Hyperbole in Hyperspace

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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...