For relief teachers
Walk in already knowing the day.
Every Bell Path cover day can be handed over as a day sheet: one link that opens on the relief teacher’s phone and reads like someone wanted them to have a good day. Exact times, real rooms, and the reason behind every session, written in sentences.
Relief teachers need no account and no app. The link is the whole thing.
The usual welcome
Most schools make their relief teachers arrive blind.
The run sheet is on a bench somewhere
You arrive at a school you have never seen, and the plan for your day is a printout in a staffroom nobody showed you. Some days you find it at lunchtime.
"Session 2" means nothing yet
Every school runs different times. Fifty minute sessions at one school, an hour at the next. A sheet that says S2 without the clock time helps nobody who is new.
Acronyms all the way down
APT, NCT, SSG, "cover DFB after the split". A day sheet should speak in sentences to the one person in the building who does not know the shorthand yet.
The day sheet
Five questions, answered before they are asked.
The sheet is derived from the school’s cover plan, so it cannot disagree with what the office decided. It carries no login, no acronyms, and no assumptions about what the reader already knows.
The exact times
Pastoral care starts 8:40. Recess is 11:00 to 11:23. Your day runs 9:00 to 3:30. Spelled out every time, because the person reading it works at five different schools a week.
Where you are, room by room
The classroom, the art room, the oval for yard duty. Not a class code and a wish.
Why you are in each room
When your class goes to Music, the sheet says who you are covering next and why: their teacher is getting a planning hour. Being in the loop is the difference between being used and being trusted.
What changed since this morning
Plans move. The link re-renders every time it opens, so it is never a stale printout. When the office republishes the day, Bell Path can email or text the update in one click.
What to do on arrival
Where to report, where the keys live, how sign-in works. The note the office always means to say at 8:45 and never gets to.
In her own words
A full-time relief teacher read her first Bell Path day sheet.
Amber works relief five days a week across Australian primary schools, and has since 1 August 2023. Different school, different bell times, most weeks.
Amber Andrew
Relief teacher (CRT) · full-time since August 2023
I have never been to a school and been given a rundown I could read myself and understand clearly. This is the first one that made me feel held.
It is nice to be in the loop. Knowing I am in a grade one room because their teacher needed a planning hour, instead of just being moved around, changes how the whole day feels. And the times are spelled out. One school runs six fifty minute sessions; every other school that week ran an hour. Seeing “recess is 11:00 to 11:23” the first time you set foot in a school is everything.
And it is on my phone, so I cannot leave it in the grade two classroom.
For principals and daily organisers
Look after the people who cover your school.
Relief teachers talk to each other
A school that hands over a clear, kind day gets its calls answered next time cover is short. The day sheet is the cheapest reputation your school can buy.
Day one goes better for the kids
A relief teacher who knows the times, the rooms, and the reasons teaches from 9:00, instead of decoding a printout until 9:40.
Changes reach the person in the room
Republish the day and every live day sheet link shows the new plan. Follow-up emails and texts go only when something a person would read actually changed.
You already did the work
The day sheet is derived from the cover plan your office already built. One link, copied, texted, or emailed. Nothing extra to maintain.