"According to a new study, teachers have the germiest jobs. They have 17,000 germs per square inch on their desk. That's 10 times the germ rate of those in other professions" - Donald Trump.
That’s a nice thought to start the holidays with, isn’t it? That my obsession with hand washing is actually justified? Thank goodness I have six weeks to scrub myself clean of the layers of grime that start to burrow into the top layers of skin.
Actually, the last week of term was pretty disgusting all round. Almost all of the UK festered in a heat
wave more suited to ocean views and a balcony than the torture of being held captive in an overheating, stuffy
classroom with 20 or so justifiably discontented children, who start to exude all kinds of strange smells as
they wilt in the unbearable heat.
There were rumours of local schools shutting their doors early for the summer holidays after sensibly deciding it was no good for health, heart or soul to be cooped up like battery chickens, churning out posters and quizzes to keep the kids occupied in the last days of term. But still we sweated on, swooning in corridors and flaking out in classrooms where the air was so thick it gripped your throat and nostrils as moisture oozed out of every pore with pulsating regularity.
What was the point? Any pretence I had concocted of teaching or at least doing some relevant activities
was bypassed as we flopped over desks instead, barely having the strength to watch videos. The children were
warned not to venture outside into the sun, and yet indoors the school needed to catch its breath, as each
class heated the classroom up even more. By the penultimate day there were more children absent than present,
and the last day of term saw even more children scarper off on holiday to escape the heat in places like Malta,
Ibiza and Italy.
Even my journeys home were treacherous: on several days the tarmac was melting in streams on the roads, and there was no dodging the sprays of road tar from vehicles in front. So really, what was the point?
Maybe it’s a good job I don’t have any power. If I were in charge, I would have said shut the school early! Stop the suffering and pretence! Let the kids who are able stay at home and do more constructive things than watch the same old films and cartoons that all the teachers show when there’s nothing left to say. For those children unable to stay at home, because of childcare issues or what have you, welcome them into school but go on nature walks in the shaded woods or squeeze them into the computer rooms with their air conditioning. Teachers could take it in turns to supervise activities, the school would cool down a bit without so many bodies around, and money would be saved on getting in supply teachers to cover for absent staff members, because there wouldn’t be the same quantity of children to supervise.
If my plan had been put into place, I might have had the time to prepare during work hours for the new course I was told I am teaching next year. There were fewer than 8 school hours left of the term when I received my timetable, and when I enquired about a mystery topic that appeared there once a week I was told that it’s something new, and there are no resources but that’s okay because I have a free rein to do what I liked within the remit. Oh well, that’s okay then! So we won’t worry about the fact I know the topic area on a very superficial level, find it quite dull anyway, and don’t have the thinking time to figure out how on earth I would make the topic interesting and relevant to kids who I know will dismiss this little extra as the same waste of time that they view compulsory RE lessons. Gee thanks.
Now talking of RE, why not read my observations on people who teach it, amongst other subject stereotypes, here.
Meanwhile, I'm off to make the most of not having to be stuck indoors when the weather is fine!
You can get in touch here.
It’s way too early to be up on a Sunday morning. Yesterday my weekend, being the last of this school year
before the holidays, was planned with precision timing, so that a fine balance between housework and schoolwork
would be achieved, thus ensuring the kids’ projects would be marked ready to return this week, and the house
would be sparkling with maybe only a light patina of dust, virtually invisible to the naked eye, and therefore
I wouldn’t have to spend the first few days of my holiday with the vacuum cleaner and a really bad mood for
company.
But no, that isn’t good enough. Spanners in the works anyone? Yesterday morning I lolled about feeling exhaustion clogging up every sinew and brain cell. Last weekend I’d felt ill with tiredness and wasted most of Saturday flopping about and snoozing. Yesterday was a beautiful ice-cream-scoffing sea-breeze-sniffing kind of day, and I hoped that a stroll by the seaside might fill me with renewed vigour for the final push of the year. And then I got home to discover a blocked drain overflowing into the warm evening and spent a couple of hours at least skipping around in puddles of dirty water on the patio. Quite ineffectual I was too. Suddenly, my visions of spending today, Sunday, in the back garden marking projects began to fade. No matter, thought I, I’ll just get up early in the morning, do the housework before the shops open, go out and get some drain-fiddling equipment, fit in my trip to the swimming pool in the only hour when children are banned, then come back and get on with my chores.
Now by “get up early” I had imagined perhaps 7 or 8am, plenty early enough for a Sunday I would have thought. But this wasn’t good enough for my body clock, oh no. At 4.15am I was awake, and I was far too awake to go back to sleep, despite trying very hard for at least an hour. So in the huff of all huffs I flung off the bed covers and stomped around the house, seeing the sky turn from gold to blue outside, and sulked as I switched on my computer, hoping that a quick surf may make my eyes droop enough to return to bed while it was still technically “too early”.
But two hours later and I’m still sat at my computer, extremely reluctant to go and start cleaning the bathroom as I had planned, and even more reluctant to start marking any school work as I feel cheated of my sleep!
I did however come across Frank Chalk’s Blogspot. It appears he has a book coming out in September which looks interesting, so I wish him all the best with that.
This time next week it will be the beginning of the summer holidays. I will probably be looking forward to a day of housework with accumulated dust and dirt from this weekend and trying to ignore piles of unmarked projects that will glare in my direction for six whole weeks. I’ll also know my timetable for September by then. Giving out timetables is a deed approached with such trepidation, that it’s always left to the last minute. Then, with cartoon-like wiliness, each timetable is dropped onto our desks while our backs are turned, and the perpetrator dashes away before the explosions when we see what we’ve been given. I’m already simmering because I had an accidental sneak preview of mine, and let’s just say my immediate reaction was, “F*** this pile of s***, I’m leaving”. Maybe I should retrain as a plumber. More money for sure, and I might be able to fix my blocked drains with some competence then.
You can get in touch here.
That’s it then. GCSEs are almost over. My GCSE class left for study leave a while back now, leaving a
wonderful handful of free periods on my timetable. It was so sudden in the end. They were due to leave on a
certain day, and we’d planned last minute revision sessions as they suddenly panicked and realised that 18
months of pissing about and losing their books and writing notes on their love lives didn’t constitute a
solid set of revision notes. (You can read more about their notes here.)
Well, perhaps I’m painting a slightly inaccurate picture here. Let’s just say that some of them panicked, and as we went over topics they really should know by now rather than look at me blankly when I asked a basic question, half the class decided that drawing pictures of male genitalia was a far better way to pass the time. After all, sticking pictures of hairy cocks on each others’ backs provides the instant gratification that no revision lesson can ever touch.
We had leaving day scheduled in, and I’d been working towards this moment for weeks, nay months. And then
SMT go and do the dirty on us all. They round up Year 11 one afternoon, herd them unknowingly into the hall,
give them a quick bollocking, and then escort them off the premises to where pre-arranged coaches sat with
engines running, ready to whisk them away. They were on study leave. Not a word to anyone else, so that we
teachers only heard the rumours from the kids. This is supposedly to avoid last minute pranks, although
they seemed to forget that most of the Year 11s were in at various points for the next month or so to sit
their GCSEs - plenty of prank time.
You’d think, that with some gaps on my timetable, I’d have more time to post updates on my website. Well, senior management giveth, and they taketh away. No sooner have Year 11 departed, then Report Writing Season begins in earnest. What else is in the teachers’ almanac for this time of year?
So although the weather has been suitably summery, and a sizeable number of the school population haven’t been in every day, there’s still no sense of winding down. Instead I’ve been run ragged, pausing every now and again to eyeball the particularly bad miscreants and offer up a silent prayer that they don’t feature in my teaching groups next year.
Maybe you have some time on your hands: you can get in touch here.
It’s my website’s birthday! On 12th April 2003 I posted my first rants, because writing seemed a viable and
cost-effective alternative to therapy. I also wanted people to realise why teachers seem to be such a bunch of
moaners a lot of the time by detailing as best I could (without giving away too much) the aspects of the job
that were making me scream!
Since then the only things stopping me writing much much more than you see here already are firstly TIME and secondly fear of losing my job by revealing too much. Sometimes I’m itching to tell you all about some doofus of a colleague and the utter ignorance or scandalous behaviour of some of my fellow teachers, but some things are best left unsaid – for now.
Since I started my website, blogging has really taken off, with teachers everywhere, all round the globe, detailing their working lives online, whether that be to share resources or simply have a good moan. There was obviously a need for workers of all professions to get the more frustrating elements of their jobs off their chests. Somebody the other day asked me if I liked my job. I really had to think, when the answer should have been right there on the tip of my tongue: of course I do! I’m growing to like it more all the time, because teaching requires an armoury of tricks and knowledge to succeed, and every day you’re in the job the more you learn about how to do it better. I get a buzz from the busy-ness, but there’s a fine line between being busy and being over-worked with no sense of closure or completion: just when a set of books is marked, the class produce more work; just when a scheme of work is in place, there are orders from on high to change it somehow.
Sometimes there are so many things to do that the best bit, the actual teaching, seems to take a back seat. Read more about these demands at No lesson today.
But what am I doing still ranting on today of all days? It may have made me a website
(and consequently a book – did I mention the book?!) but today should be a day for celebration:
three years of website and no advance in design! Spring is in the air! It’s holiday time! Year 11s are
almost off on study leave! So have yourself a bit of cake (I’m eating as I type) and say “Hip hip hooray,
a long weekend’s on its way!”
Thanks for all your comments and stories: you can still get in touch here.
March is traditionally a crazy time of year, not just for mad March hares and the clocks going forward
meaning my body has to get used to dark mornings all over again, but also because it’s coursework deadline
time. The pupils by now have had their deadlines, and this time the deadline applies to us teachers. Work has
to be internally moderated, lists of figures compiled, folders selected to be sent off to the external
moderators, and front sheets filled in. And all this has to be done on top of the normal teaching day.
This year we had some respite from the incessant headache that this all means, because many of the school’s non-teaching employees went on strike for a day (thank you! there is power in the union!) and so the pupils were told to stay at home, there being no cleaners to rake up their daily mess, or cooks to rustle up their usual fare. What a fabulous day strike day was! Like Inset day, but without all the boring meetings and stating-the-bleeding-obvious seminars. Coursework folders were sorted, I filed worksheets and prepared handouts, and had so much energy still by the time I got home that I carried on making resources for hours. Now if only we could scoop up all that non-contact time we’re now supposed to be guaranteed and have a day like this once every two or three weeks. Far more effective and refreshing than an hour scattered here and there.
However, just because the coursework is done, isn’t doesn’t mean any easing up of workload. Parents’ evenings and report writing still dominates, and to provide up-to-date pictures of the pupils I spend every spare moment marking work and cursing early mornings, late nights and lost weekends. Read about my lost weekend last weekend here.
Anyway, Ranting Teacher has had contact from some Antipodean teachers of late, and not just those clogging
up the Oz bars in a major city near you, as they revel in the relative freedom of the young Australian supply
teacher in Britain. No, I’m referring to genuine people from Down Under, one of whom spotted my book in a shop
in Sydney. She didn’t say if she actually bought the book, or just stood there under the air-conditioning
leafing through it, but she did write to me: “As one who has taught in a bog standard English comprehensive
(like most Australian teachers) and the equivalent over here "good on ya".”
Then there was the message from the native of South Africa who now finds herself in a school that, shockingly for British teachers, doesn’t sound like Erinsborough High or Summer Bay at all (- do I have to explain this? Okay, these are two schools from Australian soaps shown in Britain, “Neighbours” and “Home and Away”, upon which we base most of our misconceptions about life “down under”). She writes:
“The students in SA were fabulously behaved and I had quite a shock when I encountered my present kids. I teach at a school in a lower socio-economic "band" so that may also contribute to the behaviour. Parents tend to think that teachers are solely responsible for discipline and education...neither parents nor children need to help in any way. It'll take a lot to change this mindset.…I actually love teaching and could not think of a job that I would rather do. I would like to experience something else for a while, but that doesn't mean that I'm unhappy. 90% of the kids at my school are really sweet--there are a few nasty people in every place, but I shouldn't generalize. I had a wonderful day today so feel a renewed vigour!”
Well I guess I took some comfort from knowing that even though you may have constant sunshine, beaches on
your doorstep, an outdoor b-b-q lifestyle and episodes of “Kath and Kim” before us Brits, working as a teacher
over there can be just as gruelling as over here, with similar challenges and attitudes. However, it does dent
the dream that if it gets too bad here, we can just pack our bags and head due south where teachers are tempted
with working visas to a sunnier, happier land.
You can get in touch here.
Quite recently it was reported that all this hi-tech wizardry that has cost schools squillions of
book-buying pounds may not be so great after all. Apparently, wireless networks may give out harmful death rays
or something like that, which could mean anything from headaches to complete nervous breakdowns, although as I
suffer from these on a weekly basis I don’t think I could solely blame the wireless networking.
Times have moved on since I last whinged about the ICT provision that I have access to, and I’ve a feeling that the head teacher has masterminded some recent multi-million pound bank robbery, as we’ve suddenly been inundated with hi-tech stuff that we don’t really know how to use. Read about my experiences at Whiteboard or white elephant?
“How do you spell flew/flu?” I was asked in one lesson.
“As in the bird flew?” I replied. And then realised this was still confusing when heard and not written.
I don’t know what to think of the ever-flapping-nearer threat of bird flu though. I read in some Sunday rag
recently that the government’s contingency plans are to turn schools into hospitals if an epidemic breaks out
in Britain (amongst humans, I assume. Not chickens. I can’t see the SMT agreeing to sending the children home
in order to treat chickens). Pity the catchment area that ends up sneezing feathers in our filthy building.
MRSA would be the least of your worries. There’s the ten toilets between five hundred pupils ratio to think
of, plus the lack of lifts for feeble patients. In addition anyone propped up in a temporary bed would have
to spend their days looking at chewing gum and paper balls stuck to the ceiling.
I don’t blame the cleaners for the state of our school. Read more about the trials of being a school cleaner at Ranting Cleaner.
You can get in touch here.
So it's Sunday morning. I'm up relatively early in order to tackle my marking, but have so far spent an hour and a half procrastinating in front of my computer. But in doing so, I found a gem of a site, which is a blog site where teachers can set up their own blogs. I've created a Ranting Teacher account and here's what I wrote (although I think there were slightly more typos!).
This is amazing isn't it! I just discovered this site, and it seems like now we take it for granted that we can have a peek into the lives and thoughts of other educationalists. I was having a surf yesterday and even watched a video clip of a social sciences teacher in the US taking his lesson, which is the kind of thing I find fascinating because my only insights into the American education system are from films like "Dead Poets Society" and other such rosy Hollywood views.Almost three years ago I started my own website http://www.rantingteacher.co.uk which required a rudimentary knowledge of html and lots of messing about by this amateur of web design. I started it out of pure frustration because although I love teaching, as every teacher knows there is so much more to the job that's not so great. I had to find a place to let off steam, and writing is a very good therapy!
I like reading other teachers' blogs to get an insight into their lives and classrooms. I'm a teacher in Britain, and we have a weekly newspaper for educationalists which gives us a good insight into what's going on in other teachers' schools and in education in general, with just one page devoted to international issues, and that's usually only when something outrageous has happened in overseas schools. American schools fascinate me in particular, probably because of the dominance of the American media, and Britian in this current political climate tends to look west to America rather than east to our closest neighbours of continental Europe. American schools seem such a contradiction. On the one hand we have the Hollywood image of tough inner city schools where the kids turn out alright in the end, or the private schools of privileged children, and then we have the sad news items of high school shootings and gangs gone wild. And yet thanks to the internet I can actually pop my head round a virtual school door and take a peek inside into the wonderful creative stuff that goes on. And what I see there doesn't match up much with the media image of the American education system.
Similarly, being Britain, we still imagine Australia to be an off shoot of our little country in many respects, just bigger and sunnier. And yet to get an insight into Australian schools beyond what we see on soaps such as "Neighbours" and "Home and Away" is a special treat.
So hooray for blogging! And long may we all continue, even if it means we're spending even more time thinking about our jobs!
I do have more to tell you, but I'll save that until next time, because those books need marking and they're nagging away at my conscience like a hangman's rope around my neck!
You can get in touch here.
Watching TV the other night, I was flicking through the channels when I spotted a programme called something like “How to get your dream job”. I thought about this for a moment before asking my TV watching companion, “What’s your dream job?” We both thought some more and shrugged. Once upon a time I had ambitions. I’d like to think that the reason I had no answer is because I’ve found a job that’s fulfilling and rewarding. And sometimes it is. But I must admit that what I was really thinking, in response to the conundrum, was “retirement”.
We’d been back at school just one day after the half term holiday when Year 9 started to look out of the
window at the dark grey clouds with undisguised excitement. One boy boldly expressed what the others were all
thinking: “Is it gonna snow? Ah go on, snow. I’ve had enough of school, I need a day off.” Have I ever
mentioned that trying to teach is sometimes like trying to crawl up the “down” escalator?
We’ve recently had a whole school session on exam results. We’ve been leafing through sheaves of paper
and squinting at PowerPoint presentations of pie charts when a five minute bollocking from senior management
saying “You’re crap! Look at how much better these other schools do when they have the same amount of kids
having free school dinners as us!” would have sufficed. Dubious comparisons? You tell me. Why not categorise
schools according to attendance rates? That would be more telling I think than how many kids have free school
dinners. Unless having school dinners somehow affects a child’s intellect: too many canteen chips and the
IQ points start melting like polar ice caps.
Well, looking at statistics did make me think. It made me think about how we end up losing individual kids
in a mess of figures. It made me think about how unfair it is that we target those pupils who need to get a C
grade at GCSE to make the school’s figures look better, and pour our energy into this select group rather than
those who could be moved up from an E to a D, or a B to an A. And it made me think that for some pupils,
school is a lottery with so many variables that it seems silly to assess them on a level playing field. I’m not
just talking about their home lives and disadvantages, but the fact that
Lessons can be a lottery.
Then there’s my own role to play in all this. When you teach upwards of 150 pupils each day, it’s a challenge to cater for all of their needs. Which is perhaps why some opt for additional Private Tutoring.
But the school day can have its lighter moments too. Read about one such day at One of our penises is missing. And then there are times when you do feel more in control, which you can read about at Being Omniscient.
Meanwhile, we wait expectantly for snow: the kids so that they can spend their days sledging and throwing snowballs at old ladies, and me so that I can catch up with my marking.
You can get in touch here.
Happy New Year! What do you mean, it’s a bit late for all that malarkey? Alright then, I’m sorry. I’ve been a little busy. Well, I’m not telling the entire truth here – I’ve been EXCEPTIONALLY busy and overworked and we may well be only a couple of weeks into term but already I’m exhausted and I’ve had enough and to be honest this feels like last term still and I keep waiting for Christmas to come. It doesn’t help that there’s still boxes of mince pies in the cupboard; they just serve to confuse somebody who really doesn’t need any encouragement in the confusion department.
Before Christmas – ah, yes, I can vaguely recall the frenzy I began to whip myself into as I upped the
hyperactivity factor in my attempts to keep the pupils on task as the holidays drew near; I remember my voice
squeaking as I attempted to add interest to topics that take a back row seat when compared to the excitement of
swapping cards and presents (which began way back in November, I seem to recall). And once the holidays
arrived, they only stopped for a quick sherry before scuttling off again and making way for the new term.
Rants from this Ranting Teacher are pretty much two a penny right now; it’s just that I haven’t a moment to catch my breath and calm down and spill my guts then something else happens, and that’s just my school. I’m not even capable of formulating well-considered opinions of the big issues of the moment, such as the registered sex offenders who seem to be crawling out of the woodwork and falling out of store cupboards at schools across the land. Suffice to say, that anybody who has recently applied for a teaching job will know that schools really aren’t that desperate as to take on known sex offenders are they? It’s not easy to go through the whole application and interviewing process, and then there’s the vetting and the application for clearance and the references, and then on interview day you’re up against several other keen as mustard applicants, so how on earth do these schools end up picking the dodgiest of geezers to bring their schools into disrepute? I’m thinking that the government is not the only guilty party here. What about the selection committee of teachers and governors who choose the applicant for the post?
Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t stick my nose into affairs that require that much contemplation, because I have
enough on my own plate, and a rather rancid and unsavoury plateful that is right now. Poor lower school pupils
may well have noticed my neglect of some of their educational needs: don’t get me wrong, I’m still teaching at
full capacity, it’s just that they may have spotted their homework buried under a pile of other more pressing
stuff instead of being marked and returned with anything like efficiency. The reason for this is that the
person who timetables the year’s events into the grand scheme of things was obviously drunk when they sorted
out this year’s rota, or maybe they were about to leave and thought for a laugh they would lumber the rest of
us with an unrealistic timetable for marking mock exams, writing and compiling reports, and performing at
parents’ evenings as light relief. Everything is here at once. Exams, reports, parents’ evenings. It’s an
ongoing unholy trinity of despair. Oh hang on, what’s this on the horizon and nearing with lopsided
determination? Oh, it’s the fourth bloody horse of the apocalypse, Coursework
Deadline.
So never mind the lesson planning, resource preparation, extra-curricular activities, usual form-filling and the actual teaching, but there’s also the crushing weight of all these other rather pressing burdens, which are enough to keep many a teacher awake at night, meaning there’s a tiredness and lethargy pervading the staffroom. Just add to the mix the daily selection of hassles too:
So you see, this is why I feel I’m living on the brink of having a nervous breakdown… and why I haven’t had the slightest bit of energy to update this before now, even though the urge has been strong! Now it’s time once more to put my head down against the onslaught of crap coming my way, and battle my way through it until half term pops up like a spring crocus…
You can get in touch here.
I'm always trying to figure out which term is the busiest and most gruelling, but my criteria shift according to where we are in the year, and also according to the weather, it being a bit of an obsession in Britian, mainly because it changes so blooming often. Not for us the certainty of sunshine or rain or a white winter; instead the forecasts change too often to make betting on a white Christmas a science.
So far we've had the flooding
and snow storms and black ice and white ice, and each morning I peer out the curtains into the gloom and wonder
what battle I will have to do that day. Pupils in remote places can be cut off in bad weather, and the slightest
flutter of a snowflake means the school's switchboard goes into meltdown as parents ring in to find out if
school is still open. And once everyone who can has struggled in, the pupils are in no mood to work, but are
instead concerned with tales of snowmen and fights and whoever hasn't been able to get to school.
So winter can be tough. At least by this time of year there's Christmas to get excited about, which is another excuse not to do "proper" work because so many of their classmates are out at choir practice or rehearsals for the nativity play for the junior schools. Meanwhile the countdown to resits and coursework deadlines and mock exams has started, but the only people that seem to be panicking are the teachers.
A few bits and pieces to add to the site today then, as I felt guilty for not updating it for about three weeks, and for some reason the site's visitors have shot up recently (hello y'all). Firstly, a mention to More Learning, a website for Leicestershire teachers which also looks blooming useful for teachers who may never have stepped inside the county in their lives before.
Next, to a message I received recently from someone who contacted me. I'm not sure if the sender had been at the Christmas sherry already - see what you think.
Totally loved your book.. bought it yesterday, and read it in a single sitting. I’m not sure whether that means it was a great book, or whether I’m fab at reading or whether it was easy to read! Either way I thought it was ace! And totally not gay!I’m a qualified FE teacher, which as you know means I’m not qualified for anything really! As my PGCE (FE) has absolutely no professional body behind it and doesn’t come with QTS! Anyway that’s my rant.. also as an FE art teacher I’ve been happily unemployed in this area since I graduated.. instead I’ve been employed as a supply teacher for most of this time, going into secondary schools and even occasionally being allowed a long term contract teaching my own subject. Now I’m not sure whether I agree with the current trend for schools to employ cover supervisors (or unqualified teachers) (being that I am one – makes this a little bit of a contradiction) but I anyway, my supply work this year has been halved by the amount of schools employing brick layers to teach children! Wow! Will I ever stop ranting too! I’m doing it again..
Sounds tough though. I did consider FE teaching myself: I was under the impression that it would be a doddle
compared to a secondary school - all those students who have opted to study your subject, keen and eager to learn,
mature and motivated, already literate... And now when I hear about FE teachers battling with attitude and students
who have a mobile phone / mp3 player glued to their heads, and when I see the reprobates who end up in college
because they were too tough to teach in our school, then I breathe a sigh of relief. And that's without mentioning
the lower pay...
However, my correspondant reminds me of course that Christmas is coming and I haven't plugged my book for, ooh, about three weeks now. What a great present it would make! If you order it now, I'm sure it will be with you in time for Christmas.
What else is new since last time? Well there's a new series of Little Britain showing on BBC at the moment: arming the kids with a plethora of revamped and tired old catchphrases to bandy about and drive me insane. I did read a top tip which made me laugh so I thought I'd share with you: Rappers! - Avoid having to say 'know what I'm sayin' all the time by actually speaking clearly in the first place.
And you will find two new pages here, Kids Today and Home Truths. Until the next time I get five minutes to play away on my PC...
You can get in touch here.
Ranting Teacher, you’ve been so quiet, is anything wrong? Why no, imaginary audience, I’m still here, but
I’ve just been too darn busy to update my website. The last week of last half term shot by, and half term was
blissful indeed, with barely a thought towards school and none of the usual procrastinating over piles of
marking – because I simply didn’t bring any home! However, two weeks into this half term and I’m paying dearly
for my sloth. By the end of last weekend I felt reasonably satisfied with myself, thinking that I was almost
on top of the marking in time for the start of parents evening season. (Is it any coincidence that this is
also the start of the traditional and now outlawed fox-hunting season, where poor innocents just going about
their daily business are an open target to be ripped to shreds by people who think they know best? I’m talking
about parents evenings, of course.)
But no, I’m currently trying to justify rewriting our schemes of work so that only one written piece of work is set per half term, and trying (and failing) to propose that the key skills of listening and speaking are far more important than writing essays in this day and age – after all, essays are cheap as chips and readily available on the internet. I’m kidding of course. But wouldn’t it be nice to have alternate weeks of school: one week of traditional schooling, followed by one week of activities furthering these basic skills that the government’s always harping on about. That way I’d have a week to mark books and catch up with target setting and all that time-consuming stuff.
But until then I find myself in marking purgatory, exhausted all week from preparing and teaching and
chastising utter rudeness and negotiating with badly behaved pupils, and unable to look forward to the
weekends because I know the majority of my time will be spent ploughing through books. In addition, senior
management believe that just doing the job you’re paid to do is not enough. You are also expected to take
on other responsibilities, some within your department, like being in charge of developing the schemes of
work in relation to ICT or literacy. There are competitions that it is “suggested” you run, the lunch-time
clubs that show you are committed to the ethos of whatever sound bite the school has chosen to adopt, the
extra detentions and catch-up lessons outside normal teaching hours, the committees for this and that
which you suddenly find yourself on, the break-times spent helping student teachers plan and develop lessons.
It’s not that I begrudge doing all these things, it’s just that there never seems to be enough time in the day to get the job done properly. I hate the feeling after a mediocre lesson when I see how I could have enhanced it by having had the time to prepare better resources, knowing that other more mundane things got in the way of the twenty minutes it would have taken to guillotine and laminate cards, or knock up a quick PowerPoint of useful images.
Talking of senior management, I recently read an article by a deputy head for other school leaders, in which he advised readers on how to manage their staff. I’d never really thought about it from this perspective before. He noted that there were several categories of teachers, such as those that promise to get jobs done but fail or do them badly, despite their enthusiasm. Then there are those who grumble about every order they receive, but end up doing it efficiently. This article was a revelation to me because it suddenly made me think about how I was viewed by the senior managers, and who else in the staffroom they would categorise me with. I’ve been watching interactions between senior management and other teachers out of the corner of my eye, hoping to put to use pop psychology learnt from crass TV.
Finally, it was only today that I heard the shocking news of the death of Ted Wragg. I was shocked because
it was so unexpected: here was a man whose columns I read with such great pleasure, and who seemed full of
life and vitality and damn good ideas. He was a professor of education at the University of Exeter, but
seemed to be very much a “hands-on” educationalist, teaching all age ranges of children as well as
educating future educationalists. But most importantly to me, he stuck up for the rights of teachers
against the barrage of bollocks that governments often spew out with the misguided belief that they know
best. He did so very publicly, in his columns for the Guardian and the TES, and showed up stupid practice
for what it was with humour and without compromise. Here is the
Guardian’s online obituary and more at the BBC. I sure will miss his words of advice.
You can get in touch here.
It’s the home stretch now, six weeks down and one week to go of this half term, and this week has shot
past at an alarming speed. One conscious thought I can remember having this week is on Wednesday morning,
when I had two seconds to think to myself that the morning had dragged, and the next thing I know it’s Friday
afternoon, except I haven’t realised that fact until one of the kids mentions that they can’t have a
lie-in tomorrow for some reason or another, and I thought to myself why would they be having a lie-in anyway,
and then I remembered what day of the week it was. Read what I can remember about
Week Six here, and follow my moment of existential crisis at
Who am I?
You can get in touch here.
Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Half term, I mean. Look, I know it's only been five weeks
of term, but I'm exhausted! Read about Week Five here. Plus, find out why senior
management have been getting on my nerves at Don't interrupt me!.
You can get in touch here.
Firstly a big "shout out" (as I think the modern vernacular permits) to the PGCE students at Bradford, who are lucky enough to have a copy of my book in their college library, and thanks to the trainee who got in touch.
This time you can read about Week Four of term, and assess me in my on-going Self-evaluation. Also new this time are Tour of Duty and Sick Girl. Until next time!
I was reading an entertaining blog I’ve mentioned here before,
Tales from the Chalkface, which pointed me in the direction of
this article from the Telegraph which I have reproduced here
in case it gets taken off line. I don’t think I have to explain why it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read
in a long while, but just in case you’re wondering, I’ll enlighten you right here and now (though do read
the article first or this won't make sense!):
Anyway, maybe I do have the opportunity to laugh more than I think. Judge for yourself as I report on Week Three of term.
You can get in touch here.
It's Week Two at Bog-Standard Comprehensive, and you'll find my summary of it
here. Contents include: sighing, losing my marbles, déjà vu, NOT shouting, lying (the kids), insomnia (me),
double standards from senior management, coursework cheats, bitching, arguments and laziness.
And a recommendation from me this week! Channel 4 is showing a funny school-based cartoon called Bromwell High on Friday evenings which you will probably have to tape because you'll either be at the pub or fast asleep. I've only seen a couple, but the three main characters (teenage girls innit) all seem very well observed! Warning: the website at Channel 4 has sweary bits!
You can get in touch here.
I've written a lengthy diary of my first week back at school, so I guess that's my news really! You can read it at First Week Back.
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