I lost my pencil case during a lesson with my year eights in the computer room. I told them today that I wouldn't be angry at them if they'd picked it up 'by mistake' and returned it to me. No one did but one girl said they'd seen it and knew where it was.

So at break she magically goes and retrieves it with a giggling friend in tow. I'm not naturally suspicious but it's remarkable how good her observation skills were.

The pupils haven't taken too keenly to the new headteacher and some of the staff haven't exactly helped with this. She's requested that we don't show the kids videos until the last day of term. Partly because we're a school not a cinema but also because there's only so many times a child can watch Shrek without starting to think that they're an ogre. And besides from my own experience of end of term videos you only really acquire a knowledge of the first hour of films. At one point I knew the first half of Austin Powers, There's Something About Mary and Dances with Wolves (History: we were doing about Plains Indians) off by heart without having ever seen the conclusions of said films.

Some teachers have passed this on to the kids and said that the head won't let them show videos, which personally I think is a cop out. When a kid asks if we can watch a video next lesson it's very tempting to blame someone else and make out that you'd love to let them run riot and destroy the classroom, and while we're at it who fancies some vodka? Some fags? Pills?... if only senior management would agree to it. Some staff are taking it too far and saying that we're not allowed to do anything remotely fun. Which isn't even what was said, and hey kids, maths is fun! Right?

My year tens don't get it that I want them to be quiet. They seem to assume it's an option that I'm suggesting to them that they can take or leave. It isn't but they can't get that into their thick skulls.

I kept a few (too many) of them back yesterday and only needed them to stay for a few minutes. Annoying girl #1 shouts out 'you can't keep me, I've got to go to a meeting'. If she'd have been quiet she'd have made it there without being too late, but seeing as she could make a career from being irritating she ended up staying for fifteen minutes as we went through a repeating cycle of 'I've got to go' - 'only when you're quiet'. It got a little dull to be honest.