It was the Ranting Teacher website’s 4th birthday this month, and it passed without mention. I’m saving the candles for the fifth birthday next year, a time when Five Year Plans are supposed to come to fruition. My only Five Year Plan was to find another job that gives me the satisfaction of teaching a really good lesson, the salary to which I have become accustomed, without the other hassles and nonsense that makes me feel compelled to moan about my job! But there’s nothing to fit the bill yet.
It’s getting desperate though. Staff morale at my school is at an all-time low. News of next year’s budget has filtered down to us plebs of the staffroom, and the long and the short of it is: there’s no money. New books? Forget it. Trips? No way. Supply teachers? Not on your nelly. Classes with an absent teacher are now herded to the hall to throw paper aeroplanes around and spend an hour texting their mates while senior teachers try to complete their paperwork, looking up every now and again to shout out some variant of “shut up”. So where has all the money gone? Let’s review that “senior teachers” mention again. The school now has more members of the Senior Management Team than ever before. See the flash cars parked outside? That’s why we have no money to replace battered books. I can’t see how else we’ve ended up in such a dire position.
Many of these SMT have been recruited from our ranks. I didn’t resent them at first. Good for them, wanting to take on some responsibility, dealing with the governors and parents and crappy bits. They knew what it was like to be a foot-soldier in the place, and most of us were looking forward to whatever improvements they had promised in their interviews. But how quickly they forget.
I’m not sure what happens to the average teacher once they get promoted to such lofty heights. Does the role turn them into bastards, or was it a dormant gene just waiting for the opportunity to be unleashed? How can they forget so soon the annual cycle of non-stop stress the average classroom teacher goes through? Don’t they know when they see us rushing around with files on coursework deadline day that we might actually have other priorities than to work on their new initiative for picking up litter? Can’t they see, the week that Year 11 reports have to be finalised, that it’s not the best time to approach us with a phrase like “Now the GCSE classes are off, you’ll have more time to…” As we wait at the photocopier with the lists and samples of end of KS3 teacher assessments don’t they realise that it’s not the best time to pull rank and push in to copy another frigging pointless memo?
So you see, spring is everywhere but so is the overwhelming urge to scream. Kids are kids: they are naughty, they have problems, they want to learn, they need to be assessed in triplicate… these are the constants of teaching. Nobody needs the extra stress of being hassled by those who have forgotten this essential element of being a teacher. And nobody needs to hear that there’s no money to do your job properly because several people now have inflated salaries and ergonomic chairs.
Anyway, the utter stress this is all causing has touched every one of us classroom teachers. More and more burdens are being placed on us because of the financial situation. For example, at least two staff who had management responsibilities and the associated remuneration are leaving. Their responsibilities are being handed on to other staff. But the extra pay has just disappeared, absorbed no doubt into the budget deficit. So we all have even more work to do but without being given the choice or the financial rewards. Then there is the pregnancy epidemic which means several key staff members are about to take maternity leave. A couple of them have management roles. But their responsibilities are being dealt out to those who remain behind.
And this is why I haven’t even had the time to update this website. If I’m not exhausted from the daily process of cramming in all these extra burdens alongside the job I thought I was being employed to do, the actual teaching, then I’m pacing around at home of an evening, wound up and stressed out and then falling asleep from sheer exhaustion before the alarm goes off and it starts all over again. But this weekend I’ve just thought, “F*** it”. I left the unmarked coursework and books at school. It’s all utterly neglected right now because there’s so much else to do. Another week won’t make much difference. But here I am on a sunny Saturday not quite unable to let go, so I hope by writing it all down here I’ve let off enough steam to be able to enjoy the remaining day and a half of my weekend off!
Meanwhile, a few pages I’ve been meaning to add for a while:
Until next time, you can get in touch here.
The snow dances worked! Snow fluttered down in many-feathered forms, and the school bus drivers put on their
literal and metaphorical brakes, so we all got to have the day off. And best of all, this happened the day
before half term, so there was no way I could get into school and pick up the boxes of marking that I was
thinking of lugging home for this week. Consequently, I feel unfettered this week, none of the usual guilt
hanging over me, because there was nothing I could do about it! No piles of books in the corner to trip over
all week, no planning folder to flick through half-heartedly… I feel like I’m properly on holiday! And for
the first time in an age I’m not going anywhere either, so I’m at that glorious moment of having a stress-free
Sunday evening.
A colleague asked me if I was going away over the holidays. I did reply when asked that I didn’t have the
time. And it’s still true, despite not having the school work. I’d already planned myself a tight schedule for
the week, with trips to the dentist’s, doctor’s, hairdresser’s, gym and all those other places that aren’t
accessible during term time. So this is why I spent Saturday morning in bed surfing the net and watching
stupid videos on YouTube. But there’s no escaping thoughts of school. It invades my dreams and nightmares,
and pops up everywhere. Read about how a
comedian’s blog took me back to thoughts of school.
I was also sent this story. I don’t know where it’s from, but if you want an acknowledgment, get in touch and let me know!
'In GCSE history for some reason we had to watch Kennedy getting shot. I never understood why, since we were learning about Russia at the time. Anyway, just as his cranium explodes in a shower of brain, blood and bone, Chris shouts in his best South Park voice "Oh my god! They killed Kennedy" immediately followed by the entire class shouting "You Bastards!" We never got to watch videos after that.'
It may be the season of sniffles and colds, but for one type of teacher there's always a reason to snort. Read more at Snort it out. I've also added a page of my latest grumbles that I had to whinge about somewhere. And from minor grumbles to something more serious, and that's the topic of Teacher Stress, which is a very real problem.
Until next time, you can get in touch here.
Hello once again. I like to prove my own points you know. I've had several emails from people who read this website, some enquiring politely when it's going to be updated, and others more demanding, including one which told me in no uncertain terms that if I wasn't going to update it again then could I say so on the site. Well, I always fully intend to update it, but it would be no good me ranting on about how little free time I had if I then spent every other evening detailing here what's gone on in my day. That would be hypocritical, and also impossible, because I really don't have that amount of time to spare. But anyway, I've stolen some time from somewhere else for a wee while, and will try to use it wisely to update you on what's been happening these last couple of months.
I am in the same job, for a start. I tried to escape, but obviously my desperate begging letter didn't tug
at the other school's headmaster's heart strings enough for me to be welcomed to their cosy little fold. Maybe I
should have left out the scurrilous rumours about my current head of department in an attempt to make them pity
me as they should. Or it could be that they suspected my commitment to extra-curricular activities was a little
exaggerated, and that it wasn't me posing in a bikini at the South Pole at all. And how was I to know that my
commitment to popular culture was about to take a negative spin when I professed my love for Celebrity Big Brother?
Sometimes you just can't win.
Because my current school values its staff so much, it decided to schedule all our exams just before the
Christmas break, so that we wouldn't have the time or energy to stuff our faces with mince pies or settle down to
The Vicar of Dibley Christmas specials. I'm sure they only have our wellbeing at heart.
Everybody was working furiously in the last few days of term to try to
clear huge backlogs of marking, but we all seemed so tired that it was akin to trying to run up the "down"
escalator with six bags of bulky shopping. I was one of those who threw all my metaphorical bags to the floor
and just let the escalator carry me down again because I didn't have the energy to carry on fighting against
the two hundred or so exam papers that overwhelmed me all at once. Instead I made myself a timetable of "Things
to do" for the holiday period, then promptly got ill with a cold that knocked me sideways, and it was as much as I could
do to unravel a reel of sellotape and tear at wrapping paper. Even New Year's Eve saw me half-heartedly raising
a toast to the fireworks on the TV before flopping into bed again.
And what do ya know! Then it's back to school again, and middle management decide it's a good time to harangue us for samples of marking for moderation and paperwork that is very time-consuming to fill in; time which could be far better used by planning lessons or writing reports, all of which is a thousand times more useful than a crappy piece of paper that will be shoved in a filing cabinet just in case somebody ever asks to look at it, which is highly unlikely. Anyway most pieces of paper and official forms are filled in with about 10 percent truthfulness and 90 percent hyperbole. Take for example planning sheets. It would never be acceptable to an inspector to show them your lesson plan for the last week of term:
In fact I really am getting more and more disillusioned with it all. My cynicism is no longer confined to the dark thoughts I confess to on here, but I also find myself voicing them at school. And I really hate myself for it, for being so negative and generally moaning. I keep trying to stop myself from uttering variations of "What's the point?" but then I find it's too late, and I've told all the staff in listening distance that the little bleeder in Year 8 is never going to be able to sit quietly for a whole lesson, or that trying to help the intellectually challenged GCSE group to achieve C grades is an impossible task and they would be better off learning the skills they all want to know for future life, like bringing up babies on benefits. You see? Bad me and my negative thinking. I'm turning into the person you all think I am anyway. My everyday mask is crumbling.
There are glimmers of hope out there though, I'm pleased to say. And thank goodness for that! I had a message
from the Primary Teacher UK website who wanted to post a
link to my site, and when I went and had a look I found it immensely inspiring, full of news and fantastic
shared resources, which always makes me think of primary schools as happy colourful places full of hard-working
teachers and imaginative resources, as exemplified by this site. Of course, they only teach for about ten minutes
every day, in between sandpit sessions, singing, and playtimes,
and marking work takes even less time as most kids can only write six words without keeling over, so
it's no surprise that primary teachers have time to mess around in Publisher, the lucky devils.
And while I'm on the subject of links, I promised I'd mention this website, called 101 Things to Do While Teaching, which started at the beginning of 2007, no doubt when the author was drunk or hungover, or both, and thought he would have enough time once termtime started to blog away. It looks interesting though, and I'll certainly be checking back to see if he gets to a 101!
So that's it for now. I have a couple of new pages planned, but I don't have the time right now to add them too, but hey, it's just a few weeks until the next holiday, so I might get some time then! Honestly, us teachers, it's just one holiday after the other! What on earth do we find to moan about!
You can get in touch here.
I had an email recently. Well I've had tonnes actually, not constructive ones you understand, but automated responses from company email filters bouncing back mail. It seems some dastardly pirate of the internet is using my email address to send out spam to all and sundry. So if you're reading this because you got a rude email from this address, then I do apologise, but according to the "expert" I consulted there's nothing I can do to stop this devious practice now that they have my address. It would be a dose of flogging with the cat o' nine tails if I had my way...
Anyway, back to the genuine email I referred to at the start. A reader writes... "It made me very sad for
your profession. How can a "professional person" brag about going to work scruffily dressed and without caring
about her appearance. Or did I misunderstand?" This was in response to the news article for 7th October - see
below. Now it did make me think. The jist was "what kind of example are we setting the pupils?" And I suppose
that's true. Every teacher is well aware of the amount of scrutiny you undergo whilst standing talking to
30 or so teenagers, and we are professionals. On the other hand, we had a "no uniform" day for charity the
other day. I went to school in my casual clothes and paid my pound along with the rest of my form group. They
then proceeded to ask why I was paying when I could wear my own clothes all the time anyway. They didn't seem to
notice that I'd exchanged my work clothes for weekend clothes. Would any of them notice?
So what should a teacher's uniform look like? What could be smart yet practical, able to deal with delivering
a lesson and cleaning up vomit, and also bending over desks and reaching up to dislodge paper aeroplanes, impervious
to ink and marker pens and dust and dirt, warm enough for false fire alarms and cool enough for humid steamy
classrooms full of damp children, suitable for dashing to the toilet ten minutes away in a five minute
window of opportunity and also climbing up onto desks to remove wasps or rearrange wonky blinds... there's a
challenge for George at Asda...
Anyway, I was thinking about the new year and a possible new job, a topic you can read more about at Seeking New Situation. Plus I'm trying a slight change in design in my pages which I hope makes it easier for some of you to read. Well, all of you. It's just that some of you were having difficulties with the background... ah well, let me know.
Meanwhile, you can get in touch here. Unless you're a spambot, in which case you can naff off.
Yes, I've been quiet. These are dark days where there is too much going on to do with school and there is no time to have my own life. I'll give you a quick example before I disappear to spend my Sunday marking. This week I haven't seen my house in daylight. I haven't stayed awake beyond 10pm, even on Friday and Saturday nights, and two nights I've been in bed by 9pm. I didn't expect the dark days to come so soon. Nor did I imagine being quite so snowed under yet. Did somebody somewhere mention an agreement to cut teachers' workload? Pah! This week I have had one parents' evening (followed by temporary loss of voice), two after school meetings, and a trip that arrived back just in time for yet another evening meeting. And yet each time I hve not been the last to leave the school, so there are some far worse off than me!
When do they get to have a life then? I just don't know. When do they get their marking and preparation done? I don't know that either. I can't do mine after school at the moment because my working days are too long and I fall asleep straight after dinner. I can't do mine at lunchtimes because of extra-curricular commitments and the extra GCSE revision sessions that SMT decided we have to do. My "free" periods are spent running around organising risk assessments, having impromptu meetings when summoned, organising mock exam papers, and following procedures to report unruly pupils that I've just taught. So all the marking is saved for my days of rest, the weekend, when actually all I really need is a rest - and an opportunity to wash up a week's worth of microwaved meals' dishes, pick up a week's worth of clothes from the floor, and dust down at least a fortnight's worth of grime from around the house that settled somehow when I wasn't even here. When will it stop? The Christmas holidays, perhaps, when I'll bring home a sack full of gifts from the school: several sets of mock GCSE exam papers to mark at my leisure...
You can get in touch here.
With the annual Open Evening for potential pupils and their parents looming large, the lunchtime queue for the laminator had hit a new peak. Read about how something so innocent as laminating led to an embarrassing incident for me at Laminator Reverie.
Well we're not the only school to hold our Open Evening this half term. I had a message from Frau Bear, a teacher of Modern Foreign Languages who wanted to put me straight on my stereotyping! And reading her blog, it would seem they have just as much fun at their Open Evenings as we do! Although Frau Bear did want me to know that:
I'm afraid I will have to shatter your cloning image of us - either that, or my dept (sorry 'subject area') is seriously letting the side down! Speaking for myself, I have the kind of dress sense that receives looks of shock and horror from Trinny and Susannah - colour co-ordination, let alone ironing, are not part of my vocabulary. I confess to preferring the 'comfy' outfit - and as for make -up, I don't have time to 'faff', so it's pretty much 'au naturel' for me. I would add that one of my colleagues is of a similar ilk. Our Subject Area Leader (sorry, can't say HoD now!) is a man, but has a girl's name (if that makes up for it) although the remaining 2 colleagues are both ladies who do fit your stereotype a little better.Personally it's the D & T teachers who have struck me as the clones so far this term, but perhaps more on that another time...
You can get in touch here.
One of the groups I’ve been given this year consists of oompa-loompa sized children who are in constant danger of being trampled underfoot by me, so minute are they. I feel like Gandalf towering over a bunch of hobbits, and can now imagine what it’s like to teach in primary schools, in classrooms where everything is tiny, from the children to the chairs. Last week I was turfed out of my normal room for some reason or another, and ordered to teach in the school library instead with my class of children so small, it would only take one tumbling encyclopaedia to crush them to death, or at least scatter them like dominoes.
So I changed my planned lesson into a research one where we could use the books to find stuff out, a skill
which is quite a novelty in this day and age. After having taught class upon class of perpetually bored
teenagers, whose attitudes to books is that they are all dead boring and everything contained within their
pages is dead boring too, it was an unexpected delight to see the excitement these little oompa-loompas
exuded as they grabbed this year’s new books from the display stands with unfettered delight and leafed
through the pages drinking up the pictures and words within.
Perhaps optimistically, I’m hoping that this signals the start of a change in attitude to books. For these children are truly babes of the internet generation: born in 1994 and 1995, they have always known the concept of the internet, with its easy access information and overwhelming bombardment of images. They have been educated in the ways of the computer, so much so that books are almost a novelty. But it did warm the cockles of my heart to see secondary age children cooing over books, although I suppose they have only been at the school a fortnight. Maybe I should reserve judgement until a few more weeks in, when they have become as disillusioned and moody as the rest of the school.
You can get in touch here.
Most of these posts are just about me ordering my thoughts at the moment, rather than telling you anything funny or strange that's happened. But give it time... the more run-down and harrassed I feel, the more manic and vitriolic I can be.
I haven’t really mentioned results yet. I saw them on Inset day briefly but haven’t seen them since. The U grades stick in my mind, but the rest were a smattering of mediocrity. The only results I can actually remember are those of the girl who was getting private tutoring. Just before she left for study leave she was so confident, and told me that her tutors said she was going to get at least C grades. I was happy for her confidence, but I knew it was misplaced, and sure enough she gained a D. I guess she must have been disappointed, and I haven’t seen her since, but I do feel they gave her false hope. But maybe that’s what she needed. She could have messed up altogether without the confidence tutoring gave her.
The school usually has a success story though, somebody who usually has the support at home that turns
them into the sort of bright and confident young person that Oxbridge welcomes with open arms, and this year
was no exception. One of the sixth form leavers is off to do the Brideshead Revisited thing, and good luck to
him, though he won’t need it. He used to scare me, if truth be told, because I wondered how someone who stood
out from his classmates from Day 1 actually gained all that knowledge and sheer confidence. I’m just glad I
didn’t teach him through the sixth form, because I’m sure I would have felt like a fool in his presence. Even
at GCSE he used to bring into conversation references from the classics that he certainly didn’t get at our
school! You mention Homer and almost all of the kids would think of the yellow cartoon character.
Then again, I think so do I...
We also had some news about an ex pupil who has just gained his Oxbridge PhD. Apparently he didn't just spend his days reading in those ivory towers, he also took up oars. Except the teacher next to me misheard this announcement, and now thinks the lad kept the prostitutes of that fair city in business.
You can get in touch here.
This morning I woke up and scrabbled for my alarm clock’s light. It was 3 minutes to 5. The alarm normally
goes off at 5. But then I couldn’t remember setting my alarm the night before, and my sleep-fuddled brain
desperately tried to recall whether I’d set my alarm for 5 or 6. Yesterday I’d set it for 6 as a treat because
it was Friday… which, I slowly realised, made today Saturday, and I happily sunk back into the pillows for
another 4 hours of sleep.
I screwed up yesterday though. So happy was I that it was the end of the week, and that the sun was shining like it hasn’t shone for a month or so, that I dashed out of school knocking kids left and right like skittles and accidentally left my box of books that need marking by Monday in my classroom, and only realised once I was almost home. Ah well. I have plenty to keep me occupied: worksheets to make now that I’ve met all my groups and started to gauge their abilities, coursework to mark, which will take a good few hours, extra-curricular clubs to plan, and a week’s worth of unopened letters to deal with. Why is it that the day we went back to school a pile of letters arrived from the General Teaching Council, the union, the pension scheme, and related junk mail about my finances? Also, that very day, I had email bombardment from the union and its “affiliates”, Teachers TV, and other places I must have signed up for and forgotten all about. Give me a break! I have enough to deal with when I get home from work!
You can get in touch here.
It’s the evening of our third day back at school, only three days into the school year and I’ve spent 28 hours in that building, plus a good few hours more at home working on school stuff. I had a bit of an energy dip yesterday evening, but this evening I’m not feeling too bad, although somehow it’s got dark outside without me noticing and I still have a couple of worksheets to make.
The first day back meant Inset day. I got to see the exam results for the first time, and marvelled and despaired in equal measure. Well perhaps I exaggerate slightly: I wasn’t really so affected, although there were definitely a few cases of “have I got U’s for you”. The new school year then got off to a cracking start with a two hour “must do better” bollocking, and even worse, a PowerPoint display.
When I opened my classroom door, the clutter hit me like a wave of heat, and I remembered why, six weeks ago, I had been so insistent with my future self that I would come in over the summer to do what had to be done. Of course, for summer holiday self that was all a far-away and distant thought, so new term self became engulfed with wave after wave of panic. Hence the 7 or so extra hours spent in school so far this week.
But it’s not just my lack of preparation that’s caused a slight case of behind the scenes panic. I’ve had:
Then there’s my form group. We know each other pretty well by now. That means they know how to fluster me
and therefore get away with all sorts while I’m dealing with fluster fallout. On Inset day I noticed a new
name on my register. Nobody had told me about this, and nobody had taken my new numbers into account when
divvying up the homework diaries and other stationery, so I had to rush around trying to scrounge bits and
pieces from here and there. The second problem was that I only had a surname and initial, so I didn’t know
whether to expect a boy or a girl. I was really hoping it was a boy. The girls in my form are so cliquey
and can be very cruel, as most teenage girls can be, and I thought it would be so much easier to introduce a
boy to the form.
As I drove in yesterday I was mulling over the identity of the new addition and wondering who I would sit him or her with, when I saw three magpies. Oh, I thought. Three for a girl: it’s a sign that the new form member would be a girl. But superstitions be banished! – for the new form member turned out to be a boy, and happily integrated pretty seamlessly by the end of the day. Driving home I saw some more magpies, and sent them special psychic messages along the lines of “Hah! You were wrong!”
So I suppose the moral of this little tale is don’t diss the magpies, because this morning when I turned up with the register, there was a stroppy looking girl skulking in the corner, and it transpired that she was the girl the magpies had thoughtfully warned me about, yes another new addition to my form group. And for reasons I can’t really divulge, she has “trouble” written all over her. And all over her hands to, when I saw her at the end of the day after she’d decided to do some temporary tattooing instead of making a good impression on her new teachers.
You can get in touch here.
And so it’s GCSE results day again, and I’ve continued my record of not going in to see how my classes did in their GCSEs. It’s not that I don’t care; in fact I had everything ready to go in today: boxes of books to take into school that are still cluttering up the hallway, and a list of things to do while I was there. But then last night I started to get that awful back to school feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I somehow knew that going into school would break the spell that I’m on holiday, despite having spent an unfair proportion of my time thinking about school and sorting things for school.
In fact, for the past week I have been sat at my computer researching school related stuff and tapping away
into the late hours of day on school topics and issues, and it’s not been unpleasant to sit indoors out of the
rain and watch my snoozing cat stretch out beside me. But the lack of physical activity has had an effect, and
last night after an hour’s sleep I found myself wide awake, and finally gave in to insomnia at about 3am, much
to my cat’s delight. So I spent the next three hours reading blogs and boards online, until dawn had broken and
I crawled into bed finally ready for sleep.
By the time I woke up it was midday, and I began to wonder if this insomnia wasn’t just a subconscious ploy so that I would avoid having to go into school. But for all the time I’ve spent thinking about it and mulling it over, I could have driven there and back and cleaned my classroom as well!
However I’m worried now that my sleeping patterns are creeping into their natural state of late to bed and late to rise, because for four and a half weeks they haven’t had a chance to do that. I’ve rarely got up past 8am, and it’s mostly been around 7am or earlier, because I’ve packed a lot of different things into my summer. But now I think with just over a week left and the evenings drawing in, I’m ready for a rest! And here’s my dilemma because it’s about now that I should be gearing up to go back: I have piles of projects and coursework to mark, and schemes of work for new classes to sort, and not much time nor motivation to do it…
You can get in touch here.
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