'Does this face look bothered?' Oh, I can't believe you just said that!

Why do my year tens have to watch bloomin' sketch shows featuring surly school children. I settled for removing the boy who'd quoted Catherine Tate from the lesson and putting him in detention, but on reflection if he wants to live in a land of cliches perhaps I should have given him lines - maybe 'I will try harder to look bothered' over and over again.

I'd expected my higher year tens to be a pain today - we don't get on very well, but they were okay. I think they were taking a day off and letting my normally quite nice foundation year tens have the priviledge of running riot. My year nines weren't much better either - I know you've not seen each other for two weeks but can't you catch up at break and listen for two seconds? I think schools ought to take this into account. We should have a day with no lessons and just give the kids an oportunity to gossip, then maybe they'd run out of things to say and we can get on with teaching them. I know: fat chance.

The highlight of today came first thing in my morning. In my pigeon hole was a memo reminding staff that the year tens would be off timetable next week for exams. Off time-table! As in: no lessons! Fantastic! I teach eight hours (okay two hours teaching, six hours crowd control) of year ten lessons a week. Next week will be a doss. Okay I'll probably have to invigilate but you don't have to write out plans for walking up and down aisles and handing out paper.

I'm already liking this term.