As a teacher I am obliged to look after children during the recess/break.
How would you call this situation in English? Let me elaborate a little bit: Each lesson lasts 45 minutes, then students are entitled to a break. During that break, usually two teachers take care/look after the children in order to prevent any dangerous situations to happen. I am curious about how we can describe this situation. I would go for 'I have a break duty after my 4th lesson on second floor'.
Am I correct when I use 'recess/a break duty' term?
Best Answer
In my district, we had two breaks in elementary school: a fifteen-minute recess and a 45-minute lunch break. The students go outside and play during both breaks. Teachers look after the kids during recess; at lunch, that's done by a rotation of parent supervisors.
In high school, there were four classes a day, in different classrooms. Students got a five-minute break to move between their first and second classes. Between the second and third classes, there was a fifteen-minute long break. Lunch break was an hour between third and fourth classes. In all cases, students didn't have to go outside, so a rotation of teachers roamed the halls making sure nothing bad happened.
My teachers usually referred to this as supervision or being on duty, as in
I come from a family of teachers, so I can confirm that these are still common usage in my district. However, I'd imagine that usage differs from place to place, especially if a specific phrase like lunchtime supervision or recess duty is used in your collective bargaining agreement. Any combination of
will give you an understandable term for this situation which I guarantee is widely used somewhere; the examples playground duty, playground monitoring, and lunch monitoring, are all cited in other answers. (Note that none of these take the article a; you'd say "I have playground duty" instead of "I have a playground duty.") So
sounds good to me!
Your best answer for what you should call it, though comes from Mitch's comment: use whatever phrase is most commonly used by the teachers around you!