Monday morning. I’d almost forgotten the Sunday evening ritual of early night followed by insomnia, but a
hungover Sunday meant I was quite tired anyway. Monday morning, though! I don’t know how long my alarm had been
ringing for (or rather, it squawks like a strangled rooster to shock me out of my dreams). But when I finally
gained consciousness I realised my alarm was still squawking across the room somewhere where I’d hidden it
from myself the night before, and one of my many other clocks looked like it had been battered by somebody
who didn’t wish to be disturbed. Plus the radio was playing on a third clock positioned close to my pillow.
Monday morning! It was still dark! My groggy brain tried to register how it could possibly be dark and just after 5 o’clock, and gradually it sunk in that this was am not pm. I staggered to the bathroom, throwing on every light as I went to fill the chilly gloom and chase away the shadowy night. It takes me a good deal of time in the morning to faff around getting ready. There’s the bath running, ablutions and hair thing. There’s the packing of the lunch and the spooning of the cereal. There’s the choosing of the clothes – a task I put off the night before because I tell myself it all depends on the weather the next day, but in the darkness of the morning before the sun rises or skulks behind clouds it’s just as hard to predict whether shirt, woolly thing or jacket will be sufficient.
But on Monday morning, the first day of term, the first time I was going to venture into school for six weeks, I was finally out the door reasonably early and quite awake considering the early hour, and now that the sun had risen, and was indeed visible in a beautiful rosy-fingered dawn kind of way, I remembered that there is some joy in being up so early: the sheer freshness of the day, the sparkle of dew in cobwebs, and the low mists hovering across anything not tarmaced.
Driving in, I was too early for Terry Wogan on Radio 2, but thought I might crank up some listen-online
feature on one of the computers once I got to school. I’d obviously forgotten the reality of what happens
once I step through those doors. I wasn’t the first teacher parked in the car park, but the school seemed
very still and empty with the faint smell of fresh paint lingering in the dark corridors. As soon as I saw
my desk, I wondered if I’d been burgled, and was halfway through a particularly vicious curse to whoever
had used my room over the summer and left it in a state when I suddenly recalled the last day of term where
we teachers charged out alongside the kids, bursting out through the doors, blinking in the sunlight as our
bags bashed all and sundry in the race to get out. It was my mess. The mess I was going to clear up over
the holidays if I’d have been arsed to come in.
And so my working day started: shoving papers in random drawers and convincing myself I’d file them properly when I have time (huh!), scooping up resources and racing to the photocopier before a queue began, floundering in the rubbish and unnecessary papers oozing out of my pigeon hole, and trying to locate files on the staff computers which have been replaced by space age machinery while I wasn’t watching.
Being the first day of term, it was Inset day. This is meant to be a day for our “in service training”,
and as long as that covers snoozing over exam stats, doodling in new diaries, sighing at duty rotas and
unjamming the paper-clogged photocopier then I think we’ve got it covered. Then there’s the “Did you have
a good summer” and “Did you go anywhere nice” duo of questions that would be better served if each member
of staff gave a quick PowerPoint presentation on the topic to satisfy everyone’s curiosity and sense of
politeness, and then no more need be said. I certainly don’t want to remember sipping cool drinks on a
hotel balcony with a view of the sunset over a dancing sea as I risk death by photocopier toner and
losing a finger in the machine as I try to rip out my master copy of a very important worksheet. It
just makes the present seem unbearable.
As it was Inset day, the car park thinned out early as most teachers made the most of getting home at the time non-teachers would imagine we get home every day. I was still trying to organise myself until the caretaker turfed me out, and I drove home with lists of things to do rattling round my head. The distance between school and home is a wonderful thing: I sat at my desk and started to work through my list of stuff to do, but by early evening most of it didn’t seem important any more. I was still hyperactively zooming between chores, until I finally sank down in front of the TV for a starter of soap opera followed by a main course of a nature documentary and newspaper flicking. I had been hoping for a dessert of light comedy but dozed off before the News at Ten, finally dragging myself off to bed ready for the next early morning start.
I only had to press the snooze button twice before I flopped out of bed, slightly anxious that I’d oversleep if I didn’t get up right then. The morning routine is the same just about every day, although I left the house slightly later – probably in tune with the sun rise, or more likely it’s the downward spiral to rushed mornings and dashing through the school doors just five minutes before I’m expected to register the noisy rabble that is my form group.
Once at school my good intentions to get loads done petered out into doing what was absolutely necessary for the day – if that. A quick staff meeting and then we were let loose to round up children and herd them towards the right classrooms instead of their preferred hangouts where they gossip and play football and fight. Assembly was quick too – only time for one hollering session - and then it was the long morning trapped in an over-warm room with twenty-odd kids who just want to catch up with their mates while the hapless adult tries to interest them in the virtues of the school rules, the reasons for nagging about uniform, and the distribution of page upon page of information that gets shoved into school bags where it will provide a forgotten lining for the rest of the year.
By lunchtime I hadn’t had a single moment to stop and think of anything outside of those four walls,
and my throat was starting to feel raw. I shovelled down some lunch while I sat at my desk staring in
some kind of shock at the reams of paperwork that now covered it. Then it was back to join the photocopier
queue before the shrill bell sounded for the end of lunchtime.
An afternoon of teaching was a relief after the comparative chaos of the morning. My first class was a group I’d taken last year and had got to know pretty well, and they all seemed ready to do something constructive after such a long morning. They started their new exercise books with such care; I know it won’t last. I introduced the topic and was quite surprised by some of the intelligent comments they made: some of them seem to have grown up an incredible amount in six weeks. The next group consisted of a handful of kids I knew and a bunch of others I don’t, but again they were keen to start writing in their pristine exercise books and worked quietly and eagerly.
Today I wasn’t so willing to stay around after the final bell, and left soon after I’d stacked the books and papers around my desk into a work of modern art: pilus crappicus. There was still so much I should have done, but as long as I can make excuses to myself I’m content enough to leave it until it really has to be completed.
And so the days start to resemble familiar patterns of bells and busy-ness. There’s a strange pallid
creature with bags under the eyes who stares back at me when I look in the mirror. My patience hasn’t yet
started to ebb away as it does later on in the term: at the moment I’m still fresh to the school year and
I smile serenely at children struggling to get their brains in gear, taking time to go over points with
them individually and not yet weary of pointing out missing capital letters for the 800th time that day.
Added to this is the angelic beginning of term behaviour, which means I can spend time crouching down
next to a child’s desk without having to glare at trouble-makers every five seconds or leap across the
room to confiscate mobile phones or pairs of compasses used for duelling.
Don’t get me wrong though, I have already had a few, what we call in the trade, bollocking sessions,
just to let a few of the kids know that I won’t put up with any of their crap. There’s the Year 8 girl
I taught last year, I’m sure you know the type: congenitally thick (and that’s just her foundation),
prone to turning up late because she’s been hanging around the toilets with her mates, and she then spends
the lesson distracting the boys by arranging who’s going out with who in a way Cilla Black would have been
proud of.
Then there’s the top set boy who knows anything and everything but won’t stop butting in with his witty asides, treating the lesson like a tutorial between just the two of us, while a bemused class look on, itching to get back on topic and for him to shut up. He doesn’t take hints, it seems, so I have snapped once or twice at him already.
Two boys in the lower school amuse me already: both come with reputations for naughtiness, and I’ve taught the older brother of one and know that I should expect some big trouble, mainly as a result of their very troubled background. They sit together (for now) right at the front of the room, and at this point both seem very keen to make a good impression on me, although they are so easily distracted. One sat there for most of the lesson staring up at the wall above my board, fascinated by a poster that he later asked me about. No doubt though we shall revisit this pair later in the year!
A GCSE group has become less of a burden with a few of the members now thankfully following college courses, which means they are probably sat at home all day getting stoned or pregnant or reaching the higher levels of some driving-pimping-shooting console game. I think they just tell us teachers that these kids are now following college courses to make us feel less guilty about the sheer joy we feel when they are no longer in our registers, and therefore our faces.
Then there was my first encounter with the Year 7s – they had flown under my radar until a group turned up to my classroom with half a dozen LSAs in tow, and I still hadn’t managed to ascertain why these kids needed their LSAs by the end of our first lesson. All I know is that I have lots of asterisks scribbled onto my register to indicate special needs, but whether that’s because of learning difficulties, behaviour, emotional difficulties or disabilities, I really don’t know. What I do know is that the Year 7s are amusing my form group immensely as they gasp about how small and shiny the new kids all are, and of course won’t hear of it when I suggest that it was only a couple of years ago that they were that way too.
And now it’s Saturday and I have the familiar sinking feeling that I’ve got stuff to do this weekend
but I don’t want to do it. A night out last night was quietly forgotten in favour of dozing in front of the
TV, which meant I was up bright and early (for a Saturday) this morning. I printed off some worksheets for
school, updated my records for the next cycle of performance management, saw the rain hammering down
outside, and so went back to bed. When I did finally get up again I felt grumpy and cheated of part of
my day by that much-needed sleep. A shopping excursion was rained off and so I stomped around doing
household chores because it meant I didn’t have to face the bag of marking I’ve already dragged home.
It’s still there, in the corner of my eye, and I know if I just got on with it then the misery would
all be over, but I think I might just see how the cricket’s doing instead: a new interest, admittedly,
borne from my tendency to procrastinate. Ah well, 38 hours and I’ll be in school again…
added 11/9/05
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