Management here I come?!

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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!