Week Two, or just Too Weak? It’s now Thursday. We haven’t even been back at school a fortnight and I feel like I’ve had enough. It’s just been one of those days, without major incident or upset, where I’ve caught myself inwardly sighing as I try to enthuse about a topic that I’m bored of teaching. I’ve never been in a job for as long as I’ve been in my current position, and the cyclical nature of starting all over again with a new class just got to me today. I had a time-fragmented moment when I suddenly became convinced we’d only just done this topic, and the class were just keeping quiet so that they wouldn’t have to do anything new – or maybe they weren’t listening the first time, which, to be honest, is more likely. I was just about to challenge them when I looked up from the book and saw the fresh faces and new jumpers yet to be ripped and pulled - and I realised I’d been imagining last year’s kids sitting there. Has it really been a year?! Am I losing my mind?
The thing is, it’s true when the big bad “they” say that no two lessons are ever the same. Kids are
unpredictable and the best planned lessons of the best prepared teachers will never run the same way twice,
I’m sure. I differentiate differently when I get to know the characters in the class, and I combine resources
in different ways to convey my points, and yet the subject matter was making me sigh today for some reason.
I should have been cheered up by the LSA and her charge who were both agreeing that they’d had a good lesson:
worked hard, understood the points, and kept involved and interested - so why did I feel like slamming my
head against the wall just to liven up my day?
I couldn’t even be bothered hollering at the kids: one boy in a GCSE class was doing his usual idiot
routine as we tried to concentrate and so I hardly interrupted the whole class activity to tell him to go
outside for ten minutes to calm down, my voice steady and betraying no signs of the irritation I was feeling.
We were still reading ten minutes later when I opened the door, beckoned him in as I kept scanning the book
lest the reader stumble over a word, and indicated he sit in a spare seat away from his goonish friends. I
should have “had a word” but we’ve had so many in the same vein that I didn’t want to add to my already
mounting feelings of déjà vu.
Another moment of deflation came during last lesson where I might otherwise have welcomed the chance to ridicule a girl who ended up with highlighter pen scribbled all over her face after a fight with her partner, their hair matted from being yanked out of pony tails, and Tipp-ex caking her fingers after an impromptu manicure with the whitener went wrong. But I just filled in an incident slip, waved it in her general direction, and probably sighed yet again. None of my usual face contortions showing mock horror or disgust, no exaggerated stance of hands on hips and frowning forehead, and no talking-to at the front of the class. Just resignation that this was my lot, and I must plough on regardless.
But we all have those days, right? I bet even people with the most fantastic jobs in the world doing
stuff they’ve always dreamed of, like “Blue Peter” presenters or something, I bet they bowl into work some
days and think, “Coat hanger advent calendar? Again?”. And travel journalists, whisked from first class
flights to see the best of a foreign city, must think, “Here we go again. Hotel, unpack, fancy restaurant,
seek out the coolest club, and then get paid for writing it all up. Wish I was at home watching the telly”.
Or, at least I like to imagine that tedium can set in anywhere, because it does make me feel a teeny little
bit better.
But what about the rest of this week? Monday I can barely even remember now. I think I had a run-in with a lying little toe-rag who denied scribbling on my desk when I knew it was him, even showing me one of the pens from his pencil case to prove it was a different colour so couldn’t possibly have been him. Monday night I remember all too well: insomnia meant I totalled about an hour and a half’s disturbed sleep, finally feeling tired about half an hour before the alarm was due to go off.
Tuesday was when I discovered that a parents’ evening this year is scheduled on my birthday, which pissed me off no end. Not that my birthday is usually a cause for celebration, but if there was anywhere I’d rather not be on my birthday than at parents’ evening then I really can’t think of it right now. Plus Monday’s insomnia meant that I wandered around in a daze on Tuesday, dragging the excess baggage that had appeared under my eyes. At least I slept well on Tuesday night: in fact I was in bed almost before the watershed.
Even yesterday is a little hazy although I do remember my last class of the day being rather sweet and
consequently I recall feeling convinced that all the regular kids had been swapped by faeries with a wicked
twisted humour, creating a class of angelic changelings just to freak me out. Add to this week my
observations of senior management telling off us front line staff for doing something that certain members
of the SMT do on a regular basis (no, not freebasing cocaine à la supermodels, it’s something far more
mundane than that and I can’t be bothered to go into the petty details here), plus after school meetings
that eat into my valuable TV watching time of an evening (which grows shorter anyway when I start falling
asleep an hour into prime time) and I’m starting to feel a little weary already. This is awful! We’re only
nine days into the new school year! Well I suppose I’ll just have to see what Friday brings…
And then there was Friday… I spent my free period surfing the internet to research a new piece of
coursework I’m setting one class, and was shocked (although heartily pleased) to find that one school in
Kent (I’m not saying which one, but they must know who they are) has a website where they virtually do the
kids’ coursework for them. There are so many printable worksheets and essay plans that it’s not so much a
case of the kids doing the coursework, but instead all they have to do is mix and match the information
that’s provided and it would be A*s all round, I’m sure. I don’t know how they get away with it: after
all, the website came up in the top twenty Google results, and I’m sure exam board moderators have access
to the internet too, but anyway, it saved me a lot of work so I printed all their stuff out and will waft it
in the general direction of my class. I bet they still write me a load of bilge though. It doesn’t matter
whether I get them working everything out for themselves, or give them a little more assistance, the
general complaints are still “We don’t get it”, which can be translated as “I can’t be bothered to think
for myself, and even if I tried I probably wouldn’t have many original thoughts because my brain is stuffed
with useful information about Jordan’s wedding and how we can get someone to buy us twenty Bacardi Breezers
for that party tonight”.
Almost two weeks into term and the kids and staff are beginning to drop like the flies that keep passing out on my windowsill. I had an emergency cover lesson instead of one of my free periods, but it was a very small class of chatty boys and consequently I now know everything there is to know about what happens at an abattoir. Which I really didn’t want to know at all, actually.
There’s a new initiative at school (isn’t there always) but the pressure is on for some members of staff, and there’s been some shouting, bitching and backstabbing, which is something for us to mull over at break times. I’ve also been amused to observe how the reporting of an argument gets distorted even during its retelling, like Chinese whispers said out loud.
So, during week two of term I’ve issued one detention and marked three sets of books. Watch how these ratios change over the next few weeks!
added 17/9/05
© Copyright laws apply to the contents of this website. 2003-2005