I think I have issues with authority. I just can't bring myself to refer to the Senior Management staff by their first names, instead always calling them Mr... and Mrs...

I hope I never have to talk to the principal, I'd probably feel obliged to bow.

In the past week I've had pupils swear at me, blow kisses at me and turn up drunk to lessons.

Don't you just love teenagers?

I've turned into my worst nightmare. After initially resisting I've given in and started talking like a teacher:

"Break was twenty minutes ago, you should have gone to the toilet then."

"We're not starting until you're all quiet, and you're not going until we finish."

"What are you doing? What should you be doing?"

Thankfully I've avoided the immortal:

"Would you like to share whatever you find so funny with the rest of the class?"

When a pupil says hello/hi/alright what are they really trying to say?

Polite year 7
Choice of greeting: "Hi sir!"
Translation: "Hi sir! Appraise me! Appraise me!"
Suitable response: "Hiya!"

Polite year 11
Choice of greeting: "Alright, sir"
Translation: "Alright."
Suitable response: Low-key "Alright."

Aggressive Year 11 (male)
Choice of greeting: "Alright?!!?!"
Translation: "I'm hard me, go on, reprimand me, go on, I dare you!"
Suitable response: Crisp but cordial "Morning/Afternoon"

Sexually aggresive Year 11 (female)
Choice of greeting: (sultrily) "Hi Siiir"
Translation: "I want to get you fired."
Suitable response: Run away. Very fast.

Walking across the playground a pupil went past me and said: "I've not done nowt." Okay. That was a not undelicious double negative, implying that he had indeed done something. You have to wonder why he had such a guilty conscience - this anti-confession was completely out of the blue.

I was talking to a pupil in a classroom. "You have to shout at them or they won't listen", he says. Hey, don't tell me how to be a teacher, I don't tell you how to be a pupil. No, wait...

I went to photocopy a worksheet. Seeing as this was the first such occurence I had to ask in the office for assistance. I apologised as they were quite busy. "It's not your fault if they sent you," said the kind lady. I think the she thought I was a student who had been sent by their teacher. Damn my youthful looks! To avoid any embarrassment on either part I didn't set the record straight. Well it's not like I actually lied, except maybe by omission.

There's much of fuss over new freedoms that Tony Blair wants to give schools, with some suggesting that it's a move to something akin to GM schools.

I'm dead against GM schools. I don't think the government should be genetically modifying places of education. Only the other day I saw an infant school walking along the street. "Fine," you say, "it's only an infant school". But what happens when you wake up to find that a secondary school has wandered into your back garden and a bunch of teenagers are standing in your azaleas, smoking and upsetting the cat.

There are enough problems with our schools as it is: poor buildings, dissatisfied teachers and many of them are teeming with children (it's true). Once we starting messing around with their genetics who knows where it may lead? I for one dread the day when I come across a school which glows in the dark or becomes ripe sooner.

In a year 8 class today - in fact in pretty much every class ever - a number of pupils were dicussing "who fancies whom". Their best way of figuring out whether or not someone likes someone was if they could look them in the eye and say they didn't fancy them without laughing. I daresay the system was flawed by half a dozen accusing eyes staring at the situation, making nervous laughter amongst the protagonists inevitable.

Briefly it made think: Oh, teenage capes. What a lark! But then I thought: Hang on! Being a teenager in love sucks. The pain, the heartache, the misery, the "not in a million years freak!", the rejected last rolos.

Sooner them than me.