Your Own Personal Life Jacket

We want your very first experience of Life Jacket Education to be a positive one from day 1. That’s why we’ve prepared a few tips that can be lifesavers when making the transition in supply and short term teaching and support:

Registration

Upload your CV and we will contact you back and talk you through our seamless process
We will then arrange a convenient time to meet you online with a follow up meeting in person to get to know you. Managing each other’s expectations is vital to a great working relationship
Always have the following documents to hand: right to work, proof of address, National Insurance Number and valid driving licence and or passport. We will discuss the safeguarding process with you in our online and face to face meeting
Please make your referees aware that we will be contacting them; this will help the process along nicely

Pre Placement Prep

• Always keep your Life Jacket consultant abreast of the days you would like to work.
• Always have plenty of engaging ‘starter’ materials ready in order to build those relationships with your class
• Keep your subject materials current
• Once you know the school you will be working in, get a thorough understanding of the size and designation of the school by reading their latest Ofsted Report

A Life Jacket Classroom

• Read the room
• Understand the lesson or activity prior to your lesson. This will help you prioritise things in the first 5 minutes of the lesson. Don’t forget to smile.
• Appreciate your Teaching Assistant (TA)
• Work with your TA to manage the learning process and quickly engage with the class
• Manage the behaviour
• Set your classroom expectations early and be consistent with them
• Record your positive experiences
• Make a brief record of all the positive outcomes and interactions with individuals and the class. Working in education is challenging and you can easily focus your reflections on the negatives rather than the positives.

Be Proactive

• Introduce yourself to the Heads of Dept, the Senior Leadership Team and your teaching colleagues in the staffroom
• Handover
• Always leave some handover materials for the regular teaching staff as it’s the right thing to do.

Life Jacket will support you grow into the role and help you enrich the lives of so many children and older students. Protecting the learning is what we do!