Sports Day is an exciting time for all concerned. Falling within sight of the end of the school year, it's definitely something to look forward to, if only for the fact that there's only seven hours of school left afterwards.

I always thought that kids at school were competitive but that's nothing compared to the teachers. The 100 metre sprint is a hotly contested event with all-out vistory vital to all participants. This year it was replaced with an event suited more to the Generation Game featuring rubber gloves, mops and buckets. The theme was getting dressed up to clean a house, though I think it might actually have been an optimistic attempt to get the staff involved to clean the school. We have one cleaner for the whole of the maths block, plus god knows where else. This cleaner to room ratio does tend to favour those who like dusty floors that you can easily slip on and break your neck.

Regardless this theme provided a bit of a leveller as sprinting prowess was of secondary importance, leaving the way clear for the likes of me to take part. The absolute highlight was hearing a load of kids chanting my name, without adding 'is a w***er' on the end. I thought that was the most considerate. I didn't win, the key to success seemed to be the ability to tie an apron around your waist. Though it's not the winning of course, it's the taking part.

When you’re teaching it sometimes feels like you’re going round putting out fires. You get one kid sorted with the work, then another puts their hand up, but you don’t have time to help them yet because Kirsty is screaming that Bobby has just thrown a pencil at her and Alice is asking why you’re not yelling at Kevin for putting gum in her hair and then there’s a message for a pupil who rather mysteriously ‘has something to collect from reception’ and Annie needs the toilet and who wrote ‘maths is shit’ on the board?

All this is small fry compared with the rouge who literally gave me a fire to put out. I don’t think she meant to actually set her bag alight; she was probably just trying to singe it. Unfortunately the material must have been highly flammable because great big flames shot up out of it. This was definitely the worst moment of the year. It was compounded by the fact that the deputy head had observed me in the morning and she had ripped my lesson to shreds because it was so rubbish.

Another teacher once said to me that no matter how bad it seems you can always comfort yourself in knowing that in your worst lesson no one died. Well, I came pretty close.

One morning nearing the summer holidays I was merrily going about my business during a free. I was taking it easy as there wasn't much to do, no more lessons to plan, no more marking, a nice lazy wind down towards the summer holidays. I walk into the staffroom to check my pigeonhole. I notice a yellow cover slip sticking out. Please don't be for this lesson. Please.

Unfortunately it was. I look at my watch and start walking qutie quickly towards the room. Only twenty minutes late with all the desks rearranged and kids bouncing off the walls. I've had nightmares like this. Right down to the last pencil that's been thrown on the floor.

Still, by being twenty minutes late there were only forty more to go.

I shared a form with another teacher this past year. Officially they belonged to her but I mucked in on plenty of occasions. Whenever they did something good I referred to them as ‘our’ form, as in: ‘our form are really’ or ‘Terry and Jim from our form are really clever’. Whenever they did anything bad I distanced myself form them as much as possible: ‘Sue’s form are being really noisy’ or ‘that Sid from Sue’s form is a right pain-in-the-neck’. It worked well.

The highlight was a day called ‘the sweet factory’ where the pupils had to work in groups to invent and market a new sweet, the best from each form going through to the final presentation in an assembly at the end of the day. OUR form won, which was absolutely magic seeing as it was the other tutor’s day off meaning the success was a direct consequence of me being brilliant. Though I suppose the kids themselves might have had something to do with it.

One of my worst moments was when I had a lesson rated as inadequate. The flip side was a lesson just three weeks later where I got graded as outstanding. All this left me feeling incredibly confused. Am I any good or not? Given the excellent results I've gotten from my classes (touch wood - there's one module test's results pending) I'm starting to harbour delusions of being a bit or a maverick. Not playing things quite by the book and not giving a stuff about lesson observations or what senior leadership think, but by gosh, getting the results.

Which is utter tosh because I'm a swot and incredibly insecure so really care about what other staff think - especially if they give me great gradings for observations.

Some classes you like. Some classes you don't. Some classes you wish would get eaten by a huge dragon swooping down from the sky as they leave the building. My higher year ten class this year were one such class, safe to say they weren't my favourite class. The moment that epitomises this came quite early in the year.

A paricularly irritating boy was singing to himself using language best described as colourful, the phrase 'chamone (???) motherf***er' being the key words in his repertoire. When challenged on this he responded in his usual manner of theatrical shrugging his shoulders, saying 'what?' in a voice Catherine Tate would be proud of and looking round at his peers for support. I didn't like him much.

Ten minutes later and he's at it again. This time I cut off his lifeline and remove him from the classroom, again wishing that dragon would swoop down. Unfortunately even though our school building was probably built during times when dragons might actually have existed there aren't any lurking round the corners.

I get back into the classroom and switch on the projector ready to continue the lesson. The class starts laughing. It's one of those awful moments where you're not sure what's going on: did my clothes fall off when I walked back in? Has my nose turned into a banana? It's almost a pity those didn't happen - I turned to check the board and being beamed up from the projector were the words: 'chamone motherf***er'.

Like I said, they weren't my favourite class.

Teaching isn’t about results; it’s about the kids. But let’s be honest here, if all your pupils failed their exams you be a little down to put it mildly. So when you’ve had year nine and tens moaning and complaining and wanting to get you sacked those module test results and SATs result seem pretty important.

So I was mightily relieved when my pupils from both classes came out with fantastic results. Though I couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed with them for bitching so much and then doing so brilliantly in the tests. I almost went in to the next lesson with them having a go at them for doing so well.