I lost my pencil case during a lesson with my year eights in the computer room. I told them today that I wouldn't be angry at them if they'd picked it up 'by mistake' and returned it to me. No one did but one girl said they'd seen it and knew where it was.

So at break she magically goes and retrieves it with a giggling friend in tow. I'm not naturally suspicious but it's remarkable how good her observation skills were.

The pupils haven't taken too keenly to the new headteacher and some of the staff haven't exactly helped with this. She's requested that we don't show the kids videos until the last day of term. Partly because we're a school not a cinema but also because there's only so many times a child can watch Shrek without starting to think that they're an ogre. And besides from my own experience of end of term videos you only really acquire a knowledge of the first hour of films. At one point I knew the first half of Austin Powers, There's Something About Mary and Dances with Wolves (History: we were doing about Plains Indians) off by heart without having ever seen the conclusions of said films.

Some teachers have passed this on to the kids and said that the head won't let them show videos, which personally I think is a cop out. When a kid asks if we can watch a video next lesson it's very tempting to blame someone else and make out that you'd love to let them run riot and destroy the classroom, and while we're at it who fancies some vodka? Some fags? Pills?... if only senior management would agree to it. Some staff are taking it too far and saying that we're not allowed to do anything remotely fun. Which isn't even what was said, and hey kids, maths is fun! Right?

My year tens don't get it that I want them to be quiet. They seem to assume it's an option that I'm suggesting to them that they can take or leave. It isn't but they can't get that into their thick skulls.

I kept a few (too many) of them back yesterday and only needed them to stay for a few minutes. Annoying girl #1 shouts out 'you can't keep me, I've got to go to a meeting'. If she'd have been quiet she'd have made it there without being too late, but seeing as she could make a career from being irritating she ended up staying for fifteen minutes as we went through a repeating cycle of 'I've got to go' - 'only when you're quiet'. It got a little dull to be honest.

The girls at our school freak me out on a day to day basis but seeing as it's the season of good will to all men (and maths teachers) they seem even more terrifying.

I'm a little concerned by all these Christmas cards signed with 'lots of love' on them. Steady on. Admittedly I'm scared of the word love in all shapes and sizes. It's a word that I think should be kept in a box and only ever be got out on very special occasions, like weddings and even then it should only be used once or twice. But I think it's a bit much on a Christmas card to a maths teacher.

One card said 'thanx for a brill 2 years, Mr xxxx = excellent teacher, lots of love, x and z = great pupils and good behaviour' Seeing as they're not that great pupils I guess that means I'm not an excellent teacher. Oh, who am I kidding: I'm brilliant.

Then yesterday one of my year eights hugged me against my wishes. As they say: never work animals or children - especially teenage girls.

There are many advantages to being the most junior member of a department. I get to be the energetic and enthusiastic one with mad ideas, everyone takes pity on me when the kids play up and I get to hang out with the gorgeous girls from the English department without looking sleazy, to name but three.

But sometimes I feel a little pushed around. My head of department has suggested I go on a course to do with some focus thing (school focus? learning focus? hocus pocus focus?). The aim is targeting pupils who should be getting Cs but aren't. The official reasoning being that I openly hate top sets and have had some success - buggered if I know why - with a year eleven class that fit the bill. The real reason is that everyone else in the department would just moan about new initiatives and tell him to piss off, and in fact probably already have.

Of course being energetic and enthusiastic and into mad ideas I would of course be delighted to go.

Plus I'm guessing it means a day out somewhere, hopefully a nice hotel with a buffet.

Our head of department is taking Secret Santa to whole new levels, we each got three wishes which we posted in a box in the office and then...

'Dear xxxxxxxxxx

Secret Santa'

Any tips and suggestions are welcome. I'm thinking chocolate, pot pouri and something furry, though am well aware that a dog is for life not just for silly little games at Christmas.

It was my birthday last Friday and somehow all the kids had found out. My year eights have been bugging me for ages to try and find out and I thought I'd won the battle and they'd given up until my English teacher friend told them when it was. I then got a card from two of the girls in the class which they'd made in the aforementioned English teacher's lesson: I guess that's karma. The funny part was that they'd originally put 'love from' but then decided to cross out the 'love' bit. To be honest that just drew more attention to it. Bless.

My year ten's knew too and sang me happy birthday - against my protestations. One of the science teachers had told them but I can't remember telling him when my birthday was and I'm reasonably sure my birthday isn't on the Key Stage 4 Science syllabus. So that was weird. Even weirder was that somehow my year elevens had found out too but I have no idea who told them. I wonder if someone had been handing out flyers. I had another chorus of happy birthday. Whilst it's kind of sweet I do think the idea wasn't wishing me well so much as making as much noise as possible.

The best bit though was my form making me a lovely (and rather big) card in art. They all signed it and drew little pictures of themselves on the front. I might frame it and put it above my computer as inspiration for when I'm planning lessons.

We had an activity in PSHE this morning where the pupils had to come up with all the different words they could think of to describe people. Things like: kind, helpful, silly, knowledgable, dopey etc...

Unfortunately as is the way with this sort of activity there was one boy who took it too far and wrote out a list of words that were offensive to just about every minority (and majority) grouping on the planet. I think he covered pretty much every '-ism' known to human kind. I don't think I knew half those words when I was his age.

I decided to ring his parents and his dad was suitably shocked by it. In fact the boy himself answered the phone and I could actually hear his heart sink at the other end of the line when he realised who it was. I doubt he's watching much TV or playing on his playstation this evening.

Serves him right for being such a &^*(£.

My classroom is a magnet for disaster. I've had conkers thrown through windows, fires started in year eight lesson, cameras snapping me from behind the window and yesterday some stupid year ten kicked a ball through yet another window, sending shards of glass all across the room. It's turning into the Bermuda triangle of the school. When the kids throw paper planes across the room they'll plummet to the ground. Any ships in questions about bearings and co-ordinates will sink. It's a disaster zone.

I'm used to parents being older than I am. It'll be a good few years before I meet any that are younger seeing as they'd have to have been twelve when they gave birth to even the youngest year seven. But today the mum of one of my form was in and she can't have been out of her thirties. She had two more littluns attached to her including a baby that was so small I would have believed her if she'd said: 'sorry I'm a bit late, I was just squeezing a human being out of my body'. I think there's two more (at least) as she'd said she was dropping her other daughter off at nursery and I know that there's another brother in junior school.

I mention it because it's terrifying that someone who looks barely older than myself already has five children. I couldn't take the responsibility of caring for even one of these little people on a permanent basis. Okay so I have to be in charge of plenty of kids each day but at least when I go home I can forget about them, or at least try to. And I certainly don't have to change any nappies, though given the amount of times they ask to go to the toilet I'm surprised some don't still wear them.

Scary.

I'm well used to PSHE days now having been through a full year's cycle of them with a year seven form. I'm repeating them this year with my very own form. The older years were doing about sex-related things, but as you would imagine year sevens concentrate on more innocent things like designing and marketing a sweet.

This doesn't mean the day is free from innuendo. One group came up with an idea for a chocolate bar that's 'like an explosion in your mouth'. I doubt I'd have picked up on it if another group hadn't decided on the name 'Hucker bar'. Which I'm sure is the name of somewhere in Amsterdam.

I’m not overly impressed with my year tens at the moment, or at least four or five of them who aren’t exactly behaving like the mature young adults they like to think themselves. In particular there’s a group of ridiculous girls who can’t believe it when I tell them off for things like being five minutes late or constantly talking or brazenly playing with their phones. How dare I ask them to be quiet when clearly there are far more important things going on like make-up and boys?

For instance the five minutes late girl tried to excuse it by saying she had to go see someone about a fight. I presumed she meant talk to a teacher, but no, apparently GBH isn’t really an issue the school needs to worry about and her mate in year eleven was much more important to talk to. How stupid of me.

Or the girl who was ‘just looking’ at her phone and not reading text messages. The pupils don’t understand that it’s actually quite easy to see under desks from the front of the classroom; you get a really good line of sight. They must reckon there’s some kind of invisibility shield underneath school desks that means the normal laws of physics don’t apply. It’s kind of amusing really.

My ‘favourite’ though is the girl who seems to collect issues as though they were for some bizarre sticker album. You can trade in ‘boy trouble’ for two spots on the chin and a slash of the wrists. When you complete it you have to attempt suicide. Today’s issue seemed to centre round some boy ignoring her calls. As far as I could work out the poor deluded girl couldn’t understand why. Quite how I managed to avoid pointing out that it might have something to do with her being fat, ugly and having a personality that would make Genghis Khan seem outgoing ranks up there with the disappearance of Lord Lucan and the ongoing popularity of ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’ in terms of the great mysteries of the modern world.

If every teenager threw down their pen and didn’t do any work every time they had the slightest bit of heartache they’d never do any work. Actually, that might explain a lot.

My form are driving me crazy at the moment. The Log Book which started the year full of 5s (top marks) is now littered with 4s, 3s and even the occasional 2. The wheels are well and truly falling off the wagon, which means my bet with some other teachers that my form would beat theirs at the interform challenge is looking a little foolhardy. In fact the horse will probably need shooting if things get any worse.

They're being too noisy in lessons but what's really getting to me is some boys (yes that's right: the boys!) who are so bitchy towards each other. We had a boy join the group from another form part way through the year and he's struggled to fit in because he's different in that he's verging on autistic and has impecable manners, which as I'm sure anyone who's been into a secondary school in recent years will realise makes him something of an oddity. There are of course many pupils with good manners, but this child will even thank you to teachers for teaching him. Bless him. The others aren't particularly pleasant towards him and have a habit of doing the whole sarcastic hello thing and then trying to make out they're only being friendly. He then retaliates and they moan about it, and they make even more fun of him.

On Friday there was some nonsense and it resulted in some kid being called gay, which in all honesty is hitting the nail on the head as he falls into the John Inman Style of 'camp' rather than the Ray Mears side. I then have to give up my free period to go and sort it out in the middle of their geography lesson. We just keep going round in circles with each side blaming the other for starting it. I ended up telling them that if they didn't have anything nice to say to each other they shouldn't say anything at all.

Who ever said being a form tutor was fun (me) needs certifying.

Our school runs a day where each kid comes in to discuss three targets for improvement with their form tutors. They only come in for a ten minute slot and their parents can come or not as they see fit. The usual rule is that if it's a parent who you don't need to talk to then they'll come, if the pupils usually a pain-in-the-neck expect them to come on their own.

Supposedly the pupils should come up with their own targets but it doesn't always work out quite like that with me hinting that perhaps their national curriculum level in maths is a bit low and maybe they'd like to make it a bit higher perhaps. And of course some parents have a habit of dictating proceedings.

The interesting part of the day was meeting the parents of my tutorlings. Who'd have thought that sweet little girl's mum would be a goth? No wonder that boy never talks, his mum nevers lets him get a word in edgeways. Did I ask to hear your life story? (No). I hope that guy doesn't crush the chair when he sits down. That mum is fit. Are you still here? No I don't know how lessons are differentiated in French. Are you sure it's that other boy's fault your son keeps getting into trouble in science?

By the end of the day I was in cruise control. I can't remember the last of my appointments. One of my pupils might have set a target to eat more rice for all I knew.

It was a module test for the year tens today and I had the dubious pleasure of invigilating an exam. I don't mind it as a rule but when it's your own pupils and you're desparate for them to do well it's an incredibly tense experience. I was walking past my pupils, peering over their shoulders and trying to think the answers as loudly as possible in the hope they'd hear my thoughts. I clenched my fist in triumph if I saw them getting the answers correct and coughed if I saw them writing down one that was wrong. It's absolute agony. You have these pupils who you really geneuinely want to see succeed yet you're not allowed to give them any help. It goes against all my best teachery instincts.

Of course in any invigilation there's opportunity to play some little games, from the innocent 'guess the pupil's name' to the rather mean 'is that a boy or a girl?' or the old favourite of 'is that pupil sitting the higher paper or the foundation paper?'

And now it's the long wait to see how they've done. During the test my pupils kept grinning at me as I walked past so I figure that's a good sign, though it might just mean they're complete morons and have no hope of getting a half decent grade.

It was windy and rainy today which meant my roam around the school's perimeter looking to not find any smokers was blissfully quiet. There was one year eleven from the inclusion centre who bussled past me out of the gate. I'm not going to physically stop her so flagged it up later and she had a valid reason anyway so that wasn't a problem.

The only kids I really saw were some sixth form girls. As a rule I try to avoid these at all costs as they're a little too close to my own age for my liking. The trouble is that if they start talking to me I can hardly ignore them and it's difficult to not end up walking the tightrope between being friendly and sharing a quick joke and actually flirting with them.

They way I see it is that I'm a consumate professional so would not be one of those dodgy teachers who take developing relationships with their pupils a little too far, but it's best to avoid any unnecessary temptation.

The day started badly as my year tens were crazy and noisy. They were talking about drugs from across the classroom and being rather awkward in general. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have a big exam (does it count sir? Yes it does!) on Monday.

My year nine's were the worst though, or at least one girl in particular was. She arrived ten minutes late and immediately asked to go to the toilet. Yeah right, like that's going to happen when she's already missed so much of the lesson. I said a firm but fair no. Five minutes later and she asks again. She couldn't seem to understand why I wouldn't let her go. She keeps asking and asking and asking and eventually calls me a wanker. It's strange but if a pupils calls me a wanker I find it easier to deal with than say a pupil whistling or even chewing gum. It's so much clearer what to do, which sadly is to boot them out of the classroom and pass it on to someone bigger and scarier than me.

Then I was teaching a year ten class in the afternoon. I only teach them once every two weeks because their regular teacher is only part-time. I have a silly little boy calling me Frodo and kicking up a fuss because a question on a non-calculator test says 'calculate' but I won't let him use a calculator. I hate that so much. I don't mind kids being thick but I can't stand it when they think calculate means use a calculator. It makes me want to scream at them: IT'S CALLED A CALCULATOR BECAUSE YOU USE IT TO CALCULATE THINGS, SHIT FOR BRAINS. DID YOU REALLY THINK SOMEONE INVENTED A DEVICE FOR DOING SUMS AND THEN RANDOMLY DECIDED TO NAME IT A CALCULATOR? DO YOU THINK TO RESPIRE YOU HAVE TO USE A RESPIRATOR? GOOD GRIEF!

Ahem.

Anyway I was very glad to get to the end of the day and I walked out of the building. It became clear what the problem had been as I was nearly swept off my feet by a gust of wind.

The school day is so frantic there's barely a moment stop and think about what's going on. But in my year seven class today I had one of those mental-kodak moments. They're the best behaved class I teach, probably the best behaved in the school and given my mellow nature possibly even the best behaved class on the planet that aren't afraid to breathe.

I'd spent hours over half-term making a dominos game involving fractions, decimals and percentages and the pupils were playing it. Often when I try something clever the pupils ruin it by throwing the cards or whatever's involved across the room. I end up thinking that my lessons would be brilliant if it weren't for those annoying little children.

Today however it worked perfectly. The pupils got on with it so well and were saying things to each other like: 'ten one hundredths is the same as 0.1 I promise, no really!' instead of 'are you getting pissed tonight?' They worked really enthusiastically and it was awesome.

I paused at the front of the room to drink it in. I was the cause of children enjoying mathematics and it's certainly not everyday you can say that. I'd rate my current mental state as being somewhere between tender and emotional so as I looked across the room at these young minds I was inspiring, I felt everything rising up in me like a flood: the frustration at getting pupils to listen, the difficulty of trying to fit in with the other staff, the occasionally hellish journey to work, all the planning, all the marking and the little things that fill every other moment of the day. Seeing a lesson going so extraordinarily well was fantastic, but I had to quickly snap out of it to avoid an embarrassing, but ever so manly, tear falling down my cheek.

Last Friday's incident involving a pupil filming me on their camera phone has made me a little jumpy. I was walking along the corridor when I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. Was it a camera wielding youth? I honestly don't know, though the alternatives are few: a torch that's incredibly bright for two milliseconds but then runs out of battery, a tiny little supernova (unlikely), tinkerbell (slightly more unlikely) or the shining brilliance of the pupils (even more unlikely). Probably I'm jumping at shadows, or I suppose technically the opposite, though 'jumping at lights' makes me sound vaguely moth-like.

Lately my lessons have seemed much calmer. I'm not entirely sure why as if anything I feel a little jaded. Idiot children with camera-phones, a bit of a cold, a slightly bruised if not exactly broken heart, general tiredness from working too hard and a touch of the winter blues aren't likely to come up on Family Fortunes under the category 'things that make you teach better' but they seem to be having that effect. Perhaps my hyperactive bouncy enthusiasm is too much and I need bringing down a bit to avoid winding the kids up into a frenzy. In future I may have to put matchsticks under my eyes so I stay tired, jump in the shower fully clothed and then go for a walk, and avoid sun-light at all costs.

Put that in your training manual.

I love teaching. Really I do. On a day-to-day basis few jobs can match it for unpredictability or outright randomness, except for being the man who tests dice to be put in monopoly sets. And the pays low enough that I can feel all good about not being an accountant or actuary or some other dull city job where the whole purpose revolves around money, but it’s pretty good compared to plenty of other jobs so I can afford a house and a nice car. By nice I mean one that goes from A to B without breaking down rather than the sort that gets Top Gear all excited.

But sometimes things happen that make you think ‘why do I bother?’ On Friday I had some (top set!) year eights in for being rude and generally fussy. There were some year tens outside the window and one of them decides to film me. I go outside to tackle him and he wanders off. What a coward. Unfortunately I had no idea of his name, based on appearances it might well have been Greasy McChavchav for all I knew. Me, another maths teacher plus the head of department then have all his mates into one of the rooms to try and find out his name. They do the whole ‘I’m not telling you nothing’ routine so lose their dinnertime. Eventually though we get to the bottom of it by asking some other pupils and checking his picture on the glorious computer system.

The point is that some kids, like many adults, are complete and utter losers and there is very little desire to be anywhere within a hundred miles of them, let alone in the same classroom. It’s this sot of stupidity with phones that drives me mad. Okay some kids have tough lives and I have a lot of sympathy for them, but videoing a teacher for kicks has nothing to do with a rough upbringing and everything to do with being a twat.

My breaktime duty this year is a hike round the perimeter of the school trying to root out any smokers. Today was a particularly busy day. I'm guessing a lot of kids had a stressful first two periods because they were there puffing away. There were plenty of sixth formers at it, which is allowed as long as they don't let any younger pupils see them. The policy here is to just make sure they move along a bit and don't clutter up the school entrance. Presumably one of the smokers there was a former pupil because he said: 'I never listened to you when I was here so why would I listen to you now?'. Which is odd seeing as I'd never met the guy before. Seeing as he's an ex-pupil I have no qualms about calling him a knob.

I then caught one girl who was busy talking on her phone at the same time. When I asked her name she looked at me as though I was being incredibly rude interupting her fag break/gossip and was very put out with being annoyed by a teacher when she was off school grounds. She then walked off. Sod it if I'm going to bother chasing after her. Later I went to the pastoral hub of the school to get her picked up for a lunchtime detention. Fortunately the computer system is very swish so it was easy to identify her. The magic of modern technology.

I then caught a group of boys hiding behind the sports hall. I really enjoyed the cliche of it all but was so frazzled by it all that I was tempted to join them. I never got chance as they ran off, presumably to collapse in a wheazing heap a few moments later. Pity for them that I knew their names so could get them picked up for detention.

Whilst I would never condone smoking I do think stamping it out like this is a bit counter-productive. Previously I've stopped some of my year nines sneaking out for a cigarette when I've had to teach them next lesson. The trouble is that they miss out on their nicotine hit so are even worse behaved than normal. I almost think it'd be worth having a stash of nictotine gum in my classroom to sort them out.

It's definitely true that kids say some really funny things. I'm sure that I laugh more working in a school than any other job, apart from maybe a laughing gas tester. The only trouble is that alot of children have similar senses of humour. During registration: 'Sir, are you going trick or treating?'. Year nine: 'Sir, are you going trick or treating?' Year ten: 'Sir, are you going trick or treating?' And so on. By the end of the day I was sorely tempted to tell them that I was in fact a vampire and would suck their blood if they didn't stop asking about halloween. But then they'd just start asking what blood type I prefered the taste of or where I kept my crypt.

We’ve only been back at school a few days and already it’s seeping into my subconscious. After using the phrase ‘sitting down with no clothing’ in my year nine lesson (I meant no outdoor clothing) I had a very peculiar dream last night which involved sitting in a lecture theatre listening to a professor talking about the said phrase, which was now a metaphor for something or other. He was saying it’s origins were unknown and I was desperately trying to hide and avoid being found out when the girl in my other year nine class who all the boys flirt with suddenly appears and shouts out – which is definitely true to form - and points at me. I then run off and try to escape via the toilet but find that it’s actually just a great big sink and I slide in and fall down the plug-hole. Presumably to some hell-like dimension where everyone’s in year nine and twenty feet tall.

I think I prefer teaching girls to boys. Admittedly some are pure evil but for the most part girls are less annoying. And generally speaking have handwriting I can actually read.

They are difficult to deal with though. Such as one of my year sevens who started weeping in the middle of the lesson. Come on, fractions aren't that bad surely? I know it's top-heavy but there's no need to cry about it. I tried the whole sympathetic approach but to be honest it's not my strong point. I much prefer it when kids start swearing and throwing chairs about because then I get to show how cool, calm and collected I am. Which is of course utter nonsense. I just don't care.

And they get worse as they get older. In my year nine class there's one girl who I taught last year in a different set. All the boys in that class fancied her and guess what. So do all the boys in this one. It's hopeless because they all try to play up and get her attention. It's almost enough to make you think it'd be better if all schools were single sex. I feel a bit sorry for her because she's not a bad kid but I keep having to tell her to shut up and stop flirting, in not so many words. Afterall I do have sympathy for anyone who suffers from being beautiful, seeing am I'm totally gorgeous myself. I don't think.

Over half term I’ve clearly gained an ability to say completely the wrong thing. During my year nine lesson we were approaching the end and were packing up. A lot of the kids were putting their coats on, which is against school rules, so I say: “I want everyone sat down without any clothing on”.

What I meant to say was: “I want everyone sat down without any outdoor clothing on”. I turned extremely red. The worst part was that the kids didn’t seem to notice, which shows how much attention they pay to me.

Our department decamped to another school today as part of a training day for local maths teachers. The bonus was that it's actually nearer to my house which meant getting up at the leisurely hour of 7am rather than the normal insane 530 I subject myself to each morning.

The headteacher at the school gave the day an introduction. He seemed a decent enough bloke but was trying too hard with the jokes: 'can i just advertise our school to anyone looking for a new job. I'd like to add that the weather is like this every day!' Which would have been acceptable if the weather was warm and sunny but it was in fact cold and dull outside, though I imagine he was at least being honest.

I also got to speak to the woman who'd done a mini-pre-PGCE-placement at our school last year and was now doing a proper placement at the host school. I now teach her daughter so was relieved that she wasn't holding an exercise book and shouting: 'what the hell is this crap you've being getting them to do?!' She's at the same university I went to we could compare notes. Apparently the tutors are still as patronising as ever and the lectures every bit as dull. It's nice to know they paid so much attention to the evaluation forms we filled in.

The actual content of the day was deathly dull with some education consultant talking at us for an hour about... I can't remember what. I was too busy daydreaming. I started to feel a bit sorry for my pupils having to listen to some boring bloke rambling on and on and on. The best part about these types of events is actually getting to do some maths, which is an opportunity for me to show off how brilliant I am. Not that I'm big-headed of course.

At lunch I was talking to some other young teachers who just so happened to be female. So later my head of department was taking the mickey out of me for being a ladies-man. Honestly this reputation isn't justified. It's not my fault that I'm in a profession with a (slight) majority of female workers.

We actually went home at about two o'clock. So even if it wasn't the most exciting day ever at least it was short. Trouble is if anyone asks what the day was about and what I've taken away from it the answer would be 'bugger all'. Nevermind.