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.