With the end of the school year comes a poem to celebrate teachers and the uphill struggle they face when standing in for another.
Always remember, you have to say this,
OUR teacher never does that, Miss!Allan Ahlberg (1938—)
Poem 330. The Supply Teacher
Here’s the rule for what to do
If ever your teacher has the flu
Or for some other reason takes to her bed
And a different teacher comes instead
When the visiting teacher hangs up her hat
Writes the date on the board, does this or that
Always remember, you have to say this,
OUR teacher never does that, Miss!
When you want to change places or wander about
Or feel like getting the guinea pig out
Never forget, the message is this,
OUR teacher always lets us, Miss!
Then, when your teacher returns next day
And complains about the paint or clay
Remember these words, you just say this:
That OTHER teacher told us to, Miss!
This short comic poem is presented as advice for students whose usual teacher is absent and replaced by a supply teacher or stand-in. Regardless of what the stand-in does, the students must chorus, “OUR teacher never does that, Miss!” Similarly, when the stand-in does their best to maintain order, the students say in unison, “OUR teacher always lets us, Miss!” When the original teacher returns, the evidence of their misdeeds can conveniently be excused, “That OTHER teacher told us to, Miss!”
It tells its story quite simply—the first stanza shows us the usual teacher laid up through flu or some other complaint.
The second stanza shows “the visiting teacher” arriving and introducing herself to the class, at which the children immediately reprove her for doing something different to the usual teacher, a presumably imaginary difference!
The third stanza reverses the reproof to apply to behaviour that the unfortunate replacement disapproves of, the children assuring her mendaciously that the usual teacher approves of it.
In the last stanza the class of children wraps up the story by blaming any fall-out from their deception on the now absent supply teacher, who probably departs with a sense of relief.
I like this because it conjures up the image of a class of rebellious children determined to wrong-foot the teacher, rather like the Bash Street Kids in the Beano.