Refreshed after a weekend of doing nothing much but tending to my poor hands, lacerated as they are from the vicious paper cuts that come with the territory, I bounded into school bright and early. I had planned on marking the books I dragged home with me on Friday but then neglected all weekend, but the queues at the photocopier put pay to any ideas involving red pens. Instead I shuffled along the queue with my flimsy single piece of paper in hand, whilst those in front of me duplicated ream upon ream of booklets.
It was a gloomy day and the children seemed to be in similar moods once they started turning up. There
were complaints of tummy aches, sore heads and the odd hurting eyeball or other random symptom. Our mornings
leap from staff meeting to registration to assembly, and then onto teaching. At least there was no singing
in assembly this morning: with the gloomy atmosphere pervading it would have sounded abysmal rather than
uplifting.
That was the last moment I had to myself to just think all day. As soon as assembly finished the onslaught began: lessons and break duty and more lessons and lunch time meetings and then more lessons, and finally the bell. I didn’t have time to loiter on conscious thoughts, but rattled through the day trying to ensure children were learning, as well as simultaneously trying to stop too many piles of rubbish burying my desk. It was like trying to be a Mario Brother in a video game. I’ll have to start wearing dungarees.
I left the school a bit annoyed at the end of the day though. Firstly, annoyed at one other member of
staff who lost some important documents I passed onto the scatty sod. I’m supposed to compile these documents
for my line manager and now this dimwit has misplaced them instead of filling in the appropriate section and
passing them back. Secondly, it’s now clear to me that a group that is supposed to be set contains such wide
abilities that I’m going to have to tackle the lessons as I would mixed ability teaching, instead of a little
bit of differentiation here and there. To cut the teacher talk, this means more bloody work for me! Extra
preparation for each lesson – it’s like having to prepare for three lessons instead of just the one.
Thirdly, annoyed at myself! I under prepared for one lesson, and sometimes this “flying by the seat of
your pants” works out okay, and other times it’s a flop. I just can’t decide upon the best way to teach
a particular point, and know that in a previous job we had a great book that helped with precisely that
topic, but my cheapskate school doesn’t have such glamorous resources and I feel like I let the kids in
that class down. I don’t suppose they’re bothered, but still. When you’re a control freak, these things
matter.
Just like Monday, this week shot past in a flurry of meetings, demands, and of course lessons. I remember on Tuesday that I already thought I was a day ahead of myself, which happens because I’m always trying to keep a step ahead with my planning and so am thinking of Wednesday’s plans when it’s still Tuesday. But by the final bell on Friday it took a few moments to sink in that it was time for the weekend.
Anyway, this week I have issued four detentions and confiscated one mobile phone. I also managed to get
three sets of books marked, in a combination of free periods, lunch times, and before school. I was very
pleased with that feat, although to be honest the kids haven’t really done that much yet, so there’s not
much to mark! Schools now have to give guaranteed preparation time to teachers, which I think is supposed
to amount to an afternoon per week. This means that now we have two guaranteed free periods each week. It
used to be that you were scheduled for free periods but then had to cover for an absent colleague. So your
free period became an exercise in crowd control for an hour while you glanced despairingly at the pile of
unmarked books on the edge of an unfamiliar desk.
I’m not sure how other schools are coping with having to provide guaranteed free periods for their staff: it’s an expensive promise, because you then have to pay somebody else to do the cover instead. I know some places have employed cover supervisors; in many cases these are not qualified teachers but the dinner lady with the fiercest reputation, whose only task for the hour is to keep the kids quiet. A friend in a primary school reports that the school employed a German teacher to teach each class in rotation a bit of “Guten Tag” so that their class teachers can have an afternoon off to mark the colouring-in, or whatever it is that primary kids do. (It certainly doesn’t seem to be learning how to read and write if our Year 7s are anything to go by.)
The only other thing that has struck me this week is how kids cope with adverse home circumstances.
The appalling and awkward home lives that many children now accept as their normality is well documented
and well known: the bullying, abusive and rowing parents; the broken homes and complicated step-families;
the unsettling shunting between relatives; the parents who can barely look after themselves and drag their
children up in the manner to which they themselves were accustomed. There are kids in care and kids who are
carers for their own parents. It usually goes without saying that the unsettled and abusive kids in school
are those with home lives that have shaped them this way.
But this week I found out about two siblings in my school who are probably amongst the brightest and well-balanced there, the rare kind of kids who put their hands up in class and then actually have something intelligent to say when they have patiently waited their turn. I learned of their home background and it saddened me so much: a not unusual tale of step families and living between two separate houses and younger step siblings usurping their parents’ love. But here are two kids who get on with it all without a fuss, achieving success in their academic work and their extra-curricular activities, and never moaning or complaining or attention seeking or causing trouble.
Then there’s a kid whose father’s on the run for something or other, leaving a trail of devastation behind him, including a bashed-up mother and kids, but again you would never expect it from the kid’s behaviour, which is always polite and respectful, although now I’ve started to scrutinise the poor bugger in a different light – maybe the behaviour is more down to meekness, like a dog that’s been kicked too many times.
So yes, it is quite sad that these kids sometimes put up with so much, and then are expected to get on with it at school. For some, though, despite their unruliness they relish coming to school, though they’d never admit it. This is why most kids that are suspended usually end up hanging around outside the school gates: they have nowhere else to go. Plus, the structure of school is good for them when they have no structure elsewhere. It’s just a pain that they rally against it so vehemently!
Next week includes the half way point of his half term, which is on the one hand a very cheery though: four weeks today and I will be a week’s holiday! On the other hand the very thought of it brings me out in a cold sweat when I realise how much work I must nag out of my reluctant GCSE groups before then!
added 25/9/05
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