'This should be your bible' said my mentor, holding up a copy of the 2008 GCSE Mathematics Specification. Well, it would appear that I've been living like a heathen for the past three months seeing as I'd never even heard of a 'specification' before, nevermind treating one as sanscrit.

This may help to explain why, among with other things, my lessons with year ten had been so abysmal. My mentor had just been to a meeting with one of the senior management team and they'd raised concerns about my professional development, especially regarding my teaching of my higher year ten group. Apparently some of the class had complained about my teaching and asked if something could be done. Well, talk about taking the wind out of a boy's sails, in fact it's more like taking away the wind and replacing it with a very angry rottweiler that hasn't eaten for a week and had his leg broken as a puppy by a young maths teacher.

Other than the lack of a specification - which in theory is the sort of thing I should ask for, but that's hard to do if you don't know such a thing exists - the problems stem from not giving them notes that they're happy with, trouble getting them to listen, not being the teacher they had last year and having a rapport with them that could be best described as arctic. I could probably go on but sometimes you can only take so much criticism, even if it is from yourself.

Suddenly the words 'give up' seem very appealing. Damn.