On Wednesday I heard of a note detailing one of my year eight's plans for the event of my death. On Thursday I discovered it. They were getting other pupils to sign it, the trouble is they got greedy and foolishly tried to add to it during their lesson with me. Hearteningly they'd written:
'I h8 maths. Mr [me] is a fuckin knob. If he dies I will go to his funeral to celebrate and have a party afterwards.'
What i like about that is the 'if' I die bit because it leaves open the possibility that I might be immortal.
On Friday there came the fall-out.
Before registration one of my year eights who had signed it came to see me with her dad. Apparently she hadn't slept a wink all night because she was so worried about it and had been crying all evening. She'd even written a letter apologising for signing it. Seeing as this girl is one of the ones in the class I actually get along with I wasn't going to make a fuss and told her to not worry about it.
I discussed the note with the form tutor of the girl who'd written with it - one of the scariest and loudest teachers in the school.
The repurcussions of this would come at breaktime, but until then I had to get through my year 10 lesson which was another lesson horriblious. One pupil I sent out for saying that I must have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning, during the process of getting rid of her she told me to fuck off and said she was going to go to the head about me. She keeps saying this so I'm getting very bored of it - she mioght as well say that she's going to get a machette and cut off my head because it's all bluster.
As if this weren't bad enough I caught two of them using their phones in class. One even had the temerity to lie and claim he hadn't been using a phone. I couldn't have been more flabagastered if I'd turned up at school and found it had been turned into a giant strawberry. I gave them a choice - they could hand over the phones or stay in at break. They chose neither so ended up in the Isolation Facility at lunch.
Breaktime arrived, along with a stream of crying year eight girls. 'We're (sob) really, really (sob) sorry'. The head - he's going to be sick of me - had gotten involved, and parents were being rung. No wonder they were sorry. Though I imagine they felt more sorry for themselves. They also completely turned on their friend absolving themselves if all blame.
'We didn't know what we were signing.' From my own experience as a schoolkid if you sign something without knwoing what it is you're usually agreeing that you're a twat or offering someone a million pounds. I hope they learned their lesson.
After all this my year nines seemed relatively tame even though in reality they were pretty rubbish, with one boy staying in at dinner. Both myself and the head of maths watched over him but unfortunately neither of us remembered to dismiss him so when I went back to the room at the end of dinner he was still there. Whoops! Mind you it probably deserved him right for being such a pain.
All-in-all it wasn't my best day in teaching - anything that puts you on the radar of senior staff can't be good. But the positives are: my immortality, the fact that half my year eights will be afraid to breathe next time I see them, and the sweet letter of apology in which I was called 'a good teacher' - could someone please tell senior management that?