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.