After one completed term as an NQT its time to reflect on what I've failed to achieve so far. Highlights since September have been the visit of the demonic OFSTED, a conker being thrown through my classroom window - thankfully not when OFSTED were in - year tens moaning about my teaching, being told to fuck off and wondering if my year sevens really are that silly or if it's just an act.

In true education style I would give myself a 'good' for effort, a 'satisfactory' for relating to my colleagues, an 'inadequate' for getting the kids to shut up and a 'good' for not trying to pull any of the other NQTs.

I can now have a bit of a break from 'sir, he's pulling my hair', 'can I go to the toilet?' 'this doesn't make sense' and the usual rubbish.

You know it's all hopeless when your year sevens can't even manage to colour in correctly. One pupil was mindlessly scribbling on her work with no consideration for the fact that there was an actual picture to colour in, I described it as being a National Curriculum level 2 standard of colouring. This was a mistake as suddenly half the class had their hands up asking what level their work was at. Through the course of the lesson I accidentally came up with level descriptors:
Level 2 meant no consideration given to colouring between the lines.
Level 3 meant that they were attempting to colour between the lines but weren't quite there yet.
Level 4 meant they were mostly colouring between the lines, but the choice of colours was limited
Level 5 meant all colouring was accurate, with a good range of colours and each section was consistently shaded. Effects, such as the dazzling effect from stars or lights was starting to be added.

Incredibly all the pupils were striving towards improving to a level 5, I say incredibly because they all came up to secondary school on a level 4 in maths but have shown no interest whatsoever in raising that.

Being last thing on a Thursday after PE the lesson descended into the usual farce with pupils calling out and generally getting on my nerves:

'Sir, why are you being so nice today?'
'Aren't I always?'
'No'.
Oh.

'Why are you wearing trainers and not your school shoes?'
'Because they're in my bag - they've got astroturf on them.'
What?!

'Sir, I've made a mistake with the colouring in.' The girl in question holds up a picture of Santa with a black beard. maybe it was the fact that he looked like a pirate robbing presents from under someone's tree, maybe it was the thought of Santa dying his beard or maybe it was just the pressure of a long term showing through, but I couldn't stop myself from having a giggling fit and had to apologise afterwards. It was one of those lessons.

Christmas is coming and the kids are getting stupid. Our school Christmas dinner took place today and as expected the pupils treated it like a non-uniform day, a sports day, a Friday and a snow day all rolled into one.

In the morning whilst working on a sheet where all they had to do was to put a sum into a calculator, then turn it upside down to make a word a pupil asked: 'Is this your idea of fun sir?' To be honest, no, its my idea of something you can get on with without giving me too much hassle. Clearly my idea was wrong.

Fortunately one of the other teachers offered use of their room for my year eight lesson as they had a TV set up with a video of the Simpsons - I wasn't exactly going to turn down that offer as the class is annoying enough at the best of times.

The dinner itself was a slightly messy affair. Firstly I had to babysit some pain-in-the-neck year seven form - I've never had to use the words 'get off the table so many times in such a short space of time'. Then it involved my shared form having to wait for over an hour in the form room before being able to go down to the dinner hall for their sitting. During this time they practiced their performance and dance for a talent show in the afternoon - the next time I hear 'jingle bell rock' I'll probably curl up in a ball covering my ears and whimpering. The dinner itself was quite a nice occasion, it was good to have the whole form together for a meal.

My patience was wearing thin by the end of the day - one pupil had seen that another class were in the computer room playing games and complained that 'its not fair, why do they get to play games when we're in here doing this [making shapes from nets]?'. My response was a rather curt: 'I can't be bothered with this, just shut up!'

I hate Christmas, or at least I do until Friday.

'Sir I had a dream with you in last night.'

Uh-oh, did I really want to know where this was going? Sometimes its best to just tell them to get on with their work when they say this sort of thing, but unfortunately curiousity inevitably gets the better of me so I ask about it.

'You were Harry Potter and you were throwing green paint over the head of science's car.'

I guess that's innocent enough, though the Harry Potter thing has me slightly concerned. Do i really look like a, lets face it, slightly drippy and issue-filled teenage boy? On the other hand I could choose to take it as meaning she thinks my lessons are magic.

Last night saw the school's presentation evening taking place at a swish hall in the town centre. The format of the evening was handing out certificates to the great and good pupils at the school, mainly because of achievement at GCSE and A-Level. Seeing as I'd never seen many of these pupils before in my life the evening seemed a little dry and just-one-of-those-things-I'm-obliged-to-do, though it was nice seeing some of the key stage three awards being given to pupils I teach. The pupils collected them in a long line, with four going up at a time in succession. This meant having to keep clapping throughout all four of them walking on stage to make sure the last of them didn't feel like a twit with no one bothering to clap. Thankfully the handing out of certificates was interspersed with music from the orchestra and readings by confident pupils - I'd sooner them than I - otherwise we'd all have had repetitive strain injury from all that applause.

The plus side of the evening was that I ended up sat next to the lovely NQT from the English department - every cloud has a silver lining I suppose - it was either that or sit with my department. Really it was a question of priorities.

As the evening drew to a close the headteacher stepped on stage to introduce the final reading. He started off by talking about his time at the school over the past six years, and it became inevitable what he was about to say: he will be leaving at the end of the year. The response was a stunned silence. Whilst I thought his little speach was nicely done I felt a sorry for the poor girl doing the ending reading who had to follow him. I know I don't have a clue what she said, and I doubt she did either.

On the drive home I thought about the good and bad points of getting a new head. Bad: could end up with a psychopath. Good: the new head won't know how useless I am at teaching. Bad: The appointment could be internal so they'll already know I'm rubbish. Good: next year I'll be able to say I've been at the school longer than the head. Very bad: We'll almost certainly have OFSTED in again next year. Rats.

I can face standing in front of thirty children, but put so much as one parent in front of me and I go weak at the knees. On Thursday the parents of a year ten pupil of mine, who had been causing me some problems, came into school for a discussion with the head of maths, one of the heads of Key Stage Four and myself.

The boy in question is bright and generally a good student but for whatever reason we don't see eye to eye very often. His mum's suggestion was that whilst there were other factors I was giving him a very negative attitude towards the lessons. She'd even suggested to her son some strategies for making life easier. How about 'put up and shut up'? When it was pointed out that he isn't always perfect in other lessons she opined that maybe he was carrying the negativity from maths into other lessons. I could see her point and in fairness she suggested the blame was fifty-fifty (I'd go for eighty-twenty myself - how is it fifty-fifty if he's chewing twice in the space of ten minutes) but I think its harsh that I should be blamed for a year ten listening to an MP3 player in a science when I'm a few hundred metres away teaching my year eights. What next? Suddenly I could find myself blamed for the pupil breaking a cup at home or maybe the time he left his room a mess when he was eight years old.

The plus-side of the meeting was that I got to hear my head of department defending me and showing a great deal of faith in me, even though things haven't been going all that well. Let's hope I can repay that faith.

Non-uniform day and an opportunity to dress as though I'm one of the kids, meaning that the pupils deliberately pay no attention to me. More so.

Lesson one was nice enough, my year eights are usually half-dead on Friday morning - largely because they've worn themselves out by putting all their energy into pissing me off in our lesson last thing on a Thursday.

Lesson two with year ten and day felt less uniform. A girl walks in and says that I shouldn't give her a compass for any work because she's been self-harming for three years and has to stop. There's not much you can say to that except for, 'okay'. That came as something of a shock at ten o'clock in the morning. The rest of the lesson the class was working on their coursework, which meant pupils blaming me for the mistakes they made in their calculations; who else's fault could it possibly be? And teenage girls being teenage girls 'I like your hoodie sir', 'You look so young without your suit sir' and so on.

Year nine followed, and notable by her absence was the girl I'd had removed the previous week. Wondering if she was skiving I checked up with the office and it turned out she was with the pupil support unit, which means that she's not just a stroppy teenage girl but actually has real issues - it certainly gave me a new perspective on things. I felt rather sad for her and guilty for having ever put her in detention. I wouldn't say it was nice to get this new view, but it's always useful to be reminded how crazily insignificant learning objectives are to most of the kids.

True to form my other year ten class were completely bonkers.
'I wouldn't have thought that was your style sir', said my arch nemesis (re: telling me to fuck off) refering to my attire. What exactly did she expect? That I went around dressed in a cardigan and slippers? Or that I pay homage to the black and white minstrels when I'm out of school? There are some pupils who you can never quite figure out what's going on in their heads. Long may it stay that way.

One of the nice one's said to me: 'I'm so proud of you sir,' because I'd remembered non-uniform day, 'you're like my son.' I presume she meant this in a metaphorical way and not that she has a son and I'm just like him. But leaving this aside, what the hell's that about? Hands up if you can drive a car. Oh, that would be me, the twenty-three year old in the room not any of the fourteen/fifteen year olds.

I hate non-uniform days.

A new girl started in year eight today and at the start of the morning the head of key stage three came to see me to say that they would be in my class. Poor kid, she must have come to the school full of excitement, only to be thrust into the shambles that is a maths lesson taught by me. It's probably shattered any illusions she might have had about happy times ahead with well taught lessons. As it happens it was quite a nice lesson - I made an extra effort to be in charge and also be polite to all the pupils, it was a bit like being observed, albeit by someone much smaller and less intimidating than normal.

Naturally enough the boys were very keen to be talking to her. I would have done the same at their age, actually that's not entirely true: I would have wanted to do the same but would have been too shy.

The million-dollar question
'Sir, do you enjoy teaching?'
'Yes, of course!'
'Why is it that teachers like school but we hate it?'

Who else would do it?
'Sir, you're a teacher aren't you?'
'Yup' (well I'm trying my best at least)
'You have to plan your own lessons. I'm never going to be a teacher.'

Our department prides itself on removing naughty pupils from lessons to rooms within our own block rather than shifting them off to the Isolation Facility. And so it was today that when I walked into my room during my PPA (Planning and Pissing About) time I came across an awkward young lady standing at the door.

'Are you a teacher? What's your name? How long you been here?'

Long enough to know that it's not a good idea to be left in a room on my own with a scally teenage girl. After my - initially snubbed - request that she actually sit down like presumably she was supposed to she came to the conclusion that I didn't like her. Why on earth wouldn't I like someone who I met only five seconds ago and in that time has peppered me with pointless questions and taken three attempts to carry out such a simple request as sitting down?

Its hard for me to forget the date at the moment because every morning I get an update from my form about how close to Christmas it is. Even without this you could probably work it out by taking into account how poorly the children are behaving and how little you can be bothered to actually do anything about it.

Christmas cards being passed round the room are common-place, including, to my relief, some coming my way. There are almost entirely from sweet little year seven girls - I wouldn't expect any from my year nines. The strangest one featured a picture of a pile of 'poo' on the envelope, drawn not to be offensive, but merely because the girl who sent it was bored; she's a little bit strange and sulked when I put the envelope in the bin.

I'm also getting protests from year tens saying that it should be illegal to make them do work so near to Christmas. I'm dreading next week though. You could argue that we shouldn't bother with the last week before Christmas but then the second to last week would become the last week and so we shouldn't bother with that, which has its upsides I suppose. I will try to avoid actually teaching them anything, taking my philosophy as 'they don't wanna learn and I don't wanna make them'.

Each term we nominate one pupil from each of our classes as 'praising stars' - this means they have a 'brick' (also refered to as a bit of green paper) that goes up on the wall saying how great they are. Inevitably it ends up with the same ten pupils getting the award from all their subject teachers so no one else gets a look in.

We have to give reasons for our nominations, which all go along the lines of, 'pleasant', 'hard-working', 'good attitude' [insert meaningless platitude here], so whilst I enjoy writing them and would like to think that the pupils enjoy receiving them my view on them is a little guarded.

What would make it more interesting would be if we gave truthful reasons, such as the reason for nominating the girl I chose from year seven was that the rest piss me off, or nominating the girl from year nine because even though her friends are all pains in the neck she's actually quite nice, or the boy from year eight because its a token gesture to make sure not all my nominations were girls. Wouldn't it be nice to be honest for once?

My year tens are at it again: passing notes to each other. I really ought to learn to throw them in the bin or, if like today and the note is in their homework diary, simply ignore it, but curiousity invariably gets the better of me and I end up reading such fascinating information as:

'n she scked im of and tossed im of Fridy nyt'

Busy girl, and so generous too. Clearly year tens don't get their parents to sign their homework diaries or else I imagine they'd have just used the back of their maths book like they normally do.

Yesterday we had an in-school training session for us NQTs on behaviour management. It was interesting hearing other's experiences and successes, though a bit demoralising hearing people talking about getting 'outstandings' for lesson observations when it takes me my greatest effort to manage a simple 'satisfactory'.

I could feel a little more sympathy for some of my pupils who struggle in lessons as I listened to the other NQTs talking about things that they do well; I could see why they sometimes play-up. If you can't be good at it, then you might as well try your best to be bad at it. One task we had was to name one thing we're not very good at in the classroom. My response of 'teaching' got a laugh from my fellow NQTs but a funny look from the person taking the training session, I don't think my self-deprecating and somewhat sarcastic 'wit' (ha) was well-understood. Oh well, I probably helped make some of the other NQTs who are having a tough time as well feel a little better.

We got a number of handouts from the day, including a booklet called 'the core principles for behaviour management'. This contained several things that were completely new to me, which begs the question: if these are the core principles why the hell didn't my training provider teach us any of them instead of convincing us that we need to use lots of coloured bits of card every lesson?

I did at least have a chance to discuss some of the problems I'd had with my year nines this week and came to some useful conclusions over what to do when I next saw them about 'repairing and rebuilding' relationships. If only I hadn't bumped into the girl I'd had to send out on Thursday in the corridor on the way to the toilet straight after, making her one of about three pupils I'd see all day. It was one of those awkward moments where you catch someone's eye and there's that mutual sense of 'of all the people to bump into...'

Santa posted a letter in our department's pigeon holes this week asking for our three wishes for Christmas - anything we wanted, no matter how fanciful or unattainable. Whilst racking my mind for my wildest fantasies what did I manage to come up with? A Ferrari? A life-times supply of Rocky Road Sundaes from Sainsbury's (other brands exist)? A night in a hotel with Kimberley Walsh from Girls Aloud?

No. My responses were: time, a magic wand for sorting out bits of paper and some shelving in my classroom. The best thing I can think of would be to become Doctor Who. He has all the time in the world, could use his sonic-screwdriver for tidying up and the TARDIS has plenty of space for shelving. The conclusion I've come to is that teaching is draining my capacity to dream/think of anything other than teaching and all the periphory that goes with it.

Before the start of my first lesson of the day the year nine girl I'd had a bit of a 'falling out with' earlier in the week came up and asked if she was going to the isolation facilty.

'That depends. Are you going to be polite today?'
'No'

So out she goes, picked up by a member of senior staff whose son happens to be in the same class.

During my year ten class one boy is causing a disturbance by persistent chatter, some singing and generally being a bit louder than is really necessary to calculate the mean of a set of data. So out he must go; he is brought back at the end of the lesson by the same senior staff member.

Fast forward to my year seven lesson in the afternoon. I'd planned out a lovely lesson involving multilink cubes, colouring in and building cubes from nets. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately I hadn't taken into account that it was Thursday afternoon, that they'd just had PE and that someone would faint outside the room, meaning every single pupil in the class asking me what had happened - as though I'd have the slightest idea. The result was a chaotic lesson where I had to send out one particularly horrible eleven year old (I hope I don't have to teach her when she's in year ten), again with her being picked up by... yep, you got it, the same member of senior staff as before. How embarrassing. To make matters worse he was one of the people who interviewed me, so back in March must have thought it was basically a good idea to employ me, I wonder what he reckons now. Given that I had two frees today this means he ended up coming into my room during 100% of my lessons. He must have been thinking 'Oh no, not you again!'

Some of my year nines - nice ones, not the nasty ones I can barely stand to keep around during detentions - came looking for me today to ask if I'd pose for a picture for a 'staff cluedo' game they were making for a Pissing About Studies - or something or other - project.

I of course allowed them to take a picture, but I just couldn't get the murderous look quite right and somehow ended up with a cheesy grin. So we tried again with me trying to look as nasty as possible... and again I ended up with a cheesy grin. One possibility is that it was an incredibly bizarre prank where they'd taken a shot of me smiling in a lesson (admittedly a rarity) and were showing me this to mess with my head, or I'm just not capable of looking scary/stern/remotely intidimating. I'd go for the latter, which explains why none of my classes take me seriously when I'm giving them the frowning of a lifetime. They probably see it as a huge friendly smile and take this as approval of throwing paper aeroplanes across the room or just being incredibly rude to me. Maybe I ought to try smiling tomorrow and see if it has the opposite effect.

Year nine girls are a pain. I could just stop there and I don't think anyone would argue too much but I'll emphasise my point anyway by looking a few specific cases.

Girl 1: When the mood takes her she can be lovely, but when she's in a bad mood she's horrid, much like many schoolgirls I suppose:
'I'm bored! Sir! Sir! Sir! I'm bored! Sir! ' Yes I know, but can't you manage to be bored a little more quietly?

'I can't see the board sir!' How about putting you specs back on? 'But they're in my bag!'

Girl 2: Generally a stroppy little madam. After a lesson where she was: being rude towards me, singing and talking when she should have been listening I got her to write down the things she's done wrong: 'All I did was stick up for myself, sing and disrupt the lesson.' Is that all? I'd hate to teach her on a bad day.

Not that the boys are any better, when I asked one to hand in his homework his response was: 'That's not fair! I was off when it was supposed to be handed in... [incoherent whine] It's not fair!' Pathetic.

I've got an interesting problem with my year eight class. All the boys seem to fancy this one girl. The result is lots of hair-pulling, playful kicking and general attention seeking. Oh, to be a twelve year old again. Though none of it is particularly useful when you're trying to create a positive learning environment.

She seems completely oblivious to why the boys are behaving that way around her, which is quite funny really. Though perhaps this is just an act to get them, instead of herself, into trouble whilst at the same time getting lots of attention. It's the classic case of sweet but a bit naive or an evil genius.

'Why did you make my friend cry? She was really upset at dinner', asked one of my year tens at the start of Friday afternoon's lesson.

Well, it wasn't like I did on purpose. Here's the rundown:

On Monday's lesson crying girl makes sheep noises so I send her out, whilst I don't have an explicit rule about pupils not making farmyard animal noises, I'd expect a year ten to have a good idea of how to talk like a human being.

In previous lesson's she's been unable to stop giggling and has generally been a pain-in-the-neck, which makes it strange that she should have complained about my teaching, playing the 'I want to learn card' when she's one of the pupils who has stopped everyone else from doing so.

So on Friday I moved her away from her friends and she sulked and 'went on strike' until I pointed out that by not doing the work she was only harming herself. To which she moaned and sighed and whinged and whined. It's hard to feel too sorry for her really.