It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

Year 7 camp takes place at the end of June and everything is being planned out. Two girls in my form asked if there would be anywhere to plug in hair straighteners. I know it's only a camp for twelve year olds and it's not like we're heading out into a forest and surving by eating moss and slugs but they're not really getting into the Ray Mears spirit of things.

There probably is somewhere to plug them in because we have a little building for cooking and eating. In fact I heard that one of the art teachers took some hair straighteners themselves last year, but no way am I having my form preening themselves each morning. I'm desperate to win the interform challenge but I'm fairly certain the pupils' appearance doesn't count for points. We'll be going down a cave so I think a torch and some sturdy shoes or boots would be of much greater use.

I was thinking about getting an air horn and blasting it at 6am each morning, but I imagine the kids will all be up before me anyway. If they ever go to sleep at all that is.

It was my last lesson with my year elevens yesterday. We've had our ups and downs but I'm going to miss them. And in all fairness it's been mostly ups, I managed my only 'outstanding' lesson of my NQT year with them and I do actually quite like most of the class.

There are a few 'characters' of course. It was a non-uniform day so I was in jeans and a hoodie. One boy was comparing how much his clothes cost compared to mine, his were more expensive by quite a margin. He was inordinately proud of this until I asked how much his car cost ('oh that's right you're only sixteen so can't drive yet!') and whether his mummy tucked him in at night. The rest of the class - all eight of them who had managed to turn up - greatly enjoyed the spectacle. The term they used was that I'd 'owned' him, in which case I'd like my money back. It was only a bit of harmless banter but it was good fun all the same. He even resorted to calling my car crap - which is true I suppose - so I just jibed him for getting so desperate that he was having to swear. There's so many occasions where pupils say thyings that you have the perfect comeback/put-down for but have to hold back in the interests of professionalism. But in the last lesson with year eleven I wasn't going to take any prisoners.

A number of the girls had little notebooks for people to sign. One nice girl who's been brilliant to teach and one who I've constantly fallen out with. They asked me and it was hard to think of what to put. I was tempted to google for snappy phrases, a trick I used recently when writing a note on a wedding present. It'll be fine as long as noone else has the same idea. In the end I came up with something about how much I'd enjoyed teaching the nice one, wishing her good luck for the future and how much she deserved a great one. For the not-so-nice one I put some fairly meaningless 'good luck' statement.

Apparently most of the year group was going up this big hill near the school to get very drunk. I wonder how many will be requiring a morning-after pill right now.