogant. Apocalyptic. Telling us the roof was failing, pressuring for thousands in immediate repairs.

When I said no, he turned to my flatmate and said:

“Oh, she’s North American.” (dear goddess DON’T USE MY ACCENT AS A MEANS TO JUDGE ME).

In my own home.

As if I didn’t belong.

As if that explained why I wouldn’t comply.

Something snapped.

I argued. Loudly. Not my usual self — but a tired, jet-lagged nervous system refusing coercion.

He said he was autistic. I said I had ADHD and had just crossed an ocean. He could fix the holes and leave.

And suddenly I saw it clearly: exhaustion doesn’t create weakness. It reveals boundaries.

The Lifeguard Moment

Later, shaking, nauseous, adrenaline still flooding, I remembered something lifeguards (in my younger years I trained as one) are taught:

Before you rescue anyone, you plant your feet on the pool floor and check:

Am I actually drowning?

I wasn’t.

The roof was patched. The money wasn’t gone. My career wasn’t collapsing. No one was dying.

What was happening was clarity.

Some people in my life were draining me.

Some people confused access with entitlement.

Some people mistook my kindness for availability.

And Saturn — relentless teacher — was asking:

Who stays?

Who goes?

What costs too much?

So I cut ties where respect was absent. I culled asshole “friends”.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

Decisively.

My nervous system took days to recover, but something shifted permanently: I stopped confusing endurance with virtue.

What Saturn Actually Teaches

Saturn isn’t cruelty. It’s compression.

It reduces life to essentials:

• What is real

• What is sustainable

• Who is safe

• What matters

It teaches that experience is not bitterness — it is protection.

I realised:

I am financially stable.

I am professionally respected.

I am not powerless.

I am allowed to say no.

I am allowed to rest.

I am allowed to remove people who harm my peace.

A younger version of me would have apologised.

This version builds boundaries.

That is what growing older gives you.

Not hardness.

Clarity.