Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Or something like that. That’s what it feels like right now: Monday of Week 4 and I’ve just arrived home from a soul-sucking meeting. You see, the thing is, you think you’ve just about got everything under control; sure, it’s a fine balancing act as we all juggle lesson plans and homework submissions and exercise books that need marking. But let’s face it, teaching is the easy bit! There’s all this other stuff that people keep bothering you for that gets annoying. Statistics, targets, reports, plans, mark books (copies thereof), development plans… the list of annoyances goes on. When exactly we’re supposed to conjure all this stuff up, I don’t know.
Take lunchtime today, for example. I had precisely ten minutes to shovel down my lunch before a bunch of kids turned up at my classroom door to catch up with some coursework I’m supposed to be helping them with. Why in lunch-hour? Because the lazy little bastards couldn’t be bothered to do it last year when the work was actually set. Now I have to give up my precious time to help the selfish buggers, as they all claim not to remember nor understand it, which is hardly surprising when you consider that (a) this was work we covered a year ago, and (b) they are all really thick.
So there I am, ushering the stragglers out of the room so I can scoff my lunch, picking up litter and
abandoned worksheets as I go. I’m just shuffling papers in my desk and about to cram my mouth full of
cheese and crackers when in saunters a very very boring member of staff. He sat down, and I took this act
of making himself at home to mean he was here for something complicated. And sure enough, he talked for the
next ten minutes about absolutely nothing that made any sense to me, until I felt like I was floating in
vagueness, albeit with cracker crumbs all down my front and over the desk. As my next appointments slumped
into the room, he said, “So I’ll leave that with you, then?” and I tried to affect a cross between a nod and
a shake of my head so that I can claim in any future dealings that I didn’t really commit. To what, I have no
idea. But whatever it is, I’m not really committed. I hope.
Anyway, with such an action-packed lunch hour (if your idea of action is sitting listening to somebody and trying to look interested but really just fighting the fear of offending) I had no time to leave my classroom before the afternoon’s lessons. Then it was straight to an after-school meeting which was unfortunately a small group of people, so I could neither doze quietly nor sneak off to the toilet, which is what I’d really wanted to do since lunchtime. By the time the meeting finished, or rather finished me off, the caretaker had locked up the staff corridor where the toilets are located, and I had the whole car journey home to worry about reams of statistics I’ve got to generate before Friday plus the added worry of my bladder exploding. Just when I think it can’t get any worse I will stop myself thinking that because it inevitably will do!
I seem to have some real little buggers at the moment. Silly little boys still living in a world of action heroes and play fights. Although a Year 8 boy today was talking about types of gun and mentioned something called a BB gun. I imagined something aimed at a contestant from Big Brother, but merely asked what it was. The entire class tripped over their own tongues in their rush to tell me. Why do kids know all this stuff?
Feeling weary, I had time to spend a couple of minutes studying some of the pupils at work. At the moment there’s a boy that really annoys me. He is so disorganised, turns up late, butts into conversations, interrupts lessons with daft requests, and sits there in a dream world at other times. He exasperates me. But then I saw him rummaging in his bag, and out fell a neatly packed lunch box, a library book and his jumper with the name tag sewn carefully inside. And for a moment I thought of his mother waving him off to school, wishing for the best for her little boy, and doing all she could for him in the hope that he’d have a good day. And I felt quite sentimental, and couldn’t see the annoying interrupting day-dreamer, but instead somebody’s much loved son. It almost brought a lump to my throat. I must stop being so soft.
Enough already. As I write, on Wednesday evening, we are now nearer the next half term holiday than to the
end of the summer holidays. And don’t I know it. Gone is that glossy back to school start of term feeling.
Summer has definitely snuck off to the southern hemisphere and I’ve been emphatically reminded today that
it’s autumn, from the ice on my car this morning to the torrential rain and howling wind that’s besieged
the school building all day. The kids have remembered that threats of detention aren’t really a hardship
and so are back to their usual tricks, and boy do they have an armoury of those! Even the Year 7 kids, the
wide-eyed innocents of a couple of weeks back, have ripped holes in their jumpers, started fighting, are
now forgetting their books rather than simply not understanding that they have to bring them in, and some
are behaving like little monsters in the classroom. Even my best prepared lessons felt flat today, and I’m
in the kind of mood where if I won the lottery tonight I’d say, “Enough! I’m out of here! Here’s a wadge of
cash to hire a supply teacher until you find a replacement, here’s a bit extra for some new books, and
finally, the drinks are on me. Let’s go!” Please let me win, benevolent gods of the lottery draw.
I didn’t win the lottery, and how those cruel gods of fate decided to rub my nose in it… Today’s main event requires its own space, I think. Just in case you’re of a nervous disposition. And if you’re sat there reading this while you munch on a ham sandwich, I suggest you avoid reading Sick Girl. That’s enough said for Thursday anyway. I’m off to scrub myself clean.
Cough. Sneeze. Throb. I will fend thee off with vitamins, devilish germs; you shall not get the better of me now that it’s the weekend! At least wait until Tuesday or Wednesday when I shall no doubt relish a day off snuggled up in a blanket on the settee.
Maybe the sore throat has something to do with the SHOUTING that has been spilling out of me when I’m trying really hard to give it up. But what was I to do when one kid was bashing another with a large branch that had crashed down from a wind-battered tree? Or when another little brat was pushing a whole queue of people down the stairs as they swarmed about between lessons? Or when another kid irritated me with his disruptive behaviour, and then cheeked me when I asked him to leave the room? I want to give up shouting, I really do, but sometimes it’s more of a nervous reaction than a conscious decision. I need a twelve-step programme of some sort.
added 1/10/05
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