Ask teachers where their best class came from and a surprising number will tell you the same thing. Somebody was ill. They said yes to a Thursday. Eighteen months later it’s theirs and it’s the one they’d protect above all the others.
Teachers ask us how to get a regular slot. For me that’s the wrong question to start with, because the regular slot is nearly always the second thing that happens, not the first.
Cover gets treated as the junior version of teaching. In my experience it’s closer to the front door.
When to use this
- When you’re new to an area, or newly qualified
- If you’ve asked studios for a slot and been told there isn’t one
- Before turning down a last-minute request because it’s inconvenient
- When you want more teaching and don’t want to start something from scratch
What cover actually is
It’s an audition that nobody calls an audition.
A manager with a hole in the timetable is not, in that moment, evaluating your philosophy. They’re solving a problem at short notice, and what they’ll remember is whether you made it easier or harder.
Which means, I’d say, that the thing getting you called again is mostly unglamorous. You replied quickly. You asked sensible questions. You turned up early. You left the room as you found it. You sent a short note afterwards saying how it went.
None of that is teaching. All of it is why some teachers get called first.
The craft is a separate thing
Worth saying plainly: walking into somebody else’s regulars and holding the room is a real skill, and it isn’t this article. That’s covered properly in the Teaching collection.
This one is only about how the work reaches you in the first place.
Being easy to book
Four things, and they take an afternoon.
Be on more than one list. Studios, gyms, community venues, the leisure trust, other teachers. Most cover goes to whoever is on the list and answers.
Make yourself one message away. A manager at nine on a Wednesday morning with a nine-thirty gap is not going through a contact form. They want a name, a number and a yes.
Have your standing answer ready. What you teach, what you can cover, how much notice you need, your rate. Written down, so you’re not composing it while deciding.
Say yes to the awkward ones early on. The Sunday morning. The one across town. That’s how you get onto the list properly, and you can be choosier once you’re on it.
What to confirm before you accept
Short list, and it prevents nearly every cover that goes badly.
What’s the class actually called, and what do the regulars expect. How many usually come. Is there kit, or do people bring their own. Who lets you in and when. What’s the rate and who pays it. And is anything running that you should know about — a course mid-way through, an injury, a difficult situation in the room.
Six questions. Send them the moment you say yes.
Afterwards
This is the bit nearly everybody skips.
Send a short note the same day. How it went, anything they’d want to know, and that you’re happy to cover again. Three lines.
That note is the entire difference between having done one cover class and being the person they think of next time. It costs two minutes and it compounds for years.
Action steps
- Get onto two cover lists this month that you’re not currently on.
- Write your standing answer — what you teach, notice needed, rate — and keep it where you can send it in one go.
- Save your six questions somewhere you can paste them.
- The next cover you do, send the note the same day.
Related resources
- Approaching a studio
- The teachers who send you work
You might decide cover doesn’t suit your week, and turn it down on purpose. That’s a legitimate answer. Just know what you’re turning down — for a lot of teachers it’s been the route to the class they’d least want to lose.