After yesterday's debacle with my year sevens I was expecting more of the same this afternoon. So when someone from learning support came up to me this morning to say they'd be coming into my lesson to observe a pupil with learning difficulties who might need extra support I was a little apprehensive. Okay, so they wouldn't be too interested in what I was doing but it wouldn't look good if there was a stream of paper aeroplanes flying round the room that would give air traffic control nightmares.

And you know what? The lesson went really well - after the initial questions asking who the woman at the back was at least. Objectives were met, the pupils listened, they did work - including one boy who pretty much doubled his output for the year - and there was a pleasant atmosphere permiating through the room. It was like I'd always hoped lessons with year seven would be - not once did anyone get called a mong/gayer/inbred.

The one thing I'd like to know is whether the pupils were different because there was another adult in the room, or whether it was me who was different.

I'm pretty sure I'm the one who's supposed to ask the questions in class but one of my year tens delivered me a lovely little riddle this afternoon and I'm proud to say that I figured it out. I might even give myself a smiley sticker.

'What's more powerful than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it and the rich want it?'

Before starting out on my great teaching adventure I expected to have difficulty getting fifteen year olds to listen and get on with their work, perhaps they'd even throw a few chairs at me, but I didn't expect to have year sevens running rings round me. Each lesson with them leaves me feeling a bit like Tom being outsmarted by that annoying little mouse Jerry.

A typical lesson runs as follows:

1. I get some stupid question about if we had any homework or some pointless information about something that happened at dinner. Little Timmy got pushed of a bench and then called Bobby a gayer/mong/inbred? Well, as long as he's not bleeding on my classroom I'm not really bothered.

2. I'll get them quiet for the start but soon find myself being interupted by someone asking where I got my tie from. This will spark off a debate amongst the class about ties they've seen in the past few days. Someone will take the opportunity to call someone else a mong/gayer/inbred. I'll stand and wait for silence - the interuptions are added to by pupils saying things like: 'Look at me I'm being really quiet!' at 100 decibels.

3. After about three minutes we get relative quiet but I've lost my thread, so the pupils are now confused. I'll ask a really important question - such as how do we chage fractions to decimals - and the pupils will chew it over. Eventually the girl at the front will enthusiastically put her hand up and say: 'Can I go to the toilet?' I've never been in the girls toilets but I'm pretty sure there isn't a mathematical version of moaning Myrtle in there to tell her the answer.

4. I'll set the main activity, write the instructions on the board, get a pupil to repeat them back to me and within two seconds get a dozen hands up asking what page of the book they should be on, or just complaining that the boy next to them called them a mong/inbred/gayer.

5. The main activity will run as follows: the good kids get it all done within five minutes and are clamouring for more work. The less good kids get their books open within the same time and are clamouring for a pen. In that time pupils will have called each other 'inbreds', 'mongs' and 'gayers' about fifty times.

6. Time will tick by, the plenary will get lost in a chaotic scene of homework being set, equipment being collected in and pupils dashing round the classroom calling each other mongs/gayers/inbreds.

7. The pupils leave the room, pushing and shoving, calling each other mongs/gayers/inbreds. A little part of me dies, and in the obituary is described as a mong/gayer/inbred.

Some of my year tens are really well organised. Already they're planning April Fools tricks on me, indeed they seem undeterred by the fact that it falls during the Easter holidays and are happy to wait until we get back - they didn't really believe me when I pointed out that it's them who are the fools if it's not done before noon on April 1st.

I think it's a bit unfair playing an April Fools trick on a new teacher. I'm sure it's in the rules between: 'Don't chew in class' and 'Don't run in the corridor'. Surely. We've got enough on our plates without looking out for bags of flour above the door or teenagers squirting fake blood out of their wrists. I would of course be immune to the old drawing-pin-on-the-chair routine because I'm so flustered and busy rushing around that I never sit down anyway.

And I hate to point out the flaw in their logic, but April Fools only really work if the person on the receiving end isn't expecting them, so telling me that they're planning it wasn't the best idea. A for instance would be someone writing that I was gay on my whiteboard before registration this morning, so my form came into the room pointing, laughing and asking if it was true. The stupid thing was that I'd been in the room to switch the computer on for the register beforehand and had locked the door when I went down to briefing. Meaning either they'd snuck in through the key hole or I'd completely missed it - a proper February Fool.

I was being observed my mentor this morning. A phone rang from someone's bag.

It wasn't mine.

It wasn't one of the pupils'.

Being relatively used to the bizarre comments that pour out of pupils' mouths I'm generally not taken by surprise anymore, but it's still possible.

'Sir. Do you know what date rape is?'

Where the hell is this going? Is this an accusation? Does she herself not know what date rape is and is asking out of curiousity? Or, more likely, is she trying to distract me from the fact that she's still on question one?

'My sister's drink got spiked at the weekend. It's on CCTV and everything.'

Right. Well if her sister is anything like she is - according to notes I've confiscated - I'm a little surprised that rohiphnol (sp?) is actually necessary.

Needless to say I kept that thought to myself.

'You need to take that litter with you as you leave', I call out to a pupil standing up and walking away from their table in the dining hall at breaktime.

'But it's not mine' - a familiar reply. A simple, polite but firm 'okay, but I still need you to put it in the bin, thanks' is usually enough but sometimes they just walk off anyway, and today was one such instance. How rude.

My dining hall duty colleague comes up, 'you know who that was don't you?'

I didn't.

'That's the deputy head's daughter.'

Right-o.

It was back into the swing of things today - a new term with fresh enthusiasm for the kids to destroy.

Briefing was taken by the deputy head who spent half the time telling us what she couldn't announce: 'The ski trip is now back and I can't tell you something that happened there' and 'somebody's pregnant but I can't say who'. Well, thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps schools ought to take up that attitude towards the league tables if the exam results don't turn out well: 'We've now got the results of the GCSEs but we can't tell you what they are.'

In other news I swear the English NQT has got even prettier over half term. That's news from my blog, not a notice from briefing.

I had a difficult lesson with my year nines: 'Can someone tell me how to work out the gradient of the blue line?'

'It's more purple than blue sir'

I was glad that they were able to cut through to the important points in the lesson.

At the end of the day I accidentally volunteered to be part of a working party on learning styles. During briefing there was an actual notice about a group of staff getting together to discuss methods and lesson ideas. Later, the head of department was talking in the maths office about the impossibilities of applying certain styles to different topics. I chirped up but immediately wished I hadn't because it was taken as an offer to go to the first meeting of the working party. I think my exact words were, 'well...' That'll teach me to keep my trap shut. Still, it'll look good to get involved and I've never been part of a working party before. Sounds fun. I wonder what one is. Does it involve cake?

Today the ballot for some local union elections arrived through my door. Oh great, another form to fill in. Given that teaching unions spend most of the time complaining about excessive paperwork it's a little ironic how much they add to it. Though if a pupil made an accusation against me I'd be grateful for their services so I promptly ticked the relevant boxes in and posted it off.

One of the categories was for the 'advisory committee for young teachers', in which the candidates all seemed to talk about getting young teachers more involved in the union. No! They've got it all wrong - I want to be as little involved as possible. I can barely be bothered to open any envelopes they send, let alone actually get off my backside and do anything union-related. I was tempted to try and vote to re-open nominations.

Even NQTs have to take time off occasionally, and so during the half term break I took a trip over to Amsterdam for a bit of a city-break - even if my obsession with teaching is such that every night I was there I had a dream about one or other of my classes.

Being from a small village in England where the most exciting thing to happen is the village gala every summer, Amsterdam was a little different to what I'm used to. I was quite happy to try a little of the weed but was never going to go along with my friends' suggestion of seeing a sex show. I'm quite happy for whatever goes on in the red-light district to go on in the red-light district, and I don't even mean that in a 'what goes on behind closed doors...' kind of way. It can go on outdoors, up a tree, in outer space, wherever. It's just that I'm not going to go looking for it when it would make me feel incredibly uncomfortable, in fact terrified would be a better word. One advert said something to do with ping-pong balls. I don't think they were playing table tennis.

Most of the weekend was spent in total fear of bicycles. They're everywhere in Amsterdam. It took us a while to figure out the safest way of getting form A to B, but eventually we concluded that bikes have the right of way on cycle paths, roads, footpaths, tramtracks, concrete areas, paved areas, grass and canals - which they don't actually use because bikes don't go on water, but they probably still have the right of way over boats even if they can't take advantage of it. The only area where pedestrians have the right of way is on steps, but seeing as Amsterdam is pretty much completely flat there are only about five of these in the whole city. This meant we were forced to walk round with our heads looking wildly from side to side, back to front, and down to the ground in case of zombie cyclists, all the time dashing madly across cobbles and diving out of the way of the two-wheeled menace. It was a relief to make it home alive.

I'm used to finding chocolate bar wrappers, bits of paper, broken pens and the occasional two-pence piece on the floor of my classroom, but today I got a bit of a shock.

During my year ten lesson I spotted what I first thought to be a balloon, but after closer inspection I turned out to be wrong - damn sex education and family planning clinics. I decided to leave it where it was rather than fussing about and making my year tens all silly.

How on earth did it get there? On second thoughts, I rather not know.

To much delight We had the day off yesterday due to bad weather. I was actually at school at seven o'clock without a snowflake on the ground but by eight-thirty was skidding home in my little car pretending to be a rally driver. So maybe the 55 mile round trip was a little bit wasteful, but it was just what I'd do in an ordinary day, only without any kids being rude to me in-between.

Another great plus was that I got to listen to Terry Wogan - a rarity in these due to my OCD-esque desire to get to school at the crack of dawn.

As if that weren't enough, yesterday's day-off meant some of the pupils decided to extend their half-term holiday. I should have been teaching nineteen year tens this afternoon but only eight showed up - and one of those was fifteen minutes late, but I was so happy that the rude chavtastic ones weren't there that I didn't really care. I really got into the spirit of things and took great relish in doing a formal register and reading out all the names including those I knew were absent.

I wish all my classes were that small.

Teaching is nothing if not entertaining - some pupils are even equipped with a sense of humour, like one of my year sevens:

'Why is six scared of seven? Because seven eight nine.'

There are some things you just wish your pupils would have the sense to keep quiet about. A year seven boy told me today that his brother had said that 'people are always trying to find ways to wind [me] up'.

I'd rather not have known. So while I'm pouring my heart and soul into planning as good lessons as I'm capable of they're busy thinking up ways to piss me off. What's worse is I can't get annoyed about the fact because then they're succeeding.

Rats.

The maths department consists mainly of middle aged women. This means conversation in the maths office often steers towards such illuminating topics as memory blocks, the unfairer sex being rubbish and, my particular favourite, hot flushes. I've developed a strategy of keeping my head down, marking some books and trying to look as un-uncomfortable as possible.

But I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't contageous. If in spite of being male and 23 I'm going through the menopause myself. I'm going down to the photocopier and forgetting to bring the sheets I was going to photocopy, I'm walking into rooms but having no idea why I'm there and today, after loading up the computer before registration for the electronic register, I walked up to it and pressed the off button for no apparent reason.

Weird.

The deputy head collared me before the start of briefing this morning: 'I'm going to look at my timetable and your timetable and choose a time to observe another of your lessons.'

Great. Brilliant. I'm really glad I'm at a school with such a thorough induction programme, where the senior staff get really involved. I'm really looking forward to this professional development opportunity. Fantastic. Marvelous.

I'm not sure every NQT is being seen again so I wonder what I've done to earn this honour - perhaps it was the time my year eights were bouncing off the walls whilst the deputy walked past, or the fact that my year tens - who most people think of as nice - hate my guts and aren't afraid of telling anyone and everyone, or because when one of my year sevens was on report everyone gave him As but I gave him Ds, or...

PS: I am actually pleased to be at a school where they get things sorted rather than leaving you to die every day. It'd just be nice if nothing actually needed sorting.

My year tens really surpassed themselves in terms of sheer bitchiness this afternoon. No, I'll take that back, a handful of them really surpassed themselves in terms of bitchiness. Most of them are really good kids.

Great examples were:

'We must have been taught by someone else that lesson because we learnt something.'

'I'm not late because the bell only went ten minutes ago.'

'I'm going to go complain to Mr * because you won't let me sit where I want.'

'We shouldn't have to put up with inexperienced teachers during our GCSEs'

Actually inexperienced teachers shouldn't have to put up with horrible litle brats. Oh, hang on, we really don't - 'out you go'.

It's lessons like that that make you want to give up and run off home and never come back. However there's always a few kids who remind you that it's not all misery. Like the girl who handed in her coursework in a lovely backed folder - I want to give it an A* without even bothering to mark it - or the girl who could see that I was frazzled at the end of the lesson and stopped back to help collect in the worksheets.

There's hope after all.

I run an after school Warhammer club on Fridays. There's one boy there who talks incredibly loudly: 'I'M GOING TO ATTACK YOUR ORKS NOW AND KILL THEM'

So I went across to him to ask him to try and keep his voice down a bit.

'BUT I HAVE TO TALK LOUDLY BECAUSE I HAVE TINNITUS'

Oh.

We had another non-uniform day today. We seem to have so many that maybe we ought to make a big deal of the days when the kids are actually dressed in uniform rather than the other way round. We call these days 'dress your best', but really it's more like 'dress your chaviest'. If it were the day's winner would be the year 10 who chose to match a white top with white trousers. It's a good job it wasn't snowing because she'd probably still be lost now.

I was talking to the English NQT I like before briefing today. Even though it was only a quick snatch of a conversation this meant that by the time I made it to my lessons I had endorphins swimming round my brain like it was an Olympic swimming pool. So I wasn’t fully responsive, cognitively.

During registration a pupil asked if I could rub my tummy and pat my head. Whilst proving that, yes, I could rub my tummy and pat my head the head of year walked in behind me. Perhaps she just thought I was explaining about kinaesthetic learners.

My year tens were doing a mock test so I wasn’t particularly doing much, allowing my imagination to run wild about some cross-curricular NQT fun. They must have wondered why the hell I was walking round with a big grin on my face.

After school I went to the pub with some colleagues and whilst pulling into the car park I managed to reverse into another car. Doh! Fortunately I was going about as quickly as my year eights think so it didn’t cause any damage, except to my pride. Must remember: my car is one of those technologically advanced ones with those mirror things.

Some children worry you greatly. Two boys in the form had a bit of a squabble the other day and the smaller of the two ended up biting, yes biting, the other. Now what exactly is that about? Sometimes year sevens can seem pretty dormant during maths lessons but I’ve never considered that they might actually be the un-dead before. I really shouldn’t watch Dawn of the Dead on a school night – it makes you paranoid.

Two girls from the form came to see me the other day because a boy had kicked a football in one of their faces. Clearly this is unpleasant and it’d be nice to deal with it but when your only leads are that it was a boy, who must like football, possibly in year ten, possibly not, quite tall (relative to a year seven girl) with dark hair and a jacket you don’t have much to go on as you’ve narrowed it down to about three hundred suspects.