During my year seven lesson this morning for one reason or another I was asking the kids who invented the television. The only answer anyone could suggest was Neil Armstrong. At least they got someone from the same century, but I wonder who they think was the first person on the moon.

Gandhi?

Teenagers are invariably straight to the point. I'd put together a few examples of exam style questions for my year tens. One of them said: The people who make up these questions must be really sad and lonely.

Thanks for that.

As a teacher of maths I constantly get pupils asking questions like: why is pi 3.14? Who was Pythagoras? Why is x equal to 15? And so on. Sometimes it gets a bit frustrating when you're trying to answer such questions whilst simultaneously handing out pencils, helping little Timmy to answer question 1 and stopping several others bouncing off the walls. But at least the questions have sensible, logical answers.

I had an RE cover yesterday and I was thanking my lucky stars to teach a subject like maths: 'Sir? Why is Budha really fat when he's supposed to only eat one grain of rice a day?'

I think my suggestion of an incredibly slow metabolism might have been a little above the little year seven head asking the question.

My year sevens are fantastic. I can describe quite how good they are in mere words. It's not possible to do them justice.

On Thursday I was teaching them quite possibly the most boring lesson in the history of education. They were working on some long multiplication problems. When I asked them to stop and put their pens down they called out that they wanted to keep going.

Weird.

My year eight class is too big and contains too many 'characters', too many fussy girls and not enough nice quiet, studious young people. It's awful because there are a number of pupils who take up far too much of my time and attention meaning there must be one or two children I have hardly ever spoken to.

On Tuesday one of the 'characters' managed to fall off her chair five minutes from the end and bump her head. She couldn't understand why I was unimpressed. I don't shout and scream at kids when I'm annoyed with them but I do get really sarcastic. I pointed out to her that the vast majority of children can make it through a whole lesson without even coming close to falling off their chairs. She wasn't amused and was even less amused when I wouldn't let her go to the medical room, eventually she stormed off on her own accord.

Now, if a nice quiet kid had bumped their head whilst picking up something that had fallen on the floor then I probably would have let them go have it checked out but seeing as she'd been causing as much fuss as possible all lesson I wasn't about to let her have her way.

It turns out that she had actually split her head open. So with hindsight it might have been an idea to send her away and I feel sorry for her on that count. But when someone says they hate you, you aren't exactly going to let them have so much as an inch. We've now drawn a line under the whole debacle, with a little help from one of the assistant heads.

I just hope it's knocked some sense into her.