The Challenge

I started working for another teaching agency at the same time as Zen. This is a standard teaching agency who either book you for daily supply work, contracts or long-term teaching work.

The schools they placed me with have been good quality, however, they don’t always guarantee the work and it can be days or more than a week between requests. In addition, I am notified about most of the work on a daily basis as opposed to pre-booking me days in advance, which Zen does.

The Solution

In the process of finding a teaching agency, I signed up with a few; however, many of them were unhelpful and took extremely long to obtain my references. On discovering Zen, my references were obtained in a timely manner and I found them to be professional and extremely helpful. What’s more, they supplied me with work shortly after my initial meeting.

'Zen is a professional, helpful, and organised company who is able to offer appropriate work in a timely manner.'

I decided to try Zen as I liked the calendar feature and the app in order to organise my bookings and state the days I couldn’t work on; a feature that works well with my business — running an English language school — and also gave me a good understanding of how apps and calendar bookings could help.

The Results

Working for Zen has been a diverse experience, visiting schools from areas of deprivation to leafy suburban, and at times working with challenging children. Mostly, they have been polite, keen students. The majority of the staff at these schools are communicative and helpful.

Most of my work has been conducted in one particular Catholic school, where I’ve become known to children and staff alike, due to me working in all year groups in the school, from foundation to year 6. The headteacher demonstrated her trust in me by placing me in a year 3 class, covering a teacher during sick leave. The other year 3 teacher was very grateful that I was experienced, especially when suggesting appropriate resources, helping with assembly practices and advising her about teaching certain topics due to my experience as a Maths and English subject leader.

Zen is a professional, helpful, and organised company who is able to offer appropriate work in a timely manner. The app and organiser are great aids, as is the guaranteed work programme.