Ranting Teacher

Twittermorphosis

2010-08-24T15:01:00.002+01:00

Do I come here often? Um, no, not much anymore... you might have noticed. Seven years have passed since I started "ranting" - that's a whole generation of secondary school students. I've changed schools, roles, and also now, I've realised, attitude. With this new decade I seem to have shrugged off my anger and frustration at the impediments of the job and have just learned to tolerate (or ignore) them. And I can attribute this to two main reasons.

Firstly, there's Twitter. Everybody's heard of Twitter nowadays, and I use it mostly as a personal diary or record of the mundanities I've been up to, and to "chat" with a number of friendly, funny, caring and lovely people from different walks of life. But I also "follow" a great number of enthusiastic and dedicated teachers, whose positivity and enlightening suggestions are inspiring. Some have developed "PLN"s - Personal Learning Networks (I think), which allow them to interact with subject / age specialists around the country and the world. Sure, there are those of us who come home after a tiring day at school and offload in 140 characters, and the beauty of it is that there is always someone there who knows exactly how you feel and cheers you up straight away. But overall, the positive experience that Twitter is for this ranting teacher has made me less ranting and more bantering.

Secondly, there's tutoring. Last year I began private tutoring for the first time, through absolute necessity. I found it immensely awkward to start with, from an ideological angle. I felt unsure about the exchange of money (even though I needed it!) because was it fair for these children to receive such an advantage just because their families could afford it? Then again, if it wasn't me taking the work, somebody else would have. And besides, it wasn't just affluent families who wanted tutoring for their children. The majority were the children of builders and salon owners etc - parents who were used to being paid for their trade. It was often the case that these teenagers had lost confidence in their own abilities, and needed their C grades to get into college. It made me sad to hear of children admitting that they didn't seem to learn anything because they were in a bottom set, and there were too many naughty children hindering their learning.

But what I gained from tutoring almost outweighed anything else: I gained a love of teaching again. I mean, a real passion. Here were children who (with one exception) were concentrating fully, willing and eager to learn, and whose moments of enlightenment were a real thrill to witness. I gained insight into how other schools tackled topics, and widened my own knowledge by researching areas I'd not taught before. And after a day of sometimes tiresome classes, or demanding management, it was quite often difficult to summon the energy to be enthusiastic for another hour or two. But after every tutor session I would feel enthused and energised because I'd had the opportunity to do what I'd entered the profession to do: teach, and make a difference.

And that in turn has had a knock-on effect on my classroom teaching. Working one-to-one with a wide range of abilities has enabled me to see why pupils find some things difficult, and inspired me to try new things I've learnt from their work with my classes. It's like a second-hand Inset: I've learned things from their teachers without having ever met them.

So there we go. Confessions of a not-so-ranting teacher. Because of Twitter and Tutoring I feel much more positive about teaching than I have done for years. That's not to say it's perfect, of course: still plenty to moan about! But I probably won't be saying it here. Instead, you'll find Ranting Teacher over on Twitter, along with a whole world of teachers who will amuse, support and inspire. So if you're not there already, come and say hello!

Sun Stroke Seven

2010-04-12T17:33:00.002+01:00

Well I guess I have sunstroke, or there must be something else in the air I can blame. Today marks 7 years since I first published a post as "Ranting Teacher" and yet today, the first day back at school after the Easter holidays, I actually felt full of enthusiasm for teaching.

But then, beginnings are always exciting after the initial Sunday night/ Monday morning funk. I've had time off to relax, read, and catch up with all that stuff that life throws our way but we don't often have time to deal with in term-time (like repeats of A Place in the Sun). Therefore, early start aside, I feel refreshed, and the shining sun helps too. There are new units of work to commence, and my resources are made and ready for use. When they're schemes of work I've had a hand in creating, or there is the flexibility to follow my own interests too, I feel most enthusiastic to get started.

Of course, once the marking starts piling up again, and the students start playing up, and extra hoops to jump through suddenly appear in a couple of weeks, I might not feel so spritely. But this is also a joyful time of year because after an initial flurry of activity it'll be time to wave goodbye to years 11 and 13, and au revoir to year 12, meaning extra PPA time to plan more kick-ass lessons, or just simply stop for a moment and smell the roses. Happy third term everyone!

The Facebook Effect

2010-04-10T20:45:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I was thinking how my online presence has changed over the last seven years since I launched "Ranting Teacher". What I didn't consider was how the changes (advances?) in technology have affected the life of your average teen these days. But having just watched this week's new episode of "South Park", where one of the characters gets sucked into Facebook, it reminded me of school life once again, because although it may be satire, what happened in this episode is actually very insightful.

For example, every member of my form group has got either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I can't blame them for wanting to compare apps at the first opportunity, even though they aren't supposed to have their gadgets on show in school, lest I swoop in and wrestle their headphones from their very persons.

Texting mates in lessons (or even better for their phone credit - bluetoothing) is a matter of course these days. I used to dread what was happening when students looked to be fiddling with something under the desk, but these days it's with tiresome predictability that there's a mobile phone involved. If you're a teacher, just test this yourself: during any one lesson, furtively switch on your bluetooth and see how many (usually rude) names spring to life on your screen. With one persistant offender I decided to get through the only way I could. I wrote a note on a piece of paper my desk: "Get on with your work!". I photographed it and bluetoothed it to the dozy student, who foolishly accepted whatever file was being sent to him. Ok, we had a little laugh about it, but it did the trick.

But Facebook seems to be a huge pressure on teens. "South Park" wasn't exaggerating. The unlikeliest of students are "Facebook friends" and these alliances are seen around school too, for example when one student shouts something to another about their status updates or photos, and they have never talked to each other in your class before. That it's used for bullying, there is no doubt. That it's more important to be "Facebook friends" with the right people than to have the right trainers these days is becoming more apparent. A great equaliser? Not really. It's very divisive. Several fights broke out at school last term because of what somebody had posted on Facebook, with two opposing factions grouping because of their Facebook links.

Even stranger is that some of my colleagues have easily discovered Facebook profiles, with pictures of their personal lives plastered all over them. So? you might argue, teachers should be entitled to use Facebook as well as any other breed of human. But what disturbs me is that some of these teachers are "friends" with current students. There seems to be a professional line that has been crossed there. And when I hear from these staff some of the school gossip they have discovered because it was posted on a pupil's "Wall", I do wonder if I'm being over-sensitive about this, or whether it's excusable. After all, I'm often party to conversations between students that I'd really rather not hear. It doesn't just happen online - there's real life too of course! But online, things seem to escalate. An offhand comment by somebody can be jumped upon, undefended, and circulated widely before the poster has had the chance to rethink.

My point is, that teenagers today are under pressures that weren't even imaginable when I was a teenager myself. Sometimes I wonder how different my teen years would have been with the internet and a mobile phone, and I always imagine it to have been vastly superior. Far better to woo a member of the opposite sex with a flirty text message or a "poke" on Facebook than to stand in a drafty phone box and hope the object of one's desires' mother didn't answer the phone instead.

But the other side to this is the added layers of social networking which can increase anxiety and turmoil in a teen's life. So something else to consider next time you hear somebody sneer, "What, you're not even on MSN? Won't mummy let you?" or banter about "Facebook friends".

Spring forward

2010-04-09T20:39:00.002+01:00

It's almost seven years since I took on the persona of "Ranting Teacher". Why did I do it? I'd moved from a wonderful school to one which was more of a struggle: bigger, unwieldier, messier, louder... I couldn't help but compare the two. So many things were frustrating me about that school that I felt I needed to vent my anger and frustrations somehow. Writing it down and putting it "out there" just made me feel better. But it wasn't such a bad school. (In its last two inspections it scored top marks and gold stars.) What was it that frustrated me? The parents? The students? The other teachers? Well, a combination of all of those things, alongside endless government initiatives, curriculum changes, and the constant demands on my time.

So what has changed in seven years? For "Ranting Teacher", it has changed from a slowly-coded html website, to this blogger site, and more lately, to a more frequent presence on Twitter where I've had the opportunity to have instant banter with a great range of great people.

For me as a teacher, I have changed jobs, schools, and lost the anger I felt several years ago. But I don't think this is a good thing. I ranted because I cared about the job and the students, and was frustrated when I couldn't do my job properly because of external pressures or circumstances. That I don't rant so much any more is a bit of a worry to me. Does it mean I'm not so bothered any more? Am I just going through the motions? It feels like it sometimes.

For me as a person, like anyone else I've experienced much change in the last seven years. Bereavements, break-ups, break-downs... In the last year or so my blog has been quiet, and it's because real life has got in the way much of the time. Maybe me and Ranting Teacher have a bit of a seven-year-itch.

But I know the ranting is still in there somewhere... because I still care about educating young people and I'm still passionate about my subject, and there are still so many impediments! The great thing about "tweeting" with other teachers is that I know I am in no way unique, and it's a great way to vent in a short and sweet (and not so sweet) way. Lots of teachers use Twitter to share good practice, ideas and developments instantly with colleagues around the world. I'm far more superficial with my banter but find the support from my Twitter friends immeasurable. So if you don't see me on here much, come and say hello on Twitter!

Little Loners

2009-10-14T23:33:00.002+01:00

Canteen duty is something that can be dreaded for a number of reasons, but for me it is often the pathos of that twenty minutes. For surely there is nowhere else around the school where is it possible to observe the hard time that some children go through. The saddest type of child I see is the Little Loner.

In lessons, the Little Loner is identifiable by their reluctance to join in group work. I combat this by sorting pupils into groups myself rather than letting them choose their own groups, and of course the benefits of this reach farther than simply inclusion of a shy or unpopular child.

The Little Loner will sit away from other children if possible, and is usually quiet, but often knows all the answers; however previous experience has taught the L.L. that you don’t earn kudos from your class mates by doing what the teacher wants. The L.L. therefore often retreats into a shell, but some of them are not actually aware of other children’s sniggers and persist in shooting up their hand at every opportunity.

I suggest if you have a keen Little Loner in your class, you move away from asking for “hands up”. One way to do this is to write each class member’s name on a card, and choose a card from the pack when you want somebody to tell you something. Or if your funding stretches to mini whiteboards, these are even better. Even disaffected pupils love to scrawl with a board pen on the slippery surface, and not only do you have every pupil (more) on task, but you also succeed in letting your keen Little Loner answer without fear of ridicule.

But back to the canteen. It’s all very well thinking of ways to include the L.L. in your lessons. And for the majority of lunchtimes most schools have refuges for L.L.s: lunchtime clubs like chess, Warhammer or maths puzzles, where they are no longer alone, but in the company of those who also avoid the harsh world of the playground. L.L.s are usually well known to the school librarian, as they settle down into their usual spot to read or surf the web. But even L.L.s have to eat…

It’s funny (peculiar not haha). Teaching has toughened me up so much. When I set out I was a bleeding heart who took seriously every bleat of “he’s bullying me”, and spent weekends worrying about something a child mentioned in passing. But when you meet about 180 children every day (form group plus five average teaching groups) it’s as much as you can do sometimes to even remember everyone’s name. (Seven weeks into the year and I still don’t know at least half of the pupils I teach.)

Yet nothing tugs at my remaining heart-strings as much as seeing the Little Loner eating a solitary snack or lunch in the canteen. Often it’s a case of a packed-lunch-pupil who can sit straight down without the tussle of the canteen queue, and it’s not long before they’re joined by some friends.

But sometimes packed-lunch-pupil dines alone on the healthy contents of their Tupperware box, and I have been wondering if there’s a correlation between the type of child who brings in a packed lunch and the probability that child will be more of a loner. Maybe there’s camaraderie to be had in the long queues to reach the canteen counter, or maybe the pushing and shoving toughens up children somewhat. (I could take this one further and wonder if having school dinners makes you more successful at getting served in pubs in later life… maybe there’s a PhD study in there somewhere.)

But even canteen-queue-child can be a Little Loner. On duty in the canteen I may recognise a pupil from my lesson, nervously focused on her slice of healthy canteen pizza, or his Tupperware pot of tuna pasta or sliced peppers and hummus; they’re the children not daring to look around, and trying to block out the din and clatter going on just beyond the half metre radius that constitutes the “no go” zone around them. I’ve learnt from experience that the worst thing to do is give a sympathetic little smile. This works well in the corridors, when you may well be the first person to smile at Little Loner that day, as you both escape rapidly into the swarm of noisy pupils. But in the canteen, smiling at a L.L. is tantamount to flashing a spotlight onto their seat and superimposing a bullseye onto their forehead. And the L.L. knows this.

There have been so many times when I’ve wanted to match-make between lonely pupils who I think would enjoy each others’ company. “Rosie, meet Emma, who also likes reading, and has two guinea-pigs as well!” And some schools have “buddy” systems that aim to do just this. But in the canteen, it just doesn’t work. Instead, the Little Loners sit at their separate tables, heads down until the deed is done and they can scuttle off to some sanctuary elsewhere. And it just seems to me the saddest thing for them to eat alone every day, in the midst of all the organised chaos of the canteen.

And then my duty is over, and I scuttle off back to my classroom, to unwrap the foil from around my sandwiches and mark books as I munch… alone...

The BBC Programme

2009-10-11T14:04:00.002+01:00

Sunday: The Big Question - you have 7 days to watch this: Should teachers always set a moral example? It starts about 20 minutes into the programme. Features a Ranting Headteacher and Twitter's @schoolgate - Sarah Ebner. Interesting issues plus added hot air! Well done Sarah for reminding the public about the behaviour and responsibilities of parents! And well done sensible 12 year olds!

Moral Maze

2009-10-11T13:09:00.002+01:00

Should teachers always set a moral example? This was a question posed on Twitter on Friday evening by @schoolgate – Sarah Ebner, a journalist at the Times Online.

That she was asking this on a Friday evening, as I wound down at home after another hectic week with a glass of wine or more, brought out my more facetious side (first identified and labelled as such by my RE teacher over twenty years ago). But it stirred up some strong feelings, particularly amongst former headteacher and now education writer @GeraldHaigh, a time-served teacher who clearly believes that “teacher” is a life-long vocation that stays with you even beyond retirement.

I may be flippant about this on Twitter – after all, there are only so many things you can express in 140 characters at a time. But it’s been something I’ve been thinking about all weekend, and I do have strong thoughts and opinions on how much “being a teacher” affects our lives, and those hours when we’re not in the school building.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a generational thing. In fact, different lines of morality weave through different generations of teachers. Today we are expected to at least appear to be upstanding members of the community, leading future generations by example. When I’ve taken PSHE sessions about the dangers of smoking and drinking, and pupils have asked me about my own experiences, I’ve felt like such a hypocrite by glossing over my own history like those times as a student (when I never dreamed I would evolve into a teacher) when I drunk so much I lost hours of an evening, or set my own hair alight waving a cigarette around, and so on.

And yet when I was at school as a pupil, I remember well the two separate staffrooms: one which was safe to approach, and the other whose door resembled a dragon’s mouth with smoke curling round the edges as teachers chain-smoked their way through breaks. Even two years ago, before one of the most popular teachers I have ever known retired, the only complaint about him was from pupils whose books were returned to them reeking of smoke where they had sat in his study as he marked them, fag dangling from mouth. He’d even ignore the work-place smoking ban, and light up in his classroom as soon as the final bell went, and puff his way through staff meetings. How was that setting a good example?

The other thing that springs to mind are those 80s songs like Madness’s “Baggy Trousers” – “all the teachers in the pub, passing round the ready rub”… yep, these were the teachers of my youth, and from anecdotal evidence from those educated in the 1970s and 1980s at comprehensive schools, there are also many tales of violent ex-forces teachers, for example, who would threaten and abuse their pupils; I myself have witnessed a teacher pinning a boy against the wall by the scruff of his neck for what we now call “low-level disruption”.

So in a way, I think it’s hypocritical to now expect teachers to be the bastions of civilization and morality in their own time, if it’s not affecting anyone else. It wasn’t such an imposition on teachers twenty or thirty years ago, so why now? So we can no longer smoke in the staffroom, and have a pint or two at lunchtime, and a good thing too in my opinion, but why extend restrictions on our personal lives beyond the school gate?

However, that’s not to say I don’t think there should be guidance in place. It sends a shudder through me when I hear of my colleagues, mostly younger, who have Facebook pages and allow pupils to become their “friends”. I think if you are a teacher, and you have a personal Facebook page, then this should be absolutely private, and you shouldn’t allow access to pupils, and possibly their parents. There are so many people who don’t see anything wrong with allowing pupils into their social networks, so why do I think it’s wrong? Well firstly, pupils are not our friends. There should always be some kind of professional distance between pupils and teachers, however friendly you are, or however many sports teams you take away on trips. If you erode that professional distance, then you open yourself up for all kinds of potential problems. My private life is just that. It’s why I write under a pseudonym. I would never want anything negative to reflect on my pupils, colleagues or school.

What else? Well despite the way that previous generations have dealt with it, I don’t think that today’s teachers should drink alcohol or smoke in front of pupils. I know we’re only human, and that plenty of us do drink and smoke, but in the presence of pupils we are professionals, and should act accordingly. But in our own time, however, if we want to drink until we’re sick, then why not? As long as the pictures don’t get posted to Facebook where half the school can see them.

And here’s where another argument comes in. Some believe that once you become a teacher, you are a role model and that label shouldn’t be taken off during evenings and weekends. And this is why I don’t like the label of “teacher”. If I go out for a few drinks with friends and start chatting to people, I don’t want them to know I’m a teacher, because at that moment in that pub, it doesn’t define me. I don’t want them thinking of their own children’s teacher when they hear me slurring my words after three pints of shandy. I don’t want them thinking how irresponsible I am to be doing what they too are doing in that pub at that moment.

This reminds me of that frequent moment of surprise that young (and not so young!) children have when they see their teacher out of context, in a supermarket or the High Street. Children categorise their teachers as being that adult who they see at school, and often can’t imagine them elsewhere. I’ve even had 14 year olds go on for weeks in lessons about seeing me in the High Street, as if they can’t get over the surprise of one of their teachers being released from the school building for good behaviour, and actually having to buy groceries like a human being.

And that’s fine with me. In school I am a teacher. I am a consummate professional, because not only do I get paid to be so, but I also believe that this is the best way to guide today’s youngsters to become tomorrow’s citizens. But away from the stressful classrooms and corridors, I feel I should be allowed to conduct my life as other adults do. As long as I’m not doing it in front of their pupils, or in the same pubs they’re drinking in, I don’t see the problem.

Now there are many other arguments we could follow here. Should teachers be allowed to be members of the BNP? Should they be struck off for being caught drink driving or taking drugs? These are far more contentious, and perhaps for homework you could think about these issues for next lesson.

As a post-script, if you do follow me on Twitter then you’ll know from my regular evening tweets that these arguments are mostly theoretical, and that a night out for me these days is as rare as a hen’s tooth. But it’s the principle of the thing!

Slippery Ladders

2009-10-11T12:05:00.002+01:00

I wrote the following a little while back, in the immediate fall-out from a failed job interview. Of course, after the pain and frustration had subsided, I was reasonable enough to realise that, okay, maybe it was simply a case of somebody better than me getting the job each time. But I'm not going to edit what I wrote then, because it sums up how I was feeling, and still am to an extent. Here we go:

I’ve got a problem. It’s making me really fed up, and I’m losing motivation. My problem is that I can’t seem to get a promotion. In the past year I’ve been for three promotions at different schools, and been interviewed for all of them. One of them was a small promotion and I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell up against the internal candidate. The other two were for bigger promotions and have concluded with feedback that it was between me and the candidate who was successful but that the other candidate had more experience in something or tackled an issue better than me or… whatever. Waffle all you like.

But I’m getting worried. Because I hear of younger, less experienced people being given promotions or fast-tracked on special courses for those in the early years of their careers and I feel like I’ve missed the boat. Maybe I’ll never be given a chance. Maybe I’ll always be asked the same question: “So why now, when you’ve been teaching blah-de-blah?” With just that hint of suspicion as to my motives, trying to weed out some little secret that simply doesn’t exist.

Well let me tell you why. I love classroom teaching: I love the banter with the pupils, I love helping them make progress, opening their eyes to new ideas, and I love that they make me open my eyes too. I love thinking on my feet, finding new ways to explain something in ten seconds flat for the one child that “doesn’t get it”, seeing children develop over the year, and making resources and lessons to move the learning on and engage the pupils. I’ve had different responsibilities in different roles, but to me that wasn’t the be all and end all of teaching. I was never upwardly mobile before because I had so many things I was enjoying, from trips to clubs and competitions: how would I get the chance to do all this if I was in charge and bogged down with paperwork and phone-calls, I used to think.

But now I feel the time is right. I’ve stacked up enough experience in different roles to enable me to see that I could do a promoted job very well. I sometimes wish I was in charge because I can see a simple solution to something that others are not willing to try, or because I know that I could do it well – or better. I’m looking forward to five or ten years down the line and I can’t imagine staying in the role I’m currently in because I feel the need for a change and a challenge. I’m going stale and I feel the world moving on past me but the feeling is one of being trapped. I’m top of the pay scale and I want to try something new – so why won’t anybody give me a chance?

So I really don’t know what to do next. There are only so many knock-backs I can take without feeling like a deflated balloon: no longer of use to anyone and hanging around in the corner long after the use-by date. If there’s no way I’m going to be given a chance to move on within teaching, then what should I do? I’m more than ready to move onwards and upwards, but if there are no opportunities for me, then maybe I should look in another direction. I just don’t know what or where.

Twitter stole my blogging vibe!

2009-10-02T09:28:00.002+01:00

Oh I have been quiet haven't it! I was sure I was going to have a summer off, not thinking about school, and that pretty much happened, which, as they say, was nice. There were also a thousand other things I wanted to do over the summer, but the best laid plans, as they also say... well, you know the rest. A wash-out of a summer, apart from those three days where I did manage to live the dream and read in the garden, but a break from the classroom whichever way you look at it.

But then there's the Twitter thing. I was going to be my usual aloof self but Twitter is a whole new way to connect with people on the internet. It's far more immediate than blogging like this, but as such, you probably end up revealing more about yourself. Which is a phenomenon which had me thinking about its uses in the classroom: how much more appealing to think you only have to type 140 characters instead of an essay! How great to have immediate feedback from others all round the world, and be able to join others in commenting on the news and random selection of "trending topics". What a relief to see your "tweets" slip off the bottom of the page after a few minutes, so you go more with ideas than first time perfection.

Yep, I can see Twitter as a great educational accessory. I just wish the schools I know and indeed work in were far more geared up technologically to accommodate classes of students working with blogging tools like Twitter. I know it goes on in a number of classrooms across the world, because every now and again a teacher will ask fellow tweeters to say hi to their class or answer a question like how old you have to be to drive where you live. I'd love to work in a place where current technologies are used to inspire students but for the moment I shall have to wait until the infrastructure becomes available... or I find it somewhere!

I think this must be a record

2009-06-11T23:08:00.002+01:00

Surely this is slightly ridiculous... I've just seen the first "back to school - buy new uniform" advert on TV. This is far, far worse than Easter eggs on Boxing Day.

Twibes

2009-06-11T22:39:00.003+01:00

However twee all this Twitter language is, I'm enjoying tweeting about on Twitter (see - annoying and cloying all at once!) If you're on Twitter and are an educationalist or sympathiser, then do join the Tweecher twibe (I know, I know...). You will find it at: http://www.twibes.com/group/Tweechers

It's actually really inspiring to be in contact (via 140 character updates) with teachers who are so dedicated to putting ICT to fantastic use. And also hilarious to know that while I'm procrastinating over marking by arsing about online, there are others doing exactly the same. Plus there are journalists posting links to education-related news stories as they break. A fully rounded experience on a flat screen!

I will post some of my tweets (arghh! the twerminology!) on here at some point soon, but until then, get on over there!

Foolish fools?

2009-06-07T12:07:00.002+01:00

I live in a shroud of paranoia. Don't get me wrong - I am very dedicated to being a good teacher because I believe educating our young citizens is one of the most important responsibilities in our society. But I do rant about the daily grind of what can be, at times, a difficult job - made even more difficult by poor attitudes, lack of resources and annoying colleagues and bosses. And at no point would I ever want to cause any embarrassment to those I work with.

So it's quite hard for me to get my head round the idiocy of two teachers recently who have made the news for their own brazenness.

The first is:
An English teacher at a West Yorkshire school has been dismissed for writing a book involving underage drinking, hints of drug use and "pupil fantasies".

And the second is:
Scottish teacher in trouble for tweeting about her pupils – and criticising the head

Ranting Student

2009-06-07T11:12:00.003+01:00

I had this comment on my last post and I think it deserves an entry of its own.

Hate to say it, but I as a student completely disagree with what your saying.
Yes students misbehave, yes we talk alot.But have you ever thought that maybe
your teaching isnt up to scratch?? We talk cause thats all we have to do,
otherwise we are stuck listening to you whine on about how you can't teach
(which just so happens is true most cases than not)so really.. shove all your
complaints up your arse and STFU.You have been here before so give us some
slack, we do more work than you think.good day.

So let's look at this in detail...

In a way, you've got to feel some pity for this student. The anger, the frustration - even if we haven't all felt such vehement passions as teenagers, we can recognise that being a teenager isn't easy.

But on the other hand, maybe this poster is just a rude and ignorant pest. Let's look at the evidence. Not the highest achiever in the class, I'll bet. My mind's eye's red pen hovers over about 7 errors, some of which may well be a result of the medium of communication, but others are errors which shouldn't be typed in the first place: your saying / alot... But what I see as a desirable correct use of our written language, others will dismiss as pedantry, so let's move on.

We talk cause thats all we have to do, otherwise we are stuck listening to you whine on about how you can't teach

Does any teacher seriously stand there and whine to the class that they can't teach? If so, then they probably deserve being put out to pasture. Or does this poster actually mean those times when a teacher is faced with such a class full of ignorance and rudeness that they stand there and tell the class they are finding it impossible to try to teach them? I know I've said something to a class who won't shut up before. I've told them straight that it's impossible to learn if you don't take part in the two-way process of teaching and learning. But that is when I've prepared a lesson for the class and they have just ignored whatever is in front of them in order to carry on their own conversations. So in my mind, the talking comes before the teacher frustration - and is the cause of teacher frustration.

Yes students misbehave, yes we talk alot.But have you ever thought that maybe your teaching isnt up to scratch??

It's a fair point that there are some people out there who are teaching without much of a clue. I've observed lessons by student teachers and experienced colleagues alike where the pace of the lesson is so slack that once pupils finish their task there is nothing else for them to do for a good few minutes, and they start poking each other, throwing paper, chatting, etc. That is a sign of poor teaching. But I'm aware of that, and I plan my lessons to avoid this kind of thing. And my despair often arises from when I've planned an interesting and resource-filled lesson but it doesn't even get off the ground because of the poor behaviour of students from the moment the lesson starts. It is so frustrating. And it always makes me feel utterly sorry for those students who are keen to learn but who are constantly interrupted by the chatting and silliness of those around them.

shove all your complaints up your arse and STFU

Hmmm, here's where your arguments fall down, ranting student. This sums up the rudeness and lack of respect that many of today's teenagers feel they have the right to display in class.

You have been here before so give us some slack,

Yes, I was a teenager, but no, I have never been in that completely self-obsessed mindset that screams "me me me" and wants to be entertained rather than taught. We had our chats and our silliness, but we knew when to buckle down and listen to the teacher. And if I think about why we did that, it was mostly because of fear. We feared the consequences of bad behaviour - the threat of detention or a talk from the deputy head. We feared our parents being told that we had mis-behaved and their subsequent shame and our subsequent bollockings. And we feared that if we didn't learn then we wouldn't pass our exams and couldn't go to university or get good jobs. At times it seemed oppressive and of course led to rebellion in small subversive ways by many, and in bigger ways by a few, but that fear of failure is missing from many of today's pupils. Parents see schools as the enemy and take their children's side in disputes over detentions. Mediocre students know they can scrape the grades to get into university to do mediocre courses. Students feel untouchable because they see outlets for their lack of talent in the pipe dreams of reality TV if they fail at school; after all, haven't we celebrated and excused the ignorance of characters like St Jade of Goody?

So, Ranting Student, thanks for your comment and insight into the mind of today's teen.

Muppet surprises

2009-05-27T10:28:00.003+01:00

My year 11 teaching group were a mixed bunch: some lovely, some lively, some lazy, and some who made me livid. But in their en masse state, I'd been counting down the days to their study leave since before Christmas. There are two who I would miss, if I was inclined to do such a thing, because they have made me laugh until my sides have ached - usually unintentionally - and want to do well. But at least half of the rest make me want to turn on my heel and slam the door behind me, tell them to go and screw themselves, and hope they fail their GCSEs, because in our last couple of weeks most of them didn't seem to give a tuppeny toss about their impending exams.

In our last lesson I was trying to give them vital exam tips but only a handful were bothering to scribble notes and listen. I have, of course, been giving them vital exam tips all year, but they've had no sense of urgency so it all has to be reiterated. I had to send a couple of them out of the lesson for their rude and inappropriate behaviour. They seem to forget they have to come back for their exams, and therefore see no consequences for being complete muppets in their last few weeks.

But then one of those who I sent out made a surprise reappearance last week just after one of his exams. He sloped up to my room with another ne-er-do-well, both of them clutching sixth form prospectuses.

"Sixth form?" I spluttered. "I thought you wanted to do an apprenticeship?"

"Nah, I wanna go sixth form," was the reply. "I'm gonna miss school. I wanna stay on."

I barely disguised my sharp intake of breath and raised eyebrows.

"Do you think I can do (your subject) in sixth form?" This time his question made me laugh out loud.

"Oh, you're serious? Um, well, let's see how you do in your GCSEs..." was my pragmatic reply. Because what I was really thinking was, "Please, no oh no oh no!" But I knew the school's response would be: "Fabulous! Another head to count towards funding. Let him do whatever he wants, and we'll even give him a special chair in the sixth form common room, right next to the pool table and within a cue's jab of the fridge"...

Twitter

2009-05-08T19:33:00.002+01:00

Just because everyone is twittering on about it, Ranting Teacher has signed up to twitter. I may well get bored of it soon, but it seems a mindless way to spend a Friday evening...

Cracks

2009-05-08T18:01:00.001+01:00

Around this time last year I’d had my interview for my current job and had started to clear out years’ worth of rubbish from my classroom cupboard at the old place. I didn’t know that much about the new place, but it had seemed quite shiny and new. And the head teacher seemed cut from a different cloth to my previous boss.

But two terms in and I’m starting to see the cracks beneath the gloss. I’ve been party to snide comments from one staff member about another’s handling of a situation. I’ve been told that it’s no surprise that some kids are allowed to get away with bad behaviour when the management turn a blind eye to it. But this seems to be the norm for most schools: certain misdemeanours are overlooked to avoid any fuss/ paperwork/ visits from angry parents. And the bad behaviour continues.

At one school I worked in, the head teacher would come down on badly behaved pupils like a ton of bricks. The school was even singled out in the local press for by far the highest amount of fixed term exclusions in the area. Their spin was that we had a school full of ne’er-do-wells and a rampant drug problem, whereas we knew that most schools experienced similar problems but preferred to brush them under the carpet. At that school members of senior management spent their lunchtimes patrolling the grounds and keeping the smokers on their toes; at my current school I can see where the smokers gather each lunchtime from my window, and nobody seems bothered.

One time this previous head teacher suspended a boy who had threatened firstly a younger pupil, then the head teacher, with a broken glass bottle. How was this suspension not the right thing to do? But the governing body over-ruled the head teacher and the boy was allowed to return to lessons. And so, as a staff, we made the decision that none of us would teach this boy because of the severity of what he had done, and we would even walk out in support of the head teacher. The governors backed down and the boy was eventually found a place in another school, meaning that the child he had threatened would not have to worry about a retaliation attack.

In my last school, if a pupil swore at a teacher, and not just simply in front of them, it meant exclusion. But over the last couple of weeks I have heard all kinds of insulting language being bandied about, and had to report a couple of incidents to be taken up further. The only consequence for the offending pupils is to be placed on report, which is almost like a badge of (dis)honour for many of them. I find refuge in the “nice classes” and pity the poor children who happen to hear such foulness and altercations from a minority of kids who need taking in hand and showing that their actions will have real consequences.

10 O'Clock News of Eff-Off!

2009-05-06T22:22:00.003+01:00

I've just been watching the 10 O'Clock News. I think it's quite an achievement that I've stayed up this late. But now I'm thinking I should give it up - after trying to calm down for the last couple of hours after a manic day of heavy horribleness all round, I've just heard something that has made me panic to the point of needing more beer.

It seems that the latest news is that we will be expected to work until we're 70 to help pay off the national debt, accrued if I recall (and yes, I do) by greedy bankers. Those greedy bankers who have recently lost their jobs and are now looking to teacher training as a new career path. Hey, I have an idea... all those responsible for getting us into this financial mess, why don't YOU work until you're 70, because I'm not sure I could keep going for even the next decade let alone any longer...

Pandemic panic

2009-05-04T22:03:00.002+01:00

It's been a lovely long weekend, in spite of the typical bank holiday grey gloom today, and a well deserved rest - after all, it's been a good two weeks since the last holidays. And still three weeks until the next break.

So you can understand why, when I sit here watching the 10 O'clock News and there's mention of schools closing because of this swine flu panic, my ears prick up and I rack my brains to think of any kids I teach who have just been on exotic holidays. Now it seems that this flu isn't as serious as first thought, wouldn't just a hint of it be a great excuse to "work from home" instead of going into work tomorrow? I have been sneezing quite a bit today, and confined myself to the house, eating chocolate to keep my strength up, and keeping my pyjamas on in case I've needed to take to my bed all of a sudden.

Oh, and a day off would give me the chance to catch up with all the marking I should've done today...

May Day

2009-05-04T15:20:00.003+01:00

Happy May Day! There's no dancing round maypoles for me today, but instead I've been ploughing through the monotonous application forms for new jobs in a last ditch attempt to find something more lucrative for the new academic year. The end of May is the deadline for handing in notices of resignation in order to start a new job in September, and suddenly there has been a flurry of adverts in the educational press for roles that would pay me more money and probably give me bigger headaches. So I've saved up the little hillock of brown envelopes containing glossy prospectuses and reams of exam results and statistics for today. And now my teacher reference number is burnt into my retinas, and I have managed to rewrite some old application letters to fit newish criteria, only to find that my printer has run out of ink and I have no "large letter" stamps. I sound like an excuse letter from a parent for a child having not done their homework.

I have, however, assembled my applications into an order of preference, based on the following all-important criteria:

1. How far away the school is. Too close and going to the pub in the future will become fraught with dangers like bumping into sixth formers when off duty; too far and the future increase in diesel prices will render any increased salary worthless.

2. What time the school day ends. 3.05 is in the lead so far, followed by 3.20. Anything beyond 4pm is just ridiculous - add a 2 hour meeting onto that time and you might as well have a regular job.

3. The school uniform. Enforcing rules about doing ties up properly is just so tiresome. Dealing with polo shirts and sweatshirts is so much more simple.

4. Exam results. There's a happy medium to aim for here: too high and the pressure to get good results year upon year becomes untenable. Too low and the school will probably be a nightmare to teach in.

5. Inspection reports. Firstly, more points for those schools inspected within the last year - it means I wouldn't be walking straight into an atmosphere of paranoia and pre-inspection panic. But why is it that so many of these schools have negative comments about "small pockets of disruptive behaviour", "sub-standard accommodation", and "long-term staff absences"? It's a poor school that can't whitewash these things for Ofsted.

So there we go. Bank Holiday Monday is half-way through and I've not yet turned to the piles of marking I have to do for my current job. I've eaten too much chocolate to numb the pain of writing out the last five years' worth of training courses I've been on (who remembers that stuff? - and who checks?) and I've still got to visit relatives with my USB drive, a cheeky smile and a request to use their printer. I just hope it's all worth it...

Teachers demand pay increase

2009-04-13T21:35:00.002+01:00

I'd been waiting for some official news on this after I'd heard whispers earlier today. The BBC (amongst others) reports that the National Union of Teachers is demanding a pay increase for teachers. Now you will have your own opinion on this, and I wouldn't have even commented on this EXCEPT that the report on the BBC site just made me feel a little bit angry. Okay, quite a lot.

And it was this section in particular:

Responding to the conference decisions England's Schools Minister Sarah McCarthy-Fry said: "Teachers pay and conditions have never been better.
"We have increased their pay by 19% in real terms since 1998 which means the average teacher is on nearly £33,000," she claimed.
"We have also cut teachers' working hours, dramatically reduced the amount of administrative tasks they are expected to do, doubled the number of support staff and given them time outside of the classroom to plan and prepare lessons."

Right then, that's take a look at that.

1. Teachers pay and conditions have never been better - ignoring the lack of apostrophe for the meaning beneath, I beg to differ. I find my conditions quite deplorable at times. I'm sure you've probably noticed my discontent if you have followed this blog, for example. Poor buildings may be nothing new, but I'm sure when first constructed in the 1960s, many buildings were actually better than they are now. And the conditions? Well, knowing that I'm virtually powerless to stop children bringing in pornography and other 18-rated / illegal content on their mobile phones, or to enforce rules about attending detentions when parents dispute my professional judgement - no, to me these things do not make my working conditions better than they have been in the past.

2. the average teacher is on nearly £33,000 - firstly, what does "average teacher" mean? Outside of London, a salary of £33,000 is available to those who have gone "through the threshold" onto the second of the higher pay scales, which takes about a decade to achieve. "Average" therefore probably means taking into account those with management responsibilities plus those with the higher London wages. Secondly, how does this compare with other professionals such as solicitors, police officers, medical practitioners?
Well done Bradford teacher Ian Murch, who said:

"We take no lessons in morality from government ministers, who fit out their homes with stone sinks from Habitat on their expenses, who pay their husbands more than a teacher earns to be their personal assistants and who don't appear to engage in even a hint of performance management of what they get up to.''

3. We have also cut teachers' working hours, dramatically reduced the amount of administrative tasks they are expected to do - Ah yes, about that Teachers' Workload Agreement. Looks all fancy on paper doesn't it. We no longer have to collect money for field trips and other little jobs like that. But the amount of other paperwork has increased because we now have to juggle targets and statistics and prove we are accountable. To proceed to the upper pay scale, which allows access to the "average wages" bandied about earlier, we have to spend hour upon hour compiling folders full of evidence that we can teach, that we have attended courses, that we can number crunch targets and show all kinds of stuff to nobody in particular.

Put it this way: in years gone by, May to July were the best months to be in school. Years 11 and 13 disappeared on study leave and the remainder of the school became a more relaxed place. A few more free lessons to mark internal exams or create new resources ready for the new school year; end of term activities to chill out to; taking classes out into the open balmy air to read poetry under trees or collect water samples from the streams. But now there never seems to be any let-up. Children are often too unruly to take outside for lessons; budgetary constraints mean that timetables are reshuffled the minute exam classes leave so that you end up teaching random lessons in subjects you really don't have much idea about; and end of term activities are vetoed because the associated risk assessments are just too complicated.

So all in all, teaching today is more demanding and stressful than it ever was. Perhaps England's Schools Minister Sarah McCarthy-Fry should come and enjoy the ambiance of the average classroom and staffroom before making such paper-based judgements. Looking at her background, it would seem that Ms McCarthy-Fry has had pretty much no experience of schools since her own education quite some number of years ago. She's worked for a multi-national defence engineering company and is now a chartered accountant, and even her own website states that: "Her main political interests are trade and industry, defence and the social economy." She's been the Schools Minister for precisely six months and eight days. So I really don't give much weight to her opinion at all.

But the thing is, people are going to believe what this politician says, because it's a convenient thing to believe, that "we've never had it so good", when it's all such a load of hogwash.

By the way, in the year 2007/2008, Sarah McCarthy-Fry claimed £144,498 in expenses. I was not able to claim any for all the printing I did at home, my travel expenses to and from school, washing off the dirty fingerprints from my car where little scrotes had messed around it during lunchtimes, the books I bought because my department's collection was sadly lacking, the electricity and home internet connection I needed to use to do my lesson preparation, and so on. Lucky MPs... just think of the holidays...

Crackpots?

2009-04-13T12:34:00.002+01:00

The General Teaching Council, which snatches a chunk of our wages once a year to produce a rubbish magazine and tell us how we should be leading our lives, is mostly in the news for getting teachers kicked out of the profession for getting drunk on a Saturday night or nicking pens from the stationery cupboard.

But apparently, while a few pints (of wine) at the weekend is a no-no, hard drugs are perfectly fine...

Teacher in nightclub crack arrest goes unpunished by GTC

A science teacher arrested for possessing crack cocaine has escaped without punishment from England’s General Teaching Council.
Michael Swann, who teaches at Maltby Community School in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct. But he avoided any further disciplinary action after he was praised by his headteacher for being a role model for pupils.
The judgment follows complaints from some teachers that the GTC - which is preparing to unveil a new code of conduct - has become too intrusive when dealing with teachers’ private lives. The number of tribunals involving out-of-school offences has soared in recent years.

Retrospective

2009-04-13T10:20:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I was thinking back to when I first started writing as "Ranting Teacher". It started me thinking about some of the real characters I've taught over the years, and the clever - or downright bizarre - things that children have come out with. Now don't worry, I'm not about to do a "children say the funniest things" post, because most of the time they are situation comedies - you have to have been there at the time for it to retain a modicum of humour.

But it did remind me of something that happens to me every now and again. This year, being in a new school with rivers of mostly new faces coursing through the corridors, a weird sensation has occurred a few times. For a moment, I think I spot a face I recognise: a pleasant girl from my form group, or the witty boy from my Year 10 class, or a girl who made me a present after a school trip. But then the child turns around and I realise it's not them at all, and I also realise that it couldn't possibly be that pupil because they were in my old school not my new one. And I suddenly realise how much I miss certain pupils and other things of my last school.

Because the reason new schools can be so tough and dis-heartening is that you haven't yet built up sufficient relationships with the children that you teach. They still try to find your weaknesses and suss you out. But already some kinds of attachments are being formed. One of my classes, who drive me round the bend with their inability to concentrate and their random interruptions, are already asking me if I will be teaching them next year. Now I'm not that naive that I see this as flattery; instead I see it as a case of "better the devil you know", but what it has shown me is that they are starting to see me as a piece of the furniture, which is a positive thing unless they start etching in their initials and sticking chewed gum on me somewhere.

Six years of moaning online!

2009-04-12T08:51:00.003+01:00

It's Easter Sunday. It's the 12th of April. And it's exactly six years since I posted my first whinge about teaching.

Back then, blogging was a word I was yet to hear, but I did have my own website which I painstakingly updated with shoddy html at irregular intervals. The website is still out there somewhere, although currently lurking and inaccessible while it has a spring clean. Since then, teacher blogs have sprung up all over the place - lots of them for the power of good: sharing useful ideas and analysing current education issues. This one, however, has been mostly about the moaning!

The second edition of my book Everything you need to know to survive teaching was published last month, which is a little more positive than this website, in that I do have a good old whinge about stuff, but there are also tips on how to try to minimise the annoyances and traumas of the job. In fact, I was having a flick through it myself the other day to remind myself of some strategies that get filed away somewhere in my mind, before metaphorical boxes of other stuff get dumped on top of them, obscuring them temporarily. It's like going on these courses which teach your grandmother to suck eggs, and realising that in the business of everyday survival you'd forgotten you even had a grandmother. Or what an egg looked like. Or something.

So there you are. Happy blogging birthday to me! When I started writing this, the Year 13s at my last school were in Year 7. The Year 11s have graduated from university, and/or had babies (in fact, one of them brought in her baby to show me a few months after her GCSEs), and/or have moved on and forgotten all about school. I have had a few interviews, got a new teaching job, and am still desperately looking round for something else to do instead. But until then, I'll keep ranting - it's so much cheaper than therapy.

Just think of the holidays

2009-04-06T01:35:00.003+01:00

"Just think of the holidays," is a phrase I hear far too frequently when I'm sighing over my job. But now it is the Easter holiday period, and I find myself thinking of school - hard to avoid when I have boxes of books needing marking in most rooms of the house. This evening I have decided to be a rebel. Even though it's incredibly late (for me) on a Sunday night (Monday morning), I am forcing myself to stay up late, because it's what I always want to do during term time. Except all these great TV programmes that seem to be on late at night are in hiding and I've had to resort to rolling news reports to keep me going. Ah well, bed time then.

Gah.

Boozers 2

2009-03-27T19:42:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about schoolkids drinking alcohol. This is just to draw your attention to an article published on the BBC's website yesterday: UK youths among worst for drink.

Interview X-Factor

2009-03-27T18:46:00.002Z

Less than a year after my last job interview, I found myself dusting off my interview suit, breathing a sigh of relief that it still fitted, and tipping all the contents out of my interview briefcase to see if I could find my crib notes on such questions as "why do you want this job?" and "what are your strengths, weaknesses, and favourite flavour of jelly beans?".

Yes, I had an interview. And no, before you ask, I didn't get the job. The vagueness of the job description became clearer within the first half an hour of me arriving at the school: my three hours of application form filling-in, three hours of observed lesson preparation, and uncounted hours of online research were going to do me no good because I was up against an Internal Candidate.

Now I'm not naive enough to believe that by default an internal candidate will get the job. I've witnessed my previous colleagues go for promotions within our school and known full well that the governors and headteacher are looking for anybody slightly more competent than them. But when the internal candidate has been acting up in the role for over 12 months already, you know you might as well reverse the car straight back out of the parking space and go and watch daytime television instead of putting yourself through a day of stress and humiliation.

But that's not what I did. Because in some ways I have a belief in myself that I could actually do the job well. I don't know if it would be better than the competition - and this answers one of the questions posed to me by the sixth form representatives in the informal interview in the morning...

Sixth form reps: "What makes you think you can do this job better than the other candidates?"
Me: "Because they look a bit thick and the older bloke has definitely got a nervous twitch."
No, not really.
Me: "I think that's impossible to say because I don't know the other candidates."

And so I participated in the usual pattern of the interview day: I traipsed around the school with a couple of hand-picked confident middle class pupils, taking in the hidden pockets of rubbish and graffiti, and sat sipping coffee with the other candidates, and went through the tiresome "informal" stuff which is anything but. The internal candidate was a nervous wreck and was being pumped for information by an overly ambitious young whipper-snapper of a candidate, and I flicked through my collection of crib cards on latest initiatives and findings.

As this was a management position of small standing, I expected the morning to include some kind of "in-tray" exercise or a quick analysis of statistics, but instead it was the usual routine of interrogation by the headteacher, a deputy, and a number of sixth formers with naive questions. As our morning schedule drew to a close, my stomach began to grumble with hunger, and I wondered what kind of food the canteen served up.

But before lunchtime, in breezed the headteacher with the deputy and head of department, and began to address us all. "Strong candidates, blah blah, exciting and innovative lessons, blah blah..." So we were about to be weeded out before lunchtime. No chance to meet the governors, shake a few hands whilst maintaining eye contact, nor even make electioneering promises about lunchtime clubs and new initiatives. But to make it worse, this headteacher obviously had an urge not to be running a school but instead to be Simon Cowell, gloating with power and about to eliminate one or more of us. And it wasn't my imagination, I'm sure, that the headteacher had shot a look straight at the internal candidate but avoided any eye contact with me. So I felt prepared enough after the "strong candidates" bit to realise I was being sent home without any lunch or any chance to set out my stall in the formal interview.

However nothing quite prepares you for the awkwardness for everyone involved when you are told, in front of everyone else, that you are not worthy. Why it has to be done "X-Factor" style I really don't know. Far better, surely, to be told individually rather than in front of everyone else. It's like a slap across the face or being given a detention slip. I slowly and deliberately shuffled my papers into my briefcase, wondering if the other candidates could bear to look at me. I took my time. I decided that if I was to be humiliated in front of everyone then I might as well prolong the awkward silence for everyone else too. After a short eternity I rose from my chair, gave the other candidates a curt nod, and left the room, resisting any urges to be petulant and slam the door. No lunch! The greatest humiliation of it all! And it was a thirty minute drive back to my house.

Still, I had a good afternoon of lounging around instead of the alternative: waiting anxiously for a formal interview, then hanging around to be told the results. And I feel lucky, in a way, firstly to have seen a school whose website promises so much and whose derelict buildings told a different tale, and secondly, to have discovered so soon the sadistic tendencies of the headteacher.

Argh grrrr - a right rant!

2009-03-27T18:32:00.002Z

Sometimes it really is the day to end all days, the day when it would be so easy just to walk right out of the classroom, then walk out of the school, and keep on walking, preferably with a middle finger extended in the general direction of all the rubbish left behind.

Year 11 are being particularly horrific at the moment. Not only do I teach a class of rude, disruptive, ungrateful and "not bovvered" brats, but I also have the misfortune of having most of them in my registration group too. Most mornings start with a torrent of swearing, abusive language to each other and to the world in general, ignored instructions to remove coats and scarves, followed by fifteen minutes of me trying to ignore conversations I really don't want to hear.

This morning was no exception. Year 11 as a whole have sensed that the end of compulsory schooling is nigh. The recent warm weather only spurred on the sense of freedom. Whilst most teachers start to panic on their behalf, running around after missing coursework and photocopying study sheets, the majority of Year 11 are planning parties and not giving a shit because in their opinions they will soon be untouchable and sooooo out of there. My Year 11 teaching group have adopted a pack mentality of utter ignorance and rudeness. I'm counting down our final lessons with a mixture of relief and anxiety. Some of the class are desperate for further knowledge and help, but they are overwhelmed by the noisy and disrespectful majority. The boys are locking horns like raging rhinos, pushing and fighting each other before, after, and during lessons. The girls are preoccupied with scowling and bitching and saying "you know what, though, yeah" a lot. They feel compelled to argue that black is, in fact, sky blue pink, and that I'm an out of touch eejit for not knowing that.

As we sorted out coursework, most of which was done in Year 10 with their last teacher, I've lost count of the number of times I've been told she was a "crap" teacher when I know that by reputation she was fearsome and innovative and got good results. What a legacy to retire with: your final students, in their ignorance, only remembering you as "crap" because they couldn't be bothered to turn in coursework by the right deadlines.

So after a morning of stroppy form group and antagonistic GCSE group, I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel. What choices are there? Rise to the bait of being wound up? No. Engage in a discussion and hear out their views? Impossible: it's a one way street of closed minds and filthy mouths. Try to ignore it all and keep calm? That's the only option I've seen as viable, but it's so hard. But it's also rather defeatist. And it leads to zero job satisfaction.

Last week I tired to engage the same group in some fancy lesson to revise quite a dry topic if you're 16 years old and thinking of blow jobs not revision. It ended up with paper aeroplane revision sheets and stolen scissors. And I thought to myself, why waste my time preparing stuff like that when it ends up with such total disrespect?

One morning a huddle of my tutor group were loudly discussing how rude they had been to another teacher the day before. It became a competition of bravado: each trying to out-do the others with what they had told a teacher to do or how they had acted. The rest of the class had stopped their conversations to listen, and so I couldn't close my ears to it any more. I asked them if they thought that people became teachers because they wanted constant abuse, or if it's because they wanted to help educate people. Their replies were quite disturbing, and can be summarised as such:

A) most teachers are on power trips, and they only become teachers because they like feeling powerful in front of teenagers;
B) if you don't like getting verbal abuse all day long, then why do you become a teacher? If you don't want abuse, you should go and work in a primary school.

And that's it. My right to reply or attempts to introduce some logic into the room were shouted down by snarling mouths and noses wrinkled with disgust. And since then, they seem to be stuck in a rut of repetitive discussion about which teachers they hate more than others, and who's going to get what before they leave in May. One foul-mouthed boy, who each morning is either nursing a hangover or verbally abusing everyone that walks through the door, told me that I'm the only teacher he doesn't have a grudge against. At which point one of the mouthiest girls burted out: "Oh I have a grudge..." but luckily for me or her the bell started to drown out what I've done to piss her off. And this is the girl for whom, just two weeks ago, I wrote a glowing reference for FE college, where she can train to care for people's babies, and possibly deafen them with her shrieking and foul mouth.

So I'm going to make myself a little chart and start to tick off the days before Year 11, in their own words, "do one" and "bugger off". And how they will cope in the big bad world with attitudes like that... Well, I'd like to be a fly on the wall - and possibly a fly on their dinner, serving up some of the crap they've given me over the past few months.

Management here I come?!

2009-03-13T19:05:00.002Z

Well, not really, but this did make me laugh when I read it in a mail-out: the government is to introduce a new 'Accelerate to Headship scheme' in September 2010, offering 'up to 200 outstanding individuals' a fast-track pathway to senior leadership. The reason for this? They realise that in a couple of years everyone will have wised up and realised the utter stress of running a school in this day and age is just not worth the salary, criticism and future heart attacks.

Too soon?

2009-03-09T17:34:00.003Z

I made a decision this weekend. I'm going to apply for new jobs. Now if you've been following this blog you'll know that I went all through this last year, and started this new job in September. And I know I should give it time - preferably about three or four years to actually settle in! But you'll also have seen how unchallenged and downright bored I've been, let alone the frustration at all the usual school-related stuff.

So I'm going to see how far I can dip my toe into the puddle of management without drowning. My only problem is how I broach this with my current school. Wanting to be challenged is not a sin, but I haven't even made a mark there - aside from the dents in the wall where I bang my head against it frequently. And does it look downright ungrateful to be given a job and then look elsewhere within six months? Why is there so much guilt associated with this profession?!

Boozers

2009-03-08T18:04:00.001Z

There’s a girl in my form group who has had her stomach pumped twice since Christmas. Like most of my form group, she spends her weekends drinking so much alcohol that she makes herself extremely ill. The pupils spend registration periods discussing how off their heads they were or how they are going to get more alcohol for the next session. In my Year 9 group one girl is regularly off with hangovers, and another insists on telling me about drinking in the park and avoiding the police. One of my Year 11 boys had cuts and burns all down one arm recently, and when I asked what it was he had no shame in telling me his mate had done it with a hot poker and razor when they were drunk. I think he may have meant “stoned” or “off their heads” or similar though.

It’s absolutely endemic. And it makes me wonder how these children have the opportunities and money to sustain these dangerous hobbies. Why don’t their parents know what they’re up to? Okay, I know that some of these pupils have parents who are as bad as them: smoking their cigarettes when their own supply has run out, for example. But many of these children are from the kind of caring and supportive parents who provide piano lessons and pencil cases and educational holidays.

It also makes me ponder what my role in all this is supposed to be. I shouldn’t have to hear about all this. And if I do, then my chastisements for unsuitable conversations fall on scornful ears. My threats to pass on information to the head of year is scoffed at as the pupils tell me it’s nothing to do with me as it happens outside of school. And yet I witness the money changing hands for the lunchtime cigarettes – or worse. And I’m supposed to be educating children who are too hungover or even absent because of alcohol abuse. And suddenly to me the minutiae of my subject seem far less important than the need to straighten out these individuals and educate the whole child. But apparently, it's not my business...

Exhausted

2009-03-08T18:01:00.001Z

Recently I’ve been wondering why I always feel so tired after a day at work. After all, if I arrive at the last minute in the morning as the bell for registration sounds, and leave a few hours later when the final bell rings, I’m only at work for fewer than seven hours: far less than many other workers in this country. Even after a week off for half term, I was still ready for another holiday after being back for a week. So why the weak constitution? And it’s not just me: drawn faces in the staffroom attest to the same thing.

Last week I started to approach this question logically by looking at what happened each day to tire me out. Firstly, I don’t sleep well. So much happens during the day that it takes a long time for it all to stop shuffling around in my mind of an evening, and much of it must still be seeping out as my head touches my pillow. Very often I wake up in the early hours having suddenly remembered something like a pupil telling me they were being bullied and I forgot to see the head of year, or that I need to take in a resource for the next day that I haven’t yet packed but I’m too sleepy to get up and find it at 3am.

My alarm goes off early. Schools generally start early and I usually have some preparation to carry out before the official start of the school day. Truth be told, it’s probably things I could have done if I had stayed for an hour after school the evening before, but come that final bell after a day of aggravation, I usually can’t wait to leave and shake off the stresses of the day.

So by the time I arrive at school I’ve already been up a few hours after a bad night’s sleep. There is usually ten minutes of peace in my classroom before the first pupils start drifting in… and then there’s no moment to draw a deep breath until seven hours later. The day is filled with tiresome parrot-type repetition as I snap the usual lines of “coats off, gum in the bin” and then try to avoid engaging in debate about school uniform; quick interactions with other flustered staff; giving out numerous notices and doing admin during fifteen minutes of registration; having thirty seconds to switch gear between an A level class and a Year Seven special needs group; deflecting arguments; running lunchtime meetings or detentions; doing duties; sorting broken computers and printers whilst retaining eyes in the back of my head; absorbing hormonal stresses of angsty teenagers; filling in paperwork about being sworn at or confiscating cigarettes; chasing photocopies and updating whiteboard resources; and overall, trying to teach and ensure that all pupils in the room are learning something in that lesson. There is rarely time to stop and pause for a moment.

Above all, it can be so emotional. However much of a hard edge you develop – and it doesn’t take long – the incessant chipping away at your patience can make you snap. The nagging from a discordant chorus for over five hours at a time sets your nerves on edge. Absorbing or deflecting verbal abuse and stroppy rudeness… there is no let-up, no escape, no sneaking off to the toilets with a newspaper for ten minutes to cool down.

Seeing ineffective policies in practice only adds to the stress: if I refer on a pupil for bad behaviour, nothing really gets done about it but I have to find that ten minutes from somewhere to fill in the paperwork or track down the head of year. Having a pile of paperwork thrust at me first thing from a member of senior management which requires my immediate attention when I have a class of hyperactive 15 year olds to register and organise also adds to the stress. Like an octopus I grab things thrown my way: homework, coursework, paperwork… no wonder my desk erupts by the end of each day.

So it might be not quite 4pm by the time I leave work, but I often feel like I’ve lived three days in one. And that must be the reason why I feel so exhausted all the time.

Pondering

2009-02-22T20:05:00.002Z

Question: Is it better to have a really dull half term holiday where you potter around a bit and mark a few books every day, and plan some lessons, and worry about work? Or an amazing week off, full of fun and late nights and a nagging feeling at the back of your mind that you should be doing some work, which only becomes reality on Sunday evening just twelve hours before you're back in work again?

Answer: At this point on a Sunday evening it doesn't really matter... that sinking "back to work" feeling is all pervasive...

Juvenile

2009-02-15T17:28:00.002Z

One of the problems of working with children is that you often default to their juvenile behaviour: maybe it's peer pressure. Or maybe when you're surrounded by the intensity of being a teenager it starts to sink into your pores by osmosis. It does mean though, that I found this headline at the BBC amusing in an Ali G style way, before I realised that I'd probably be first up against the wall if it happened here: Shock as Tanzania teachers caned

In one of my classes this year I have a couple of boys who come out with some utter rubbish, but they do make me laugh. I've given up trying not to laugh at them, and they do enjoy the attention it brings: they aren't really as stupid as they appear. Quite frequently the whole of the relatively small class and I are laughing uncontrollably at some idiotic comment that one of them has made.

But there's not just the humour that degenerates. At a recent family gathering I was told how cutting I was being about certain topics, and it wasn't something I'd noticed I was doing. But when I thought about why such nastiness was dribbling from my lips, I realised it was probably reactionary from the frenetic nastiness buzzing around me during the day... somehow I had picked up on the back-biting comments as being the norm. But it was good to have that moment of self-realisation, so I could try to make myself grow up a little more.

Bad weather season

2009-02-15T16:52:00.003Z

I made it through the wilderness.... and the snow.... and now it's half term! We were most unfortunate at my school in that we only had the one day of closure because of bad weather, whilst colleagues at my previous school were gloating and gleeful at having the best part of a week off. Note to self: must look at topography more closely when choosing next school.

Having snow outside and trying to contain kids inside is one of the worst experiences I'd ever had, until the last lesson of the half term where I'd foolishly made the wrong choice between covering for an absent teacher or accompanying a class down to a talk by an outside speaker on something so deathly dull I can't even recall what it was. The pupils just wanted to go home, not be bored to rebellion by somebody talking at them for an hour, so it was no surprise when they started messing about, eating, fighting... but very wearisome for me! Every time my eyes glazed over in a bored stupour I had to jerk myself awake to chastise some child for trying to throttle another or for snapping their chewing gum loudly. I don't remember any degree module on babysitting duties such as these.

It was an anti-climatic end to the half term, which had eclipsed some of the genuinely lovely moments of the day. In the morning half of my Year 11 group was missing as they had been yanked out of class for a mass telling off for some sort of vandalism, so I was left with the nicer element of the group. We couldn't really get on with much without the naughty missing members, however tempting it was, and so we were generally chatting about careers and what they intend to do next year. I discovered one of the quiet girls really wants to be a doctor, so we were looking up details about courses on the class computer, which felt like a genuine way to actually help somebody for a change.

Then there was a touching moment during a Year 7 lesson, where I'd cunningly disguised my laziness by calling the lesson an exercise in "thinking skills". I'd handed over the decision making to the pupils the lesson before: they had to present a topic in any way they wanted to. It meant I could sit there and just observe, perhaps pondering what I might have for dinner or something, as they practised and rehearsed. A couple of groups made cartoon strips; several groups made up little plays, but one boy wanted to work on his own and made a puppet show. Now I do worry about this boy, as he is so earnest but the rest of his class seem to tease him all the time, although he just seems obvlious to it all. But when he presented his puppet show the other children all gathered round and were genuinely oohing and ahhhing at his presentation, quite enraptured. It was lovely to see. And of course, it meant no marking for me from that lesson!

Everything you need to know to survive teaching...

2009-01-30T21:36:00.003Z

This week I received the advance copies of my new book: Everything you need to know to survive teaching - the second edition! And do you know what I thought, dear reader... what an excellent present it might make for the teacher in your life...

Get rid of religion

2009-01-17T09:19:00.002Z

I've been perusing inspection reports. Strange hobby it isn't; it's getting to know the schools in my local area just in case a job comes up that means I could have an extra half an hour in bed each morning.

And what I notice time and time again is that most schools are criticised for lacking in the statutory requirement for a daily act of collective worship. Now when I was a school pupil back in the increasingly hazy mists of time, we had assembly every day. We sung hymns, we dropped our hymn books accidentally on purpose to raise a few giggles and glares, we didn't dare whisper to our neighbour, and we stood up when the teachers flounced onto stage. Since becoming a teacher I've never stepped foot into a school that does this.

Instead, the majority of schools do not have a hall big enough to accommodate the whole school population in one place at one time. Even if there's a way round this, such as extracting one year group at a time for their own year assembly, most pupils only meet for a whole school assembly once a week. This, I think, is a mistake. I believe that a whole school assembly provides cohesion and sets out expectations quite clearly. It's an opportunity to pass on messages and give some moral guidance. I remember the stories we were told in assembly quite clearly, right back to primary school. True, they seemed to be told on an annual rotation, and I've never been one for the religious messages in particular, but I feel I gained a lot from the food for thought they provided.

But sadly, as most schools don't have a whole school assembly every day, this collective act of worship is supposed to take place in form time instead. And it just doesn't work. Maybe in Year 7 the pupils are open and receptive to the structure of a quick prayer "to the god we believe in" and some debate of a thought for the day, but try this with stroppy Year 9s and upwards and you are fighting a losing battle. However subtly a teacher may try to squeeze in a moral message, the pupils are quick to sense that your tone has changed from nagging about uniform to something they're going to take even less notice of. Start to mention "prayer" and the backlash starts.

Religious Education has a generally poor reputation amongst pupils; it needs a rebrand for the 21st century. It's no surprise really: when the news is dominated by deaths and doom caused by religious conflict and the subsequent wars on terror, who wouldn't be turned off by religion? But that's not to say I don't think it has a place in schools: it is precisely because of the dominance of religious conflict in the news that pupils need to know about world religions. And Religious Education does provide the crucial opportunity for children to think philosophically about moral issues, which I see as far more important than learning about oxbow lakes or other trivia that, let's face it, could be condensed to a fact file on the back of a cereal packet. The things learnt in Religious Education are, I believe, some of the most essential life skills that pupils need to grasp. But get rid of the name. It's such a turn off. Call it something sexier and half the battle is won.

But back to these daily acts of collective worship. Why have them at all? Schools fail to provide this quite frequently according to the inspection reports I've read, because even if there is some discussion about important issues in tutorial time, the religious aspect is missing. So why do the powers that be keep insisting that we provide a prayer a day? Again, it needs re-branding. What is a prayer anyway? For the few people who do believe in a god, how many of them pray because they believe their god will answer their prayers, and how many actually just benefit from sorting their muddled thoughts and anxieties into some sort of conscious order? Meditation does provide benefits, but most pupils aren't in the mood to think if from the outset they are being asked to do something they don't believe in. Instead, we need a daily act of collective thinking, discussion, debate and awareness. It would serve the same purpose but without the failure factor generated by using the words "religion" or "worship".

Leading by example

2009-01-17T08:57:00.003Z

I wrote before about the difference a Head Teacher makes to a school. And I knew there was great hope for my school when I recently caught sight of something that I don't suppose many others did. We'd had an Open Evening in deepest darkest winter, when the staff found it gruelling to stand around like sales assistants for three hours after a day's work and answer difficult questions from parents: some over-keen, others ill-informed. As we began to shuffle our best text books into piles ready to stash away from sticky hands and rude pens until next year, I realised I'd left my coat somewhere. And as it was about minus ten outside I knew I had to find it before the caretaker locked it away and doomed me to freeze solid and statue-like just as my hand grasped in my bag for de-icer.

I dashed to the Staff Room and saw my coat lying across the back of a chair, and just as I turned to leave I caught a glimpse into the kitchenette. There I saw our Head Teacher, sleeves rolled up, washing up hundreds of cups and saucers, alone and unacknowledged. And I couldn't help but smile and feel renewed enthusiasm for working for somebody like this.

Bad Boys (and Girls)

2009-01-16T23:24:00.002Z

It's not often I would refer you to The Telegraph, but in this case, it's worth seeing. If I wasn't a teacher I would read that article about terrible behaviour in schools with a cycnical eye, thinking the media was doing their usual "it's the end of civilisation as we know it" act of prophesising armageddon... but I work in a relatively nice school and even I come across this behaviour several times a week.

In fact, in my last school, one student in particular was such a nightmare of aggression and stroppiness that I overlooked whatever duty of care I perhaps should have had for him, and looked out for the others in the class instead. And myself of course. Because each lesson, it could go one of two ways. The first way was the worst way. Ten minutes into the lesson he would explode about something or other, kicking over chairs, stomping out, hurling abuse and books and whatever else was in reach. The second way was preferable, but wrong in the eyes of authorities and laws. He would sheepishly ask to go to the toilet, disappear for ten minutes, and return in a more chilled out mood with slightly blood-shot eyes. He would placidly make a half-arsed attempt at whatever we were doing, without a fuss, and the lesson might even be pleasant for everyone else too.

So which has the best results for the well-being of the students as a whole then? Maybe he just should have had ritalin, but took an alternative route...

Building bridges

2009-01-16T23:03:00.002Z

Ah, look at me there. I was all "end of the year" melancholic wasn't I? Well I decided to return with a more positive attitude for 2009, and for a few days it worked. In the fast-paced, slow-stretched world of the pupils' lives, after one term to them I seemed like I'd been there forever. Even my form group, a bunch of foul-mouthed piss-heads and stoners if they are to be believed (hah!), asked me how my holidays had been, but only so they could then regale me with tales about what they did on New Year's Eve. Puking up on pool tables in the local pubs seemed to be a favourite pastime this year.

But a mere eight school days into the new year and the "alrigh' teacher" greetings had been replaced by at-tee-chood. This week has been the sort where I've had to exercise restraint beyond the understanding of most other professions, except perhaps Catholic priests, and even then...

Three girls in my form group, flashing new diamond rings straight from the Argos catalogue bought to them by gullible boyfriends, have returned with more attitude than they ever had last term. This has resulted in several "in my face" rows as they scream at me in frustration at not being able to slather on another orange layer of foundation because I've informed them it's assembly today. Let's just say they are lucky that their hair extensions are still glued to their heads and not inexplicably wrapped around my fingers...

That was the end of term...

2008-12-30T19:18:00.001Z

End of term scenario 1: Year 11s have had their mock exams and see no point in being at school for the last week of term. Me neither. The wisest ones didn’t bother showing up. The rest just came in moaning in the usual “can we watch a video” way. I’d actually managed to manoeuvre it so there was an educationally relevant (albeit a tenuous link) film for them to watch. They would have been impossible otherwise. But they are out of control and over-excited: the talk is of boyfriends and expensive presents and getting drunk and new phones. A gaggle have exchanged presents and ripped them open and now they all have chocolate that they are just about to start eating even though by rights the lesson has started and the rules state that they can’t eat in classrooms. But I know they’re going to anyway. The solution: “Okay, we’re about to watch the film, and because this our last lesson before Christmas, as a special treat, you can eat chocolates if you have any, but only if you promise to put the wrappings in the bin.” The response: “Oh thanks, you’re so cool, wicked…” etc. The result: I look like the good guy even though all I’ve done is formally acknowledge their rule-breaking…

End of term scenario 2: the staff party looms. Rumours abound that it has taken on a significance well beyond the reality of a few drinks and crackers in a local wine bar and that it’s the social event of the millennium. Any sane person knows this is a lie. Any sane person knows it will be a bunch of teachers standing around swilling drinks for an hour or so and discussing shop and mundane rubbish before some of the group get drunk and start being “outrageous” and giving the teachers of a certain age something to talk about for the next few weeks. The solution: catch a terrible cold and cough pathetically at any given opportunity, therefore giving you a perfectly good excuse not to attend the social event of the millennium and get home in time for Friday night telly instead.

What chance do they have?

2008-12-30T18:33:00.003Z

I suspect that this kind of thing isn't unusual... A couple took their baby on a drinking sesssion and have been prosecuted for its neglect. I suspect they still live with their baby though. As teachers we have to be vigilant and look out for indications that need to be reported to a designated child protection officer. And it's not unusual to discover quite disturbing things about children's home lives from their conversations or from what they write in lessons or form time.

Children with alcholic or drug dependent parents are more usual than you'd think. And with this comes the neglect: poor nutrition, dirty clothes, children looking after parents, no money for school dinners or trips... what chance do these kids have when they look at the role models in their lives? In the past I've had to report on a child who wrote about being given sleeping tablets so her mother could go out and leave her for days; another who looked after an alcoholic mother; a child who unwittingly brought in some of their parents' drug stash to show their mates... and the list goes on.

And very occasionally you get the pleasure of meeting these parents at Parents' Evenings. Mostly they don't show up, but sometimes they have an axe to grind so make the effort. I had one recently. The daughter is well on her way to delinquency and takes great delight in telling me how her mother thinks that we, the school, should be sorting her out. And all I can think is: why doesn't her own mother "sort her out"? Why doesn't she take some responsibility for the delinquent she has spawned and nurtured? Meeting the mother was a very unpleasant experience. Just as I was about to fill her in on what I was doing to try and steer her daughter towards some sort of exam success I could sense the seething rage bubbling up from the mother. And having come across this type of parent before I knew there was only one thing to do: agree and tell her whatever she wanted to hear before she exploded with indignation. The mother was looking for a fight, but I wasn't going to give her the opportunity.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe school is the solution: give these children a chance to develop properly, away from their piss-poor backgrounds deprived of love and opportunity. But I don't feel like I should be responsible for all this too. I don't mind giving it a go in passing, but I'm judged on my exam results and not my nurturing abilities. I became a teacher to teach, not sort out the mesh of social mess. There are workers in school with those roles: the social workers and counsellors and pastoral team. But it's not me and I don't feel qualified to have to deal with all this too. There needs to be some other agency to help with this.

Deepest darkest December blues

2008-12-30T17:52:00.001Z

So there was my first term in my new school. It’s not easy to start afresh. Yes, the staff have been friendly and helpful, and yes, at this stage in my career I know what I’m doing. But there lies the problem I think. I had imagined that a change of scene might revitalise my teaching, with different schemes of work and different challenges. It’s true that one lesson is never the same as another, even if it should be on paper. There are so many variables that affect the lesson: the pupils’ behaviour, their interests, the time of day/week/term, my enthusiasm, and so on. But still I feel an overwhelming sense of repetition.

It all boils down to the same subject matter, the same mistakes in their work, the same interruptions, the same arguments and attitudes about school uniform and other age-old squabbles, the same bombardment of paperwork and new initiatives that are just old ideas in new folders… I’m well aware I sound jaded, because that’s how I feel. And I really wish I didn’t.

One of the appealing factors of my new school was its similarity to my old school, in terms of the sort of catchment area, and exam board, and general outlook on life, the universe and everything. But maybe I should have looked for something that was more of a contrast. But would they have wanted me? I applied to several schools but from past experience I know that selecting candidates means looking for somebody who knows what they’re doing, who has relevant experience and who can fit in.

I can see now why people go for management positions. It’s not just to earn more money surely – it’s also to escape the monotony of teaching the same thing for forty years. Technically, I should be in a management role. But I turned the other cheek and looked the other way when those opportunities were waved under my nose, because I was quite content being a classroom teacher. But now I’m not so sure. I’ve been thinking hard about where I should go from here. I know I should give this job more of a chance. I’ve been trying to analyse why I feel so jaded. It’s been a long and stressful term out of school as well as within. I’ve been struck down with that never-ending cold that seems to have affected half the country. And I’m surrounded by over-keen and enthusiastic NQTs whose energy for new initiatives and activities fills me with guilt because I don’t feel equally inspired.

Meanwhile my previous colleagues have been keeping me up to date with what’s going on in my last school, and their tales of reorganisation, upcoming inspection and low morale should make me feel better… but don’t. There’s something about adversity that pulls a staff together, but I know that’s a romanticised view now that I’m no longer working there.

So yes, there was my first term in my new school. I’m hoping the second term will be more fulfilling. Because now that credit crunch has turned into recession, I can’t afford to take any leaps into the unknown and rock my little boat just yet.

Season's Greetings!

2008-12-19T23:07:00.002Z

I am here! Only just! It's the end of term and I am so exhausted I have no brain left and not even the energy to take a sip of festive cheer! But I will be filling you in on what's been going on in the next few days, with any luck.

Fur coat and no knickers

2008-10-26T08:17:00.003Z

Sometimes it is only with distance that the true picture merges into focus. So it is when I look back at the last school. Now that's not to say that the old school didn't give me lots of opportunities to develop (i.e. courses (snooze) and trips (yay)), or space to actually teach (i.e. we had half-arsed schemes of work and nobody actually checked what I was doing for the first term I was there so I could just make it up as I went along). But when I compare certain aspects with my current place, then I can see just what was going on with greater clarity than before.

It is true that the Head Teacher sets the tone for the whole school. Now these beings are cut from a different cloth to me, because I can't understand why anybody would want to set themselves up for constant public criticism, whether they are right or wrong. But let me show you the difference between my past and present Head Teachers. My present Head Teacher is very similar in ideology and practice to my Head Teacher before last, whilst my last Head Teacher must have been from the same mould as my first Deputy Head who went on to become Head Teacher after I'd left. Keeping up? I can reduce it to two attributes: power crazy, and philanthropic.

The Power Crazy Head Teacher usually has conspicuous displays of his or her rule of iron. Firstly, there's the power dressing. Sarah Palin ain't got nothing on the Power Crazy Head Teacher, who dresses to impress and probably barks, "Breakfast is for wimps!" whilst squeezing a bulging waistline into designer threads. Philanthropic Head Teacher will assert their authority equally well in a comfy cardigan or well-worn suit. Therefore this school's staff also go to work in smart comfort rather than the rigid inflexibility of suits which don't allow for the clambering on tables to fix wall displays or the unforeseen P.E. cover lesson that are part of a teacher's daily life.

This is the same power crazy person who usually drives an inappropriately flashy sports car, probably with personalised number plates, and parks it in their own reserved section far away from flying footballs, and often behind a red roped section attended by a liveried sixth former. Philanthropic Head Teacher drives a middle of the road (not literally; that would be dangerous) car, one which is a few years old but probably top of Which? magazine's list of reliable motors.

And the conspicuous displays of wealth and power dominate the personality too: when Power Crazy Head Teacher patrols the school, it is to sneer at crooked displays and question decisions with derision. When Philanthropic Head Teacher wanders round, it's to see how you're doing, praise your efforts, and wish you a happy half term.

It is no surprise that Power Crazy Head Teacher leaves the staff somewhat unfulfilled in knowing their own worth and value. Their ambitions are laid clear, and it's not long before they have taken on some consultancy role that means they are moving onwards and upwards, until they are only a part-time attender at school they are paid to run.
....

Oh yeeeeeees!

2008-10-24T19:25:00.002+01:00

It's here! Half term! Yeeeees!

There's so much I wish I could share on here but I really don't want to lose my job in the midst of a credit crunch / recession / depression.

In my last school I knew practically everyone was a Luddite who believed even calculators to be either the devil's work or pure magical witchery. In my new school I'm not so sure. Somebody even mentioned "the internet" to me today, so I'll just have to stick to reminiscing about my past colleagues and capers, perhaps...

Naivity

2008-10-22T21:00:00.003+01:00

There's a class I take who are unruly and untamed, uncouth and unable to write properly. Wait, there are several classes like that. But the difference with this class is that they make me laugh so much. They are so naive and yet quite edgy. For a few of them, they cling to little pockets of stereotypes that they have picked up from somewhere, and every lesson involves the dredging up of at least three of these ill-conceived notions, alongside the usual tricks of tripping each other up as they move around the room, sly punches, and blatant insults.

Today's ill-conceived notion is that everybody in London carries knives, from grannies to babies. In the white noise of their minds, London is a place populated with the Krays, Fagins, Jack the Rippers and nobody else. Schoolkids are just short Jack the Rippers in blazers. They seem to think that the periphery of London ripples with the gleam of weapons, and that stepping over that threshold means you might as well give up any hope of staying alive.

Last week's stereotypes for off-task chatter were "gypo"s. When I enquired as to what they were talking about, I was informed that these ne'er-do-wells spend their days and nights stealing generators. That's it. That's all they could come up with. We had a little chat about the dangers of stereotyping, and then one boy confessed that his real problem was people who lived in caravans.

"But," piped up a boy behind him, "you've got a Coachman Laser Tourer."

Cue more punching...
...

No more testing for 14 year olds

2008-10-16T22:12:00.003+01:00

So the big news throwing all sorts of people into flaps this week is the news that the government has decided, just like that, to scrap the national tests for Year 9 pupils. Previously only valuable as a threat to unruly 13 and 14 year olds, the tests were a major balls-up this year when the company responsible for administering and marking the tests just chucked them all into the bin or something like that.

Hooray, lots of teacher are yelling. Boo, some others are crying. And suddenly there are a flurry of emails from publishers and museums and theatres whizzing around saying, "Don't cancel us! Your pupils still need to learn stuff! They can come and visit our Mad Maths exhibition, or buy our "how to spell and write proper" study guides, or enjoy a performance from the Shakespeare troupe. You don't have to cancel just because there aren't any tests!"

And they've got a point, haven't they? It's all so sudden that it's knocked a good number of cottage industries and publishing ventures sideways. I don't know how it's going to pan out, but maybe the government should just step back and stop interfering every five minutes.
...

Ladies' man

2008-10-16T21:57:00.002+01:00

Every now and again I happen to teach a boy who, in the old days, would have been called "sensitive", but in this more enlightened day and age is simply known as "gay". The boy may or may not know he's gay yet; it's not my place to ask or interfere, but merely observe and perhaps write about it on here.

I teach one such boy at the moment, and very effervescent and likeable he is too. He is a chatterbox though. At Parents' Evening this week I mentioned his chattering to his mother, who then wanted to know who he sat by. I reeled off a list of names, all of whom are female. I had to chuckle when his mother nodded sagely.

"Oh yes," she added, with a hint of pride. "He's very popular with the girls."

It was hard not to laugh. There she was, thinking her son is super-stud of the year group, when all I can think of is him prancing about with his gal-pals discussing who's wearing what on Saturday night out.

...

Sharp wits or soppy gits?

2008-10-13T20:41:00.002+01:00

With a Year 9 class of not the highest intellect today, we read the word "debate" and they wanted to know what it meant, probably because it sounds a bit like "masturbate". I tried to explain that we might have a debate about fox hunting, for example. Some people might be for it, and some might be against. Perhaps it was a mistake to choose something so contentious. A large and lovely girl was nearly in tears as boys taunted her with graphic descriptions of foxes being ripped to shreds. I changed the topic, inspired by their behaviour.

Me: "Another debate would be about whether teachers should be allowed to hit pupils with canes."

Brat 1: "We would just hit you back if you hit us."

Brat 2: "That wouldn't work these days 'cos we'd just bring a knife in and stab you."

And what do you say to that?

...

Teacher of the year

2008-10-11T19:44:00.002+01:00

I've been thinking about yesterday's post for a lot of today. I was wondering if I had portrayed what had happened to me too harshly, but on reading it again just now, I don't think so. But I've had a chuckle to myself today remembering when I worked alongside the winner of one of these "teacher's Oscars" award winners a few years ago. Because if I was asking myself if I am shit, then he must have no conscience, because how else would he sleep at night...

Mr W (that's how I think of him; the W stands for something like Winker) hadn't been a teacher for very long when it was announced in the staff meeting one morning that he had been short-listed for a prestigious teaching award - the Headteacher was practically bursting with a mixture of pride and fawning at this time.

Rumours started flying around, as they do amongst a jealous and petty staff, that he had bribed several of his sixth formers to nominate him for this. After all, here was a teacher whose "Rate my teacher" website entry is the only one full of five stars and comments like "what a great guy". But these turned out not to be rumours at all. One of the teachers in my Friday-lunchtime-down-the-pub gang had a son in the sixth form at the time, and confirmed that Mr W's nomination had come as a result of his own suggestion just before he took a bunch of sixth formers on a really exciting field trip with lunch at McDonald's thrown in. Well, we kind of shrugged, how else would a teacher be nominated for an award that only teachers ever really knew about?

Personally I couldn't quite understand how Mr W was supposed to excel at teaching. At times he used my classroom for lessons, and it used to wind me up every time when I returned to my room at the end of one of his lessons to find overturned chairs, sweet wrappers all over the floor, new graffiti on the desks, and so on. At one time I had asked him to track down the culprits who had drawn something rather pornographic on one of my desks, and which had been spotted first by some Year 7s who hadn't quite worked out what it was, thank goodness. Mr W promised to sort it out, but nothing was ever done. A small point, but one which I added to the many others which I started to hear about. There was the case of the lost coursework, the case of the made-up coursework marks, the case of stealing another teacher's work and passing it off as his own... but Mr W was charismatic, and such matters were overlooked or just forgotten...

And being charismatic, Mr W won the trophy and got a promotion within the school. But still the slackness continued. He was given his own office opposite the staffroom. One time I was in the staffroom trying to mark, books balanced on my knee, when in came a dozen Year 11s. I was just about to ask what the hell they were doing when one of them pre-empted my question. It turned out that Mr W had important stuff to do in his new office, like arrange exciting field trips to McDonald's, and so had abandoned the idea of actually teaching his class, dumping them in the staffroom so they were nearby while he used his phone and internet. I did not have the words to express how I felt about this, but he was irreproachable now he had a shiny trophy and promotion.

So I guess the moral to this is that even award-winning shiny-trophy-possessing teachers fall far short of perfection. Or maybe the moral is that awards for teachers are a sham. But either way, it made me feel better about being made to feel a little bit shit yesterday.

...

Am I shit?

2008-10-10T20:45:00.003+01:00

Please, please tell me that not everybody is perfect and I'm not the only person who doesn't always have a starter, plenary, all-singing and dancing kind of lesson.

I was visited by another teacher today from another department. Thanks to timetabling tangles, I teach a few lessons outside of my subject specialism. It's not like I know nothing about this other subject: I've taught it on and off for many a year now and I'm qualified in the subject up to a high level. But obviously, in a new school, they do things differently, and alongside everything else that's new and slightly confusing at times, I'm dealing with teaching this other subject with not much guidance at all, apart from my own stack of resources and experience. For a start, the department might as well be on the other side of town to where my classroom is. Location isn't that important though: only this afternoon I was thinking about how I hadn't seen one member of my department, who teaches next door but one, for about three weeks.

But anyway, I have seen teachers from this other new department about four times since I started and then only in passing. But then today the head of department decided to drop in to see how I'm doing. My classes' books were scrutinised, and I had a round of rapid fire questions about what I've been doing. And then, like a magician who has been hiding the top hat, this teacher suddenly pulled out a white rabbit in the shape of a child's book from a previous year. "Ta-da! Now this is how you should have been doing it for the past few weeks." Gee, thanks. And you didn't show me this before because...?

So the whole exercise just made me feel like crap. I'd been doing alright, but it just wasn't the right type of alright. My starters were the wrong flavour, and I'd marked in the wrong colour. Pah. I just wished I'd been asked the right types of questions. Were the children enjoying the subject? Yes. Were we adhering to the national curriculum and its latest incarnation of levels etc etc? Yes. Was I differentiating for the enormous range of abilties in my groups? Yes. I'm not saying I didn't learn anything from this brief visit, because it did make me rethink one of the tasks we had done, but it just reinforces the fact that in teaching you are never ever right. You can never reach nirvana. You are a mere cockroach who keeps coming back for more shit.

Happy weekend. :-)

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

2008-10-09T17:20:00.002+01:00

Here's something I never thought I would do... look back wistfully at my last school and yearn for one of the teachers and his strict discipline and old fashioned values. I thought of him today when I was on duty, as he used to organise the duty rotas at the last place, and whilst I never really got on with him, he did embody a set of values that a number of the older teachers held dear, which seem overlooked by those of the same generation at my current place.

For thousands of years the elders in society have complained about the lack of respect amongst the younger members. It's just a rite of passage for older people like myself to be disrespected in the same way we used to disrespect our elders when we didn't give a hoot. What goes around comes around. If only for that life lived backwards, youth is wasted on the young, and all that.

But I can't believe the way that the pupils in my current school have a complete lack of boundaries, of knowing (assumes teacher-voice now) where the line is, and when they have crossed it. I thought it was just me, being new and being verbally prodded to see how far I will go. But today I was observing a senior teacher with a class of GCSE students. At first I was smiling wryly to myself: here where the usual complaints and protests about a task from a bunch of students who will just about scrape C grades if they are lucky, or more likely, when the exams are dumbed down yet again. Different kids, different school, same moaning. It does bring a smile to your face to know that some things are just universal.

What shocked me though, was the way that some of the students were cheeking this teacher, and she did not even acknowledge that this wasn't the way to talk to an adult. Even another teenager would have taken offence at the tone of delivery. And now I am alert to this, I am witnessing it time and time again. This afternoon, another senior teacher who has served at least thirty years at the school was completely ignored when issuing instructions to badly behaved students in the corridor. He had to raise his voice to stop them in their tracks, and even then, in a busy corridor swarming with pushing kids, most of the miscreants just carried on with the flow, whilst only two listened to his wrath.

During last lesson, my class were doing group work. It's a big class and although they are only Year 7, whether it's their keenness or boisterous, as an entity they can be noisy during collaborative work. I was circulating, and had stopped by one group. A boy had called me from another group and I visually acknowledged him with a sign I'd be there in a moment. Suddenly, a huge voice bellowed out to attract my attention, and I just couldn't believe that somebody would act that way! I turned slowly on my heel to glare at the culprit, asking very seriously and slowly: "Are you shouting at me?" If that boy ever does that again to me, I'm quite prepared to eat one of his trainers, that is how certain I am that he got the message.

But I fear that for some of them further up the school, they are lost causes by now. They have been pandered to and put up with for so many years that for them, teachers are just like their friends and can be talked to or shouted at or sworn in the presence of in the same way.

Afternoon tea

2008-10-06T12:38:00.002+01:00

Just saw this in the news...

Girl fed school staff hash cakes

The story continues...

Leeds City Council said neither staff members made formal complaints.

I bet they didn't! I bet the day went quite well after that little afternoon tea. Suddenly a double lesson with Year 10 didn't seem such a bind after all...

New leaf

2008-10-01T21:20:00.002+01:00

Maybe it's the autumnal motif, but as the wind whipped the tree tops this morning I decided to turn over a new leaf. I've just been feeling so fed up already, and yet my mind was turning back to how I felt leaving my old school back in July. The staff, my friends; the pupils whose lives interweaved with mine for 5 or more years; the camaraderie against the common enemies of whoever was annoying us that week... I don't have that right now, which is why I guess new schools are hard to cope with at first. And I miss it. My life and experience is starting to diverge from theirs: I can't share their anxieties about the forthcoming inspection, and they know nothing of the issues I find myself involved with now.

So I decided that today I would start to plough my own furrow, feather my own nest, or some such idiomatic doings. I would get more involved. I would sign up to run clubs, help with productions, organise rotas; whatever needed doing. And I did at least one of these things today. Consequently I felt quite beatific all afternoon, bestowing even the most restless of children with calm smiles as I issued detentions like I was dishing out fine candies.

As a result, I finished the day with a calm serenity I haven't felt in a while. I did wonder if somebody had laced my water with opium, but I know I would never let my bottle (of water, not antiquated drugs) out of sight, so it must just have been my leaf-turning.

All was well until I made a crucial mistake. I tried to organise my out-of-school life. Being at school all day, there's no time to make the important phone calls that involve waiting in automated queues or tracking down the one person you need to talk to who always takes their lunch break at the same time as you. So I have about half an hour once school is over in which to phone the weary office workers who control things like council tax and credit cards. And of course, it's always the wrong time of day for them. I imagine they are just reaching over to switch off their computers and fetching their coats from their department kitchenettes, leaning over their open office divides for a quick gossip to pass the long minutes until going home time. And then the phone rings and they tut loudly, irritated at the prospect of having to deal with somebody in the last ten minutes. And that person is me.

So this is why I ended up spending ten infuriating minutes talking to Mrs Jobsworth at the council, unable to satisfactorily resolve what I'd imagined to be a small and easily remedied query, but obviously I was a fool to imagine that anybody like Mrs Jobsworth would share my view. To say she made mountains out of molehills is an understatement. And unhappily for me, I finished the day just as wound up and angry as I normally do, albeit for different reasons.

Stiff letters - and stiff drinks - all round!
...

Griff Rhys Jones and Anger Management

2008-09-30T21:44:00.002+01:00

I felt obliged to watch the second part of Losing It with Griff Rhys Jones on the BBC. Like him, I want to manage my anger. I'm not sure I share a lot in common with Griff - for example, he is a successful multi-millionaire TV personality who can pick and choose his life and whether or not to work, whereas I spend too many hours a day with mixed-up kids and wind-up specialists.

Apart from converting to Buddhism (which does appeal, but I think I like shopping too much), one of the other solutions is to keep a log of which situations spark off feelings of anger. Well, hello, here it is; I've been doing it for five and a half years now and the anger hasn't really subsided... next idea please!

New kid in the block

2008-09-29T19:40:00.002+01:00

I am the new kid in the block - and don't I just know it. Year 11 never fail to remind me in their "subtle" subversive and downright rude ways. Today I just stood there whilst a couple of hulking 16 year old lads pratted about making silly noises and generally interrupting the class. I was wondering what exactly I should do. Once you've worked in one place for long enough, you gain a patina of age and with it a certain respect. And so you only have to give a certain look or have a quick word and the silliness quickly subsides. But when the kids have been in the school for four years longer than you, and they hate school, and they hate your subject, and by default they hate you, then it's all a bit trying. And then when you chastise them by whatever policies the school has in place, or you flick through your behaviour management tricks, they hate you even more for "picking on them".

Which is why today, with Year 11, I found myself just standing there wondering what I should do next. Because all that was going through my head was the almost overwhelming desire to yell and scream and swear in their faces, and it was really hard to suppress this and come out with a more measured and politically correct response. In the end I sent one to a different classroom to sit like a Goliath among the overexcited Year 7s next door, and had a "word" with the other one at the end of the lesson. But both of them were resentful and angry towards me for the way I treated them, which was not the shouty-in-their-faces screaming that I wanted to do, but instead the wholly expected school sanctions. There was back-chat and sulkiness, but I just wanted them out of my sight rather than get involved in any more of their arguments. And now I think of it, what right did they have to be resentful? The majority of the class, who do want to learn, should be resentful, and I maintain the right to be angry with them. After all, aren't I just trying to do my job?

But I can't even be bothered to be angry now the moment has passed. Instead I'm just very weary of it all. I can't afford to throw in the towel, which is the most tempting option, but the thought of a year or two of being tried and tested by spotty oiks is quite demoralising. And biting my tongue when I want to retort with expletives is not as easy as you might imagine when you have dozens of pairs of eyes watching for your reaction.
...

4 weeks on

2008-09-26T20:59:00.002+01:00

Time has done that strange stretchy bouncy thing where it all seems distorted. Today marks my first payslip of the new job, and what amounts to a month in the post. Yet that just consists of 20 working days, 2 of which were child-free. And yet it seems like forever.

When I don't know the names of pupils in my classes I feel incredibly guilty, and yet I've only encountered some groups four or so times. I keep seeing teachers I've never seen before, and yet I still don't know the names of the heads of year. It does make me feel insecure, and yesterday as I drove to work I was wistful for some adult company in the workplace - particularly any kinds of conversations that do not revolve around classes and bad behaviour.

Halfway to half-term... but I don't want to keep wishing away my time...

BSA

2008-09-24T21:04:00.002+01:00

Most people at some point come across BSAs: Bloody Stupid Abbreviations. Teaching is littered and shittered with them. More inventive departments or authors like to make WOOLs: Words Out Of Letters. And my new department excels in this pointless and infuriating sport. At our first department meeting I thought they were taking the piss. We don't just have random WOOLs, but WOOLs on a theme: a zoo of these critters... TIGERs and LIONs and BEARs. Then there are the WALTs and WILFs. WALT stands for something like "We all learn today" or some other simpleton phrase that sounds like it was strung together by an EAL (English as an additional language) pupil. WILF is "What I'm looking for". (I wish I knew.)

And I really, really wanted to add to this particular strand of acronyms "We All Now Know".

But instead I'll just keep RTFM and look forward to next week's Parents' Evening where I can check out the MILFs and FILFs. FFS.

...

Weary and feeble

2008-09-24T20:20:00.002+01:00

That's how I feel, weary and feeble. There's no let-up, is there? I just keep comparing my job to other more normal jobs. Like, if I reached this state of weariness in an office job, I'd just book off Friday or Monday and have a long weekend, go and blow away the cobwebs, and not have to worry about spending my days off marking and planning and never really feeling like I'm getting a break.

And if I was in one of my previous jobs of office chair races and rubber-band flicking, I could just sneak an extra-long lunch break or spend twenty minutes browsing exotic holiday destinations on the internet. But I can't. Instead it's an endless treadmill of education-education-education. Or rather, aggro-cheek-backchat. If it was just the education bit I'd be laughing. I love the education bit. It's what I became a teacher for.

What wears me down and out is the constant scrutiny. Everything I do involves me being watched and judged. Foucault's vision of a carceral system rings hauntingly true... and here's a snippet from font of all knowledge (and master of none) Wikipedia:

In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” which has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “…disciplinary careers…” (Discipline and Punish, p. 300) for those locked within its corridors.

The pupils judge me every moment of every day; if they aren't listening to my education-education-education then they are sizing up my shoes or shirt. The other staff judge my new face on how much time I do or do not spend in the staffroom, what I say, and how I join in. My department colleagues want to know how my teaching is going, and whether I'm letting the kids run riot or verbally beating them into submission. My bosses will inspect me, inspect my books, inspect my lesson plans, assess my adherence to the schemes of work, watch what time I arrive and leave... there is no respite from being judged. Which, on top of everything else - the incessant irritating behaviour, for example - is enough to drive me round the bend...

Anger

2008-09-23T21:21:00.002+01:00

I'm just watching a programme on the BBC about anger and its management. Topical, as today I really had an explosive case of utter rage with one of my teaching groups. Everything you're not supposed to do and say came shooting out of my mouth, firing in the direction of several irritants after a few days of bubbling under as I had tried to tolerate their low-level disruptive crap.

One of these pupils I find quite dangerous. Well, maybe dangerous is not quite the right word, but she seems quite unstable: needy and fishing for compliments, draping herself across my desk on the way in and then chewing and chatting away through my lessons. Unfortunately for me, she is also in my form group. And from my perspective at the front of the room I can see how she plays with the other girls in the form group, intimidating them, stirring things up, excluding and including them in order to exert power over them. I think that deep down she is dreadfully unhappy somehow, but at the moment - and perhaps for ever - there's no way I want to get close enough to delve into whatever is going on.

Anyway, the poor twenty-something other members of the class have now experienced me losing it and I really wish they hadn't had to witness it. I know I should have kept my cool but I am only human. The initial loss of temper lasted about four seconds, but as I'd already started shouting I thought I would just carry on at that level with a few more better-measured comments on rudeness, predicted exam failures or successes, and how inconsiderate it is to waste time. Yep, almost every cliche sprang to mind as I flicked through the mental textbook How to make an impact on rude teenagers. I thought I might as well take the opportunity to get them out of my system, and I was also hoping to show the rest of the class that my initial shout was less of an outburst and more of a life-lesson for the needy and those bereft of manners.

The thing is, I put up with so, so, soooo much crap: several on-going irritations in at least four corners of the room for the majority of five hours a day. Not all of it is intentional, but just the tapping of a pen or the constant reminders from me to some pupil swinging on a chair starts to build up and irritate me. Repeating instructions to children who should have been listening to what I said the first, second and third times (and these instructions are usually written down somewhere too to appeal to the "visual learners") irritates me. Reminding the same children every lesson to remove scarves and coats irritates me. How can these things not? If I overlook them, I'm a bad disciplinarian and the behaviour deteriorates.

And now I've just remembered a childish temper tantrum I myself had last week one morning. I should have left for work ten minutes earlier but was still trying to hunt down something important from a set of shelves with no success. Before I really knew what I was doing, I had started flinging everything from the shelves, yelling to nobody in particular how unfair it all was. Unfortunately, the TV programme on anger management has just finished with the presenter Griff Rhys Jones just telling us that we'll have to wait until next week to find out how to deal with anger. Fricking great.

I know the real solution of course. It lies in the job pages, somewhere.

...

Kick a banker

2008-09-19T22:11:00.002+01:00

My oh my... talk about kick a banker when they're down...

Anxious bankers fearing their jobs are under threat are to be targeted as potential recruits by England's teacher training agency.

Still disconcerted

2008-09-18T20:37:00.002+01:00

Since splitting up some hardcore slackers in my Year 11 class last Friday after a "bit of a stern talking-to" (I'm not usually the shout-in-your-face type that other teachers enjoy being from the sounds of things), the group is still freaking me out with their knuckling-down-to-work attitudes. The phrase "silent but deadly" doesn't just apply to farts, it also applies to innocent -looking students, so I'm waiting to see what they are really up to...

Even more disconcerting was the amount of younger pupils in corridors at lunchtime today who greeted me with cheery "hellos". Year 7s are always naive enough to be nice; it's the swiftly fading memory of cheery little primary school still playing about their persons. But Year 8s saying "hello" is just a little more freaky. Hey, maybe I'm just a cynic. But Year 8s normally know better than to show any kind of positive emotion towards a teacher in front of their peers, especially when you're not even in the classroom.

Ah well, Friday tomorrow. Plenty of time for the little beggars to get me wound up ready for the weekend...

Fashion watch

2008-09-16T22:06:00.002+01:00

The latest fashion adornment requires just a red pen, probably swiped from a teacher's desk. Take the red pen and scrawl pseudo-slashes across your wrists and up your arm. And voila - you now look like you are a self-harmer as all "emo"s allegedly are, according to the misinformed members of my school.

Bee-zarr.

Too quiet

2008-09-16T20:31:00.002+01:00

Today I am very disconcerted. After all the grief I got yesterday from noisy and unco-operative children, today they were mostly as good as finding out I had exactly the right change for the vending machine at lunchtime. My raucous Year 11 group were studying their texts so attentively I had to keep giving them sideways glances to make sure they were still there. In addition, I had two free periods and I wasn't taken for cover on either of them, even though I checked the list a dozen times or so, not quite believing my eyes.

Ah well, I'm sure the shit will hit the fan tomorrow.

Headache and a half

2008-09-15T21:06:00.002+01:00

I'm off to bed in a minute. I have a banging headache. It was caused, ultimately, by my own bellowing at a couple of classes who would not SHUT UP today.

Week 3 is always a pain. Novelty has faded away and the grim reality of being back at school has sunk in for pupils and teachers alike. New friendships are forged between class members, and new enemies are made and disbanded every day. Newish books appear slightly dog-eared, pencil cases lack pens, and there have already been a few playground fights.

Add to the mix that today is a full moon, meaning hyperactivity and madness all round. There wasn't particularly any naughtiness, although I'm sure a hundred years ago it would have been the type of behaviour to earn a few sound thrashings. It was just the inability of some people in each group to stop talking for more than 30 seconds to listen to instructions or the register. Even when they had all listened to the instruction to remain silent for the register, within milliseconds the talking had started again.

My form group is the worst. If I hear one more time about how cool their last form teacher was, and how she let them do this and get away with that, I shall throw all their PE kits out of the window when they're not looking. The girls are noisier than the boys because they just sit there and gossip and twitter away even when addressed directly and asked to be quiet. The boys give out the odd bellow and stupid noise, but their conversation seems very limited from what I've overheard: mostly crude comments about girls. A lot of them are nice kids, but en masse they are an incessant cloud of noise. Form time each morning is the thing I dread most at the moment. The thought of it ruins my whole evening.

In fact the only good thing about today was that Mondays mean the scent of freshly washed uniforms wafts around the school corridors and out of over-crowded classrooms.

My new school

2008-09-14T17:45:00.002+01:00

Random stuff about my new school:

a) The Senior Management Team is mostly older time-served teachers, which is a relief after a succession of young whipper-snappers who talk the talk but don't walk if they can possibly drive around in their flash Audis instead. There is one younger senior teacher whose main role seems to be making highly colourful charts and wearing the flashiest designer clothes and brand new white trainers on Inset days, so I already have him marked out for possible future ridicule.

b) I've been there two weeks and I still don't really know much about what goes on outside of my classroom. But now I'm almost over being a complete "newbie" and people keep telling me about things I've never heard of and assuming that I know what they are talking about. Ditto with people's names. "Can you let Mrs H know as soon as you can?" - a typical phrase that sends me into a panic as there are at least three teachers with the same names and I can't put any names to faces.

c) There are some very helpful people who have gone out of their way to assist me with various things and have made my whole experience much more pleasant with their thoughtfulness. The smallest of gestures can mean a big deal to somebody new. Thanks guys.

d) The classrooms don't have many cupboards. So there's nowhere to stash all my resources or go to pull faces when the kids annoy me or take the mickey out of my accent.

e) It took me over a week to stop thinking about the last school as "my school" and to stop texting my old colleagues every lunchtime to catch up on the gossip.

f) Things that look shiny on your interview day must only look that way through the sheen of nerves. When you're actually there, for real, you can see the literal and metaphorical cracks.

So there you have just a few first impressions. Some things don't change though. I've left it until tea-time on Sunday to do my homework - that is, make resources for several schemes of work I've never taught before. And week three is when the novelty of new school / back at school wears off for the pupils, so I'm expecting a rougher ride over the next few days...

Wondering about wandering

2008-08-24T21:25:00.003+01:00

Maybe this is my shortest ever rant, but I just want to say that I really, really, really hate it when people muddle up "wander" with "wonder". There are some other idiot mistakes that annoy me, but I've just watched a promotional video online where the presenter mixes them up and I just wanted to go "arghhhhhhh grrrrrrrrrrr".

Bully Teacher

2008-08-22T11:31:00.002+01:00

I thought I'd shaken off the shackles of my old school, but having been in this week to see the exam results, I feel wound up again by some of my (ex) colleagues. Like every workplace, schools have a number of people working there who really shouldn't be, and like the public sector in general, it's quite difficult to get rid of incompetent members of staff. And then there are staff who should be booted right out of the door but for some reason Management thinks they are valuable assets to the school who should be rewarded and retained with promotions.

One of these disgraces is Mr A. When you first meet him, you will probably recognise his type: one of the lads, seemingly popular with the kids, likes a joke and a laugh and has many of the LSAs swooning. Add into the mix that he teaches a shortage subject and filled a vacancy that had been wide open for a long time, and you can see why he looks like an attractive proposition.

But then you dig deeper. Why do the kids love him so much? Well, he takes lunchtime sports training every now and again, and he is the king of practical jokes. Oh yes, he's always having a laugh and a joke with the kids. But then you start to hear complaints from members of your form.

"We don't learn anything from him."
"He picked up my pencil case and emptied it all over the desk, and everyone was laughing but I didn't think it was funny."
"We're always playing games but we didn't cover what we needed for the exam."
"I wanted to ask him something but he told me to go away because he was emailing his friends."
"He scribbled on my book right in front of me then told me off and said I'd done it."
"He shouted at us all for not doing the homework but he hadn't set any."
"He lost my book and then told me off for forgetting it. But he's lost it."
"We watch lots of videos. Last lesson we watched 'Die Hard'. It's really good but it had nothing to do with (the subject)."

Now some of these you would be inclined to explain away. What teacher hasn't been accused of losing a child's book? Who hasn't shown a video at the end of term? Surely these games are educational, but he's such a great teacher that the kids don't even realise they are learning? But after having given Mr A the benefit of the doubt, there comes a time when these comments start to add up into something more than the occasional slackery.

Mr A is a bully. He commands a group of laddish teachers whose behaviour deteriorates in his presence as they compete to keep up with his "jokes". At least one NQT has emulated his behaviour, seeing how popular it makes him, and has gone from being a really promising teacher to an arrogant slacker. Mr A bullies the children. Messing about with their stuff might seem like a laugh to the class, but it's the kind of thing the class bully does to intimidate others and make themselves look popular.

Mr A is also really thick. In his shortage subject, the barriers for recruitment must be lower, and whilst he knows enough (allegedly) to teach his own subject (if he could ever be bothered), his general knowledge and common sense are way below par. He can't write very well, and so his corrections and notes read like an illiterate Year 7's.

And in September Mr A's reward for all of this? - a promotion to head of year, where he can continue to bully children and charm their parents.

Loaded

2008-07-25T09:42:00.003+01:00

The BBC's Education website has given burglars hope that the recession will not affect them by pinpointing that come the autumn, student rooms will provide rich pickings in the way of easily portable electrical consumables: Students bring kit worth £6,000

I would have had an easier time of it too if I had had a mobile phone instead of wasting valuable drinking, ahem, studying minutes queuing for the pay phones to ring home once a fortnight or when the money had run out. I wouldn't have spent ages wandering around campus to see where everybody was when a quick text message would have confirmed that.

But then I would have probably spent all my time messing about on the internet instead.

In Limbo

2008-07-24T10:07:00.002+01:00

There we are then. As I've had a leaving party, embarrassing speech scenario, and am about a stone heavier from all the "goodbye" parties (aka chcolate overload) with each class I taught, I can assume that I have officially left my school, even if they are paying me up until the end of August.

So now I'm in limbo.

I don't even have a timetable for my new school yet, which saves me an hour of colouring-in this summer. I don't have any schemes of work to prepare for the old department for the new school year, and in fact I don't really know what my new department does or how they do it. I went for a visit, but everybody was in that "can't be bothered, let's worry about it in September" frame of mind, and if I had asked I would only have been interrupting their video viewing, so I didn't bother either. Somewhere I have about two weeks' worth of generic winging-it lessons, so I'll dust those off the night before.

Which means that I should be feeling less burdened than the past umpteen years, but I don't. It's only the second day of the holidays but I can't settle. Does any teacher immediately switch off? There's a term's worth of dust layering shelves I haven't looked at in daylight for a good few weeks, and the spare room is chest-high in boxes of resources I found lurking at the back of my cupboard. I have so much to sort out but I just want to flop down and watch old films.

The transition time between hectic end-of-termness and yawning summer holiday is limbo time too.

Sexuality - strong and warm and wild and free

2008-07-04T21:44:00.003+01:00

I was just browsing around some of my regular haunts in the blogshere and reading MissB's comments on sexuality reminded me of something I was going to say earlier. In contrast to MissB's observations about boys wanting to be uber-masculine, there's a really odd trend in my school at the moment. It's now the done thing for boys to show that they are camp as a row of tents... provided they are the studs of the school in the first place. Wannabe-studs seem to have to flaunt their passion for pink as a rite of passage to show they are so over having to prove themselves to the girls. I've never seen such behaviour before, and I'm wondering how much influence metrosexuals such as David Beckham and Gavin Henson have had on this trend.

For example, when giving out coloured paper to Year 8s for some time-filling poster activity, the boys all want pink, and also want to shout this out so that everybody in the class knows that they haven't gone for manly maroon or boyish blue. In corridors between lessons, those boys who drip with cheap and chunky gold jewellery greet each other with mafia-style hugs and kisses, and all that's missing is the heavy coat being shrugged from their shoulders.

Now I'm all for breaking down gendered stereotypes, but this is all just a bit disconcerting. I just get the impression that there's more going on here than we're aware of. And I don't think it's as simplistic as passing wraps of drugs or salt (both equal menaces in our "healthy eating" school). Maybe I'm just missing something obvious - a TV programme they are imitating, for example. But whatever's going on, all I know is that we need to start stocking up on pink paper.

Can you help?

2008-07-03T22:49:00.002+01:00

I wonder if anyone could help? Today, after counting up how many lessons I have left to count down, and realising that I will never see some of the children or staff again after a couple of weeks' time, I experienced a strange feeling. It was like a twinge, but it wasn't anger or cynicism or elation. It was this odd kind of sensation that made the corners of my mouth droop. If anyone knows what I could possibly be feeling, then please contact me in the usual way...

Seasons out of synch

2008-07-01T06:43:00.002+01:00

Maybe it's global warming (of course; it gets the blame for everything else natch) but our seasons currently seem out of synch. I didn't think it was exams-knocking season for over a month yet, but clearly it's started early this year. The BBC reports that a Watchdog is to debate exam difficulty, in that across the board subjects are not comparable, with some being far easier to achieve the top grades in (or even pass) than others. Quite right too. But quite wrong if the end result is that the harder exams get dumbed down to make them comparable to the easier ones. They have already been doing that for a number of years.

Indeed, on the day of my subject's GCSE exam, I found myself scoffing and scowling once I had a paper in my hands. I even had to read the small print on the Higher paper to ensure it wasn't actually a Foundation paper instead. It was ridiculously easy compared to the past papers we had been practising. And whilst that will be reflected in our results, I did think it was a shame that the students hadn't been challenged to produce their very best on the day by something with a bit of oomph. It also means you can probably pass the subject without knowing very much at all.

Then there was the story that Markers award students for writing obscenities on papers, which I even heard discussed on "Parliament Today", where ministers took the opportunity to start deriding many different exam questions at different levels. It seems that this story is actually about a chief examiner who uses a sample script each year to demonstrate a point, but it is heartening to know that half of the sink set at least won't come out of the exam with zero.

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.
One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.
His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.
Mr Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), an examination board, said that he had given the pupil two marks, out of a possible 27, for the expletive.

Nearly there?

2008-06-23T21:43:00.002+01:00

Time is ticking away until the end of term, but there's still no time to slack off. Even if the kids all want to chill out and piss around. They've done their exams so their point of view is that there's no need to learn anything else until next year. I'm struggling to mark exams but I must get them done in good time to get the reports written before the deadline, which is looming ever closer. Then there's the additional wrapping up I need to do in this job, as of course I'll be leaving my grotty classroom in just about 4 weeks' time and there's a billion loose ends to tie up before I go. I may be a Ranting Teacher, but I'm also a crusader for good standards, so I'm currently trying to write notes for my successor and leave everything in as good an order as is possible.

But even then I know that by two weeks into the new term in September, everything that goes wrong can be conveniently blamed on me. It's the way of the workplace, and they're welcome.

Summer Heights High

2008-06-18T21:41:00.002+01:00

I've just watched the first two episodes of a comedy on BBC3 called Summer Heights High. You just have to give it a try; it's one of the funniest things I've seen this year. It's an Australian "mockumentary" set in a high school, but the characters are so wittily observed. I especially like Jonah, the 13 year old swearing hard nut with a reading age of 8. Most schools have at least one Jonah, even if theirs isn't from Tonga.

Try to catch it if you can!

Taking the piss

2008-06-18T18:50:00.002+01:00

One thing I will certainly miss when I start my new job is the rank that every teacher, if truth be told, aspires to, if they are not working their way up the career ladder. And that rank is the one which could be called the "taking the piss a little bit" rank. By this, I mean that you know your way around the job ever so well, you know who's who and who matters, and you've earned yourself some brownie points here and there. So, like a get out of jail free card, you've earned a "taking the piss a little bit" card. Some people in my school seemed to have progressed further still, to the "don't give a stuff" rank, but that's a dodgy one to aspire to - it could tip the balance between SMT turning a blind eye and SMT getting heavy on everyone.

For example, the "taking the piss a little bit" rank entitles you to turn up to school a little bit too late for the morning meeting because you had five extra minutes in bed. The "don't give a stuff"-ers are those who then deliberately avoid meetings, so that SMT implement a sign-in policy for everyone to try to curb this wayward behaviour. The "taking the piss a little bit" rank means you can casually ask the teacher in charge of cover if you can leave early to go to the dentist, instead of waiting until the summer holidays like newbies. Those who "don't give a stuff" ring in sick with toothache and spend half the day at the dentist and the other half getting their hair done.

So come September I shall revert to being a newbie and doing things to the letter until I work out who the movers and shakers are, and really by now I should start booking dentist appointments for upcoming half terms...

Washed up

2008-06-10T18:36:00.003+01:00

Today I am mostly feeling washed up. Why? Well, on our staffroom noticeboard is a bright and breezy call-out for a new initiative. It's extra training for those who want to develop managerial skills by attending all kinds of fun days out of school scoffing hotel buffet lunches and listening to talks on current issues in education. I'm sure there must be a downside too, but as I had just been propelled into the staffroom by the pure hot air expelled by the over-boisterousness of cocky teenagers, sitting around in an air-conditioned seminar room looked like an easy option. So I peered closer for details.

And then I saw it was only available to those who had been teaching for fewer than a certain number of years. And I have been teaching for more than that. So bright and breezy initiatives aimed at go-getters are only for those who are not yet washed up and past it, those like me who haven't been bothered with management bollocks to date because they haven't yet been worn out by classroom teaching and haven't looked for a cushy escape yet.

Is there a critical moment when a classroom teacher who actually enjoys teaching kids is deemed to have failed to hatch because they have, up to that moment, shown no desire to leave the classroom for more paperwork? Did a group of "experts" sit around and say: nope, once you've served your x amount of years without promotion and progression then you're a has-been, and you're never going to make it? I don't like to be written off like this!

But it did make me think: how is this equal opportunities? What about women who have notched up their years but it has been punctuated by pregnant pauses and subsequent maternity leaves? What about people who were waiting until their own children were in nursery or school and so could dedicate more time to their career? Or those who have moved between several schools for whatever reason, piling up valuable experience with no previous desire to aim for management?

And what about those of us after the free sandwiches and mini quiches instead of crisp warppers on the classroom floor? It's just so unfair.

Big Brother Season

2008-06-06T19:20:00.002+01:00

Oh I love this time of year. As light relief from the attention-seeking, constant noise and shouting, and idiotic comments every hour of the working day, each evening I can chill out in front of the TV and watch the attention-seeking, constant noise and shouting, and idiotic comments of the Big Brother contestants.

This year there are two trainee teachers amongst the seething mass of humanity (and otherwise) who entered the house last night. Dale is training to be a PE teacher and claims to hate children. Why is this a surprise? I thought it was a prerequisite of being a PE teacher. He is also an arrogant tosser who believes he is heaven-sent for the women of the world. I mentioned this to a female PE teacher at school today. She hasn't seen the programme, but just shuddered. Apparently Dale sounds like a typical male PE teacher, most of whom are to be avoided like the clap.

There is also Rachel, training to teach English and drama. Some of her pupils from her training school are already posting on forums about how "pritty" she is and what a surprise it is to see her there. Is there a future for teachers who appear on Big Brother? In 2001 a contestant called Penny Ellis temporarily left her teaching job to appear on the show, and the headteacher of her school said she faced the sack if she had sex on the show. In the end she was voted out early but not before letting her towel slip a few times in front of the cameras. According to her entry on imdb, she did carry on teaching, and in 2005 one poster wrote:

after big brother, she came to teach out our school, her real name is penny
ellis, us older lot used to mess about wit her, saying stuff like "nice tits
miss". if the class got out of control she used to cry. believe me if u like and
dont if you like, i just thought it was worth mentioning!

I might try to find out more later, but if anyone knows any more, then let me know!

Sparklebox

2008-06-02T16:02:00.002+01:00

This is just a quick post to draw your attention to Sparklebox, a website full of lovely resources especially for primary teachers - and you can now download any of their stuff for free! It makes me wish I lived in a world of names-on-trays and amazing wall displays, instead of names scratched on desks and walls, and wall displays left intact for 5 minutes before some little tyke decides to rip them...

Hyperbole in Hyperspace

2008-05-28T16:47:00.003+01:00

Teachers online are in danger. That was the gist of a news article on the BBC yesterday.

School teachers using their home computers have been warned about the dangers of putting too much personal information on the internet.
Concerns were raised about teachers contacting pupils by e-mail, or communicating through social networking sites such as Bebo or Facebook.
Some fear that it could lead to the kind of accusations that have ruined careers in the past.

My response to this: no shit, Sherlock. And yet when I was surfing around one of these social networking sites the other day, searching for some photographs that a relative had posted, curiosity got the better of me and I did a search for my school name. I didn't want to snoop on pupils: that would feel so wrong, even if they do expose their private lives to such a public forum. But I wanted to see if any other staff used the site. And I must admit, I was surprised by how much information some of our staff members put up for all to see online.

But what was more surprising were the "friends" that these staff members linked to. At least half of them appeared to be present and past pupils of our school. I can understand that if you teach somebody for up to 7 years and they then go off to university and beyond, then you are curious about their future and how they get on with their adult lives. But where do you draw the line?

The General Teaching Council of Scotland is asking teachers to adhere to an agreement about using social networking sites. Usually I rankle at any intrusion the GTCs want to impose on us teachers, but I think they are right in this case. Here's what one of the teachers says at the BBC news article:

"There are some new technology issues that do come up. A friend of mine had a social networking page and was recently approached by a pupil to become their friend, to which they rapidly replied: 'no thanks'.
"In rural areas, where teachers live within the catchment areas of the school or perhaps have children who go to the same school, they may have pupils who are friends with their children and maybe even visit their house.
"At what point does it become the teacher/pupil relationship, or one of the friend's parent?
"There has to be a balance between building a rapport with pupils, but also maintaining a distance and a level of formality.
"There is always an element of naivety, particularly with those who are new to the profession, but this new code will benefit us and protect us."

Untold Junk

2008-05-28T16:44:00.000+01:00

I was a squirrel in a past life, or will be in a future life. I’ve started to clear out my filing cabinets and found untold junk. Important documents I was going to read later but never did; scraps of newspapers and magazines that I was going to incorporate into lessons but are now curled up and yellowing; photocopies of reports from the days of yore when they were still handwritten; papers I’d searched for high and low but were under my nose all along; confiscated notes from Year 8s who are now grown up and have left school; lesson plans long forgotten but gladly rediscovered… and all because I’m such a hoarder.

But now the hardest bit: how can I part with stuff? How can I sort the wheat from the chaff, the useful resources from those I will never need again? Obviously a lot of the above list is easily jettisoned, but as I don’t know what the new school has yet, I can’t decide what I will need. Besides, what if I have to teach beyond what I’m expecting? What if I move schools again in a couple of years? So even what should be a simple job of clearing out my classroom and packing up papers into crates is taking much longer than I expected.

And so it sinks in

2008-05-23T20:32:00.002+01:00

It takes a while to actually realise you’re leaving your job. At least, it took a while for it to sink in for me. Maybe because I had been thinking of it for so long that the novelty just wore off, and also I only associated the idea with hassle. Maybe I already knew deep down that something would turn up before the May deadline and I’d be off, and so something inside me was already prepared. Or maybe the nerves and adrenaline take a while to subside, and only then does reality bite. And that bite comes in different forms:

1. People you never really spoke to before come up to congratulate you and actually mean it.

2. You see your job advertised with alarming rapidity.

3. People start planning your leaving party without consulting you.

4. Somehow the kids know before you do. “Is it true?” they ask and you try to work out if they’re happy, sad, or just curious.

5. You start to view your classes with different eyes. With some pupils, there is overwhelming relief that you won’t have to deal with them or their parents ever again. With others, there’s some sadness that you won’t be following their progress when you see so much potential.

Today were the interviews for the post I am vacating. I was going to say “my job”, but I think it ceased to become mine when I staked a claim in a new place. I’ve never been at a school for as long as I’ve been in this one, and so never before have I felt such mixed emotions about leaving, even though it’s a little way off yet. I was involved in some of the interviewing processes and so was eager to know who had been given the job at the end of the day. I was pleased for the successful candidate and it was a happy moment to see how excited and relieved they were when they were told: texting colleagues and family whilst shovelling papers into their briefcase and trying to take it all in, just as I had done so recently myself.

But it was as I walked out to the car park that the reality sunk in and I realised I had just been replaced. And that was the moment I knew that I really will be leaving. Today was the end of a busy half term. That means I have just one half term left... the next time we break up I will be saying goodbye for good.

Not green? Not surprised

2008-05-21T18:16:00.003+01:00

I just read on the BBC News site that Most schools aren't turning "green". This comes as no surprise to me, and something that I'd wanted to have a rant about for a while - the absolute WASTE of resources generated by just one school. Whilst one teacher on our staff battles on to try to win us "green" awards by creating a little garden that pupils can work on at lunchtimes, and organising the paper recycling, the rest of the school - pupils and teachers alike - continue to contribute to astronomical fuel bills and sheer waste of paper. Regardless of the PSE sessions and geography and science lessons, in practice the school is worse than any other place I've worked in.

Here's what is NOT green about the school:

1. The building: draughty most of the year, with windows rattling in rotten frames and doors continually left open. For over half the year the heating has to be turned up full everywhere to make a difference. For a few months in summer we swelter in the heat generated by the sun beating through the badly insulated building, whilst the computer suites bask in their incessantly whirring air conditioning.

2. Computers and printers left on - all the time. No matter how many times we are told to shut them down at the end of the day, most rooms contain equipment still left on at the end of every day, overnight, and even all weekend. It makes me furious.

3. And while it may grow on trees, paper is wasted every single second. Kids printing out their work send it through multiple times, and then when it is actually printed, it's full of mistakes so they have to repeat the process. Kids think nothing of screwing up a piece of paper and requesting another one when a drawing has gone wrong, even though they could just erase the mistakes. Two photocopiers churn out multiple worksheets and letters home (that get left on classroom floors) every minute of the working day. Weighty booklets of documentation are distributed to each teacher at regular intervals, and most of it goes unread.

4. The buses waiting to take pupils home sit there for at least 15 minutes at the end of the day belching out noxious fumes from their antiquated exhausts, making bus duty the equivalent of smoking several really big cigars.

And we're all guilty of something too - through choice or by necessity, most teachers live a good car drive away from the school, because nobody wants to live too near the pupils, or share a bus with them at the end of the day...

R&R

2008-05-20T18:28:00.002+01:00

You'd think this would be the best time of year... exam classes are on study leave, freeing up several lessons each week. The mornings are light and so are the evenings. The student teachers are still in school and can now be left alone with classes to do their thing. So why is practically everyone at school so blooming tired all the time?!

Roll on half term; the lower school has gone hyperactive and hormones are a-go-go. Without Year 11 in school and with no sixth form prefects on duty because they're all on study leave, the middle years now think they rule the roost and spend their time loitering in corridors and snogging in doorways. Just wait for the Year 6s to start visiting and even Year 7 will start to strut their stuff, realising they're not the babies any more...

The truths about job hunting

2008-05-19T21:43:00.000+01:00

1. It’s incredibly difficult to get an interview if you have passed over the threshold on the pay scale.

2. It’s absolutely draining: from the repetitive form-filling to the same phone call home every day enquiring about the post, just in case.

3. But like the child who continues to chew gum every lesson, even though he is reprimanded every time, until he eventually gets away with it… if you send enough applications off, and widen your radius, and cross off the criteria you’d carefully put on your list of desirable attributes of potential new employers… you will eventually get an interview! Hooray!

4. And then the nerves really kick in, along with self-doubt, and the frustrating knowledge that you could do the job well, but you just don’t do interviews very well.

5. The traumas of the interview day are documented elsewhere. And it’s all too recent and raw for me to re-live here. But after what is now months of anxiety, I can finally announce: I have a new job! More hooray! Well, same job, different faces and places…

And the wishful thinking would be that a new job won’t give any cause for ranting… but the chances of that…?

It's Friiiiday!

2008-05-16T21:40:00.002+01:00

I don't know how we got there but we did... it was a slow crawl to the last bell today. After days and days of sunshine, the rain finally came and left the kids giddy and wound up. Year 11s milled around the school, fondly glancing in classrooms as they wandered down to exams, as if they had been away for years, not just a few days of study leave. But the rest of the school were in the mood to fight, push, swear and back-chat.

And so I only have the energy to lift the glass of wine to my lips before an early night...

What a shocker!

2008-05-14T19:05:00.002+01:00

What a shocker indeed - but a nice one I must say. Today a member of the senior management team dealt with and solved both things that I raised, and did so within three hours.

In a world where you can drop a form into somebody senior's tray and then never hear anything about it again, it was a totally pleasant surprise that just had to be noted here!

Give that SMT member a gold star!

Faking it

2008-05-13T18:08:00.002+01:00

In the news today (although I'm sure I've heard of this before) is the revelation that a university has told its students to inflate their opinions of it in a survey so that it ends up higher in a league table:

University staff have been caught pressuring students to dishonestly answer an official funding council survey of student satisfaction.
Kingston University staff have been recorded instructing students to inflate their responses in the annual National Student Survey.
"If Kingston comes down the bottom, the bottom line is that nobody is going to want to employ you," staff warned.

I don't see how this is any different from every school going through an inspection, which bribes or threatens the pupils to behave well, smarten up, respond in lessons, etc. It goes on all the time. Just like the schools which force pupils to take vocational qualifications that are the equivalent to 4 GCSEs so that the school looks like it gets 100% of pupils attaining 5 GCSEs.

It just goes to show what nonsense league tables are. And yet I still look at them. Because with all the higgly-jiggly going on, you know that if a school looks average or worse, then surely it's got to be a really dire place with a management team that can't even fiddle figures to make their own school look better...

Scottish 6th formers on grass! etc!

2008-05-13T18:03:00.002+01:00

I just wanted to get in with the most obvious headline first when I read about a sixth-form prank in Scotland:

The entire sixth year of a school was sent home on their last day after pupils turfed over the floor of their common room.
Teachers at Banchory Academy took the step after it was discovered some pupils had been drinking.
Aberdeenshire Council said it was decided to send all 100 pupils home.
A spokesman said there were concerns about disruption to exams taking place in the school. One 17-year-old pupil was charged with breach of the peace.

Another week of hot weather forecast

2008-05-11T21:34:00.002+01:00

I'm just hoping that as usual the forecasters have got it wrong. After being categorically told we can't leave the classroom, I know for sure that, if I am confined to my room with an average of 30 sweaty adolescents while the sun beats in through the windows, I will just wilt and fade away...

So I wasn't the only one

2008-05-10T19:05:00.002+01:00

Earlier in the week I read a blog entry by a maths teacher who had taken his class outside for the kind of lesson the Teacher Training Agency pretends we do all the time: in his case, putting maths into action, measuring stuff and photographing lines of symmetry. At the time I added a comment that I hoped he didn't get a bollocking like I had done.

And then today I read that he did sort of get told off for being innovative.

I wonder if we are just all living in parallel worlds (must be the maths influence). How many other teachers tried the same thing this week? Who else tried to enliven a lethargic class by taking them outside to breathe in fresh(er) air and feel something other than the tingle of wireless networking on their skin, to hear the birds sing instead of the background drone of computers on standby and flies trapped in hot classrooms?

I took a class outside for a lesson for two main reasons this week: firstly, they were in real danger of dehydrating and having their brains frazzled in my very hot classroom where the blinds are broken and you can't open the windows very far in case they swing round and smash; and secondly because there were 35 wilting children in a classroom with just 32 desk spaces, and it was to be an active lesson to satisfy the kinaesthetic learners (and disguise the desk: pupil ratio).

Unfortunately our traipsing outside coincided with a member of the senior management team patrolling the grounds for smokers (or perhaps he had just snuck outside for a crafty smoke himself). But whether it was nicotine withdrawal or just the heat of the day, he decided to start shouting at the advance party members of my class who were doing nothing wrong at all: walking out orderly and quietly as I'd asked them to. I caught them up and muttered something before whisking them away, but the damage was done: the kids were justifiably unhappy to have been yelled at for no reason, and I just knew this would come back to bite me on the bum.

But nobody even gave me the right to reply. Every one of those kids could have told anyone who asked them what their learning objectives were that lesson. All of them were actively involved in our al fresco lesson, and they all gained something from it. I'd done my risk assessment of the situation: I had asked about allergies and made sure they had water and we were close to the shade in case it felt too hot. I'd taken more care over their health and safety than the groups of pupils doing PE just over the way, pounding round the track with no shade for over half an hour.

Instead of the job satisfaction of knowing my lesson went well, I just waited for the bollocking. I wouldn't have expected one had the senior teacher not kicked off, but we all know the SMT can't possibly lose face after a hissy fit. And sure enough, the next morning at our daily meeting, a big point was made that learning ONLY takes place in the classroom, and that NOBODY was to take pupils outside because learning DOES NOT take place there.

And I've been sulking about this ever since.

Stupid Post Office

2008-05-10T10:51:00.002+01:00

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

For want of 6p postage, a job was lost. I just found out that one of my job applications arrived 9 weeks late because the Post Office was holding it hostage for the want of 6p. Please learn by my mistake. Find a Post Office branch that hasn't been shut down, access it during its paltry opening hours, and get your job application weighed before sticking stamps on it.

More on jobs

2008-05-09T18:07:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I let off a little steam about the ridiculous recruitment process for teaching: the tight turn-arounds and the all day ordeal of the interview day. But that's not the be all and end all of irritating things about interviews. For there is one thing that everybody dreads when they turn up to interview, and that is the presence of The Internal Candidate.

Schools are legally obliged to advertise posts - I'm not entirely sure of the legalities, and I know of exceptions where posts have only been advertised internally. In my current school, the situation is different to any I've seen elsewhere: rejiggling a job and advertising it to all-comers is their sneaky way of getting rid of a staff member they don't want. It seems really mean. But also justified in some situations.

But when I have turned up to an interview, as I did recently, and there is the dreaded Internal Candidate, it can often feel like a foregone conclusion. As indeed it was in this case. The post had been advertised, I found out in retrospect, because the Internal Candidate had never had a proper interview, and had been taken on straight from teacher training college to cover a long-term absence. So the job was his, but we needed to go through the charade so it could be made officially his.

It must be horrible for the Internal Candidate to go through the day for what is essentially their own job, but it's also horrible for those, like me, who turn up to feel like they have been duped.

All day the school's staff were popping in and out of the staff room, saying hello and good luck to the hapless fellow. The kids in the corridors were making comments on his smart attire. At break time he was chatting with his colleagues while the rest of us sat there like the spare parts we were. When we had to teach a class with a short sample of a lesson, he had the advantage of knowing the class and the pupils, being familiar with the classroom and its resources, and knowing what they had already studied that year.

But still, I retained a glimmer of hope. Maybe he was a really mediocre teacher and they were looking for the opportunity to recruit somebody more experienced, like me. By the time the formal interviews arrived, I felt surprisingly relaxed, whereas the Internal Candidate was visibly twitching and shaking. He was the last to be interviewed. I had already whittered on for far too long but hoped I'd come across as friendly if nothing else. He was in there for 20 minutes, and then it took just 2 minutes before the Head came in and asked him to back into his office. The rest of us just pursed our lips and began packing away our papers. Two minutes of post-interview discussion just screamed stitch-up. It's never taken a panel less than half an hour to come to a conclusion before. By the time the Head started to explain to us what good candidates we had all been, I just wanted to punch him for wasting my time!

Anxiety

2008-05-08T17:37:00.002+01:00

Getting a job in teaching is an anxious process from beginning to end. And then beyond...!

As time ticks on, panic starts to set in. That's because with teaching jobs, you can only resign at three times in the school year, with a few privately negotiated exceptions being rare. To start a new job in September, for example, you need to hand in your notice by the end of May. And as the end of May is usually half term week, any job interviews have to be completed before the third week in May. If you were to get a job after the deadline, you have to wait until Christmas to be released from your old job and start your new one... and how many employers are willing to wait that long when they have a vacancy? Which is why those jobs advertised in May and June are most suitable for those currently training, as they will be available to step straight into the role in September.

Then, if you do get a job, the sooner you do so then the better it is for your school. If they too can advertise your post and recruit somebody before the May deadline, they will have a wider pool of applicants to choose from for a September start. So the pressure is on.

If all this pressure isn't enough, there's the application and recruitment process itself. You send off your forms and letters and you wait... and sometimes you wait... Many schools don't respond to those not asked to interview and so you are left in limbo, biting off the postman's hand in anticipation. But if you do get a phonecall or letter inviting you to interview, the turn-around can be so quick. Everybody has deadlines to meet, and so it's not uncommon to find out your interview is the day after next, leaving you little time to prepare - and panic!

Then there is the day itself. This is probably the worst moment of teaching. Far worse than over-excited Year 8s on a wet afternoon, far worse than moody Year 10s last thing on a Friday, and even worse than any department meeting or bollocking from your boss. How bad can it be? Well here is the usual interview ordeal:

1. You are at the school not just for an interview, but also for informal chats, tours, inquisitions by pupils, gentle interrogation over coffee and lunch, and probably to teach a short lesson in a wholly artificial set-up.

2. You spend this day doing your rota of activities along with all the other candidates, so you are battling your competitive spirit whilst trying to look agreeable and like a good team player.

3. You are doing all this while trying to get a feel for the school, the pupils and the staff. There's so much to feel nervous about, yet so much to take in.

4. You have to make your mind up on the day whether you want the job. After formal interviews, usually with several people including the headteacher and governors, you and the other candidates sit together and fret for what seems like hours (and sometimes it can literally be that long). Then the door opens... and in comes the Head with possibly a Deputy or a governor. Sometimes they announce who got the job in front of everybody, and sometimes you are called into the office separately to be told your fate. And if you are offered the job, you have to say yes or no right there and then. It doesn't matter if you have another interview lined up for the following day or week - it's now or never.

5. There is usually no opportunity for feedback - and if you want to know why you didn't get the job, after such a stressful ordeal you probably don't want to hang around any longer after hearing the words "sorry but...". So you spend the journey home agonising over what you said in response to questions like, "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" You wonder if they didn't like the way you looked at the stock cupboard on the school tour, or whether you should have asked about computer access. Did your outfit put them off? Did you choose the wrong sandwich filling at lunch? Who exactly took a dislike to you, and why?

In all, it's a demoralising process from start to finish, and enough to make you wonder if it's better the devil you know...

Teachers need more training

2008-05-05T09:17:00.002+01:00

This morning's news is that the sun is shining on a Bank Holiday Monday. It's also, according to the BBC website, that Teachers need better training. When I saw the headline I bristled as is the way of the teacher, that the suggestion is that I'm not doing my job properly. But when I read further, I saw that it's not talking about me, but about teachers who don't do their jobs very well.

The study found a pupil taking eight GCSEs and taught by eight "good" teachers would score four to five more GCSE points than the same pupil in the same school taught by eight "poor" teachers. An "excellent" teacher had an even greater impact.

This much I have seen to be true. Last Inset day we had the usual figures waggled at us, then we all had to go back and check our last sets of GCSE pupils from a big list. Whose had exceeded their targets, thus having "value added", and which pupils had minus figures next to them? While I don't understand the maths behind the figures, the pluses and minuses formed patterns and it was obvious which teachers hadn't added as much (or any) value than others. There were several comments thrown my way, disguised in a veil of congratulations, but only thinly disguised because I could detect the snideness and disappointment. It was probably a horrible thing to do, to make us go through these figures together. Far better for quiet reflection as individuals than to sit there and squirm.

But my successes are down to one thing that I can think of. For about two weeks before each of the mock exams in Years 10 and 11 I teach the exam. I then consolidate this by using the month before study leave to do the same. It sounds obvious, but I know not every teacher does this. One top set a few years ago had never seen a real copy of the exam paper beforehand. They had seen photocopies of past sections, but nothing prepared them for the thickness of the exam booklet or the fact that there were about 12 sections and they only had to answer on three of them. I heard of at least two of those candidates who started answering questions on topics they hadn't even studied, just because they were unfamiliar with the layout of the paper and began to panic.

I know some people think that you shouldn't be teaching pupils to pass exams. Why not? They need the qualification, I want the good results, and isn't that what eleven years of schooling is working towards? It's not all I do, of course. In fact, for the rest for the time I spoonfeed my pupils the least out of most teachers I know. I want them to become independent thinkers who will go on to work or higher education being able to think and do things for themselves without being told what to do or handed step-by-step guides.

But if I was able to make suggestions to the other teachers in my department, it would be to teach the exam. Give them past papers, make notes on the types of questions that come up, get them to figure out what the examiners are testing you on when they use particular words or phrases. Give them example answers and get the pupils to grade them, then tell them what the examiners thought. Let them figure out why one answer scored much less than another. Even in the past couple of weeks my Year 11 class has been shocked in this way: one answer was full of waffle which they mistook for genius, generally awarding it 8 out of 10 when in reality it had scored 2. Unless they see what makes a good answer, how are they going to know what the examiners are looking for? We look at as many past papers as we can. They prepare notes on how to answer on particular themes and subjects. They practise writing the first paragraphs, the opening sentences, and essay plans.

It's too late now for this year's GCSE groups. I know I've done as much as I can to make the exam process clear and less intimidating for my groups. But for the rest, it's just the luck of the draw. My form group is Year 11. Last week I was tidying away some resources and asked the few who weren't chasing round the school handing in coursework who wanted my spare copies of past papers. None of them, apart from those in my teaching group, had seen any others before apart from those we did in the mocks.

Now I'm not saying that my way is the best way to prepare the pupils, but those plus and minus signs on our "value added" sheets would certainly look like I'm doing something that the others aren't. And I just wish I had the opportunity to show all of them that it really is that simple. There's no trickery or witchcraft and I'm not trying to show everyone up. It just works for me and seemed an obvious thing to do.

Chinese School continues to be a joy

2008-05-04T16:01:00.002+01:00

I wrote about the televisual pleasure that is Chinese School a while back. It continues to be amazing and heart-warming and also shocking. The dedication of the teachers is borne from the education system which instills such a sense of hard work and virtually no play. If the hours are long for the students, they are even longer for the teachers.

Class sizes in the high school seem to be between 40 and 50 and yet bad behaviour is not a problem; it's all about conformity not rebellion. And having such high levels of poverty all around them, the students know that succeeding in school is the only way to escape a way of life where fields are still ploughed by oxen and wooden ploughs and clothes are washed in dirty polluted rivers. At the charity school which takes in 5 and 6 year old children as boarders, a few of the new cohort were found to be malnourished and one had to be sent away again as he was carrying hepatitis. The children selected for the school are the lucky ones though - they are well-fed and clothed, and learn all kinds of skills as part of their education. But their sadness at being separated from their families for weeks at a time is infectious, and it can be a real tear-jerker of a programme.

It also got me thinking: what would I prefer? The British way of doing things, where classes of over 30 are said to be overcrowded, but only because the children can be so unruly and difficult to teach, or a class of 50 compliant hard-working teenagers whose own self-control and work ethic has been moulded by the state since their earliest years? The relatively short school day of 5 hours of lessons with marking and planning and extra-curricular activities, or the Chinese school day of 14 or 15 hours, starting with communal exercises before breakfast and finishing after the school closes after 10pm every evening? Crumbling school buildings or... ah, crumbling schol buildings? An interfering government which dictates the curriculum and keeps a close eye on schools by sending in government officials and penalising poorly performing schools or... oh. Some things transcend continents.

Perhaps education only takes on its true value when it really is the only way out of poverty. And that simply isn't the case in Britain, not any more. At least, it isn't perceived to be by those who would benefit from it the most.

Bank holiday weekend pastimes

2008-05-04T14:23:00.002+01:00

Just over four weeks ago, during the Easter holidays, I had a day off from working and doing chores. This weekend I'm having two days off. As it's Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow, I can do my marking then. I was going to do it today, but an excess of wine last night means that I'm watching "Frasier" re-runs in my pyjamas instead.

However, this sounds like fun too:

Teachers at a conference have jeered a minister after
she talked about league tables and tests in schools.
The flashpoint involving Children's Minister Beverley Hughes happened at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference.
During a question-and-answer session, she said thought teaching was a great job, but was jeered again by a large proportion of the teachers in the hall.
The NAHT is currently holding its annual conference in Liverpool.

And Liverpool is the capital of culture, as well. Sounds very cultured.

Did the strike work?

2008-05-04T13:33:00.003+01:00

I haven't heard much about the aftermath of the strike, apart from parents who were inconvenienced by having to look after their own children for the day. But that was the point. Strikes are meant to inconvenience people. They are meant to show what would happen if you didn't have workers doing their jobs. They are meant to highlight what an essential service the workers provide. There was a particularly narky debate going on at Frank Chalk's blog - mostly by posters who look like they could benefit from a little extra education themselves.

Just days after the strike, we heard that several schools in the vicinity are to make staff redundant because of falling pupil numbers. Funding to schools is being cut. Staff in my school have been offered the option of early retirement. And funnily enough, in the current climate of uncertainty about pay, the pressures that an Ofsted inspection brings, the doubts and uncertainties about the new diploma system, and the proposal that schools should monitor pupils' obesity and drug use, there is no shortage of people ready to give up the job.

Ridiculous ideas

2008-05-04T12:43:00.002+01:00

Coursework deadlines, mid-term madness... I haven't had a chance to rant for a while! But then I saw this news on the BBC website:

Parents who spend quality time with their children should be rewarded through the benefits system, head teachers' leaders have said.

I don't know where to start on this... the simple truth is, if you don't want to spend quality time with your own children, then don't bloody have any. Unfortunately that's not how many parents see it. Whether it's the middle class mothers whose children were just another item on their "things to do before you're 40" list along with seeing the pyramids and learning to scuba dive, or the benefits-addicted women who have their eye on a house-upgrade, there are plenty of parents who palm off their children to after-school care, weekend clubs, boarding school, or the loving care of the TV.

Now I know what you're thinking. It's expensive bringing up kids these days. It's not practical to expect mother (or father) to stay at home or work part-time so s/he can spend quality time with the children. But what are these expenses? Video games, satellite TV subscriptions, childcare, after-school classes?

I thought perhaps this was a report about giving parents benefits help instead of insisting mothers go back to work as soon as possible after the birth of their children. But instead:

Perhaps parents who spent time reading to their children, going to school parents evenings or helping out in their school, could get higher payments, she [National Association of Head Teachers president Clarissa Williams] suggested.

And I just didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Catholic School

2008-04-17T20:08:00.002+01:00

No luck for me on the new job yet, so I'm back to scouring the job adverts. I'm at the stage now where I would even consider a Catholic school, although I'm not sure they would consider me. I'm not even sure if you have to be a believer, a church-goer, or avoid mentioning the Reformation if you work in a Catholic school. I really am that ignorant about it.

I was mulling it over on my way to school this morning, and imagining how I would respond to interview questions about my beliefs and faith. But try as I might, I couldn't get the Father Ted response from my mind: "That would be an ecumenical matter"...