It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

Just before half term one of the maths teachers was discussing how one pupil from their A-Level Further Maths group was getting a bit lazy. They'd always worked hard at GCSE but were finding other things (I think the inference was boys) to distract them lately. It got me thinking about some clever people I know who have had their 'off-the-rails' moments and in particular from the Further Maths group I was in when I was doing my A-Levels. I came to a startling realisation. Further Maths is cursed.

Eight of us started the course, but two dropped out of it because they were a bit lazy. It might sound a harsh statement but I think they'd admit it themselves if you asked them.

A friend of mine got a good grade in the Further Maths and actually went to the same university as I did, on the same course in fact. I hasten to point out that I chose it first and he copied me. He didn't go 'off-the-rails' exactly but he gave up on maths after a year to take computer science. He's now an electrician with a wife and baby, so I suppose he's been very successful in that regard but in maths terms he didn't have the bottle to hack it, possibly because of the curse. I don't feel bad about being so condescending either because I remember him being very smug when he beat me a in a test once, what goes around comes around.

Another person went on to study music, which is a good move because he's a musical genius. Unfortunately he had some problems with illness so had to restart his degree a couple of years later. He's now doing a PhD. Again this is awesome, but the whole illness/restarting university is further evidence of a Further Maths curse.

Yet another person chose to do computer science. I'm not aware of any particular issues he has but he's a bit a cock so it stills counts.

The 'best' story if you like is of the only girl to do the course that year. Like a few of us she went to university to study maths, and in a similar to pattern to the others she didn't settle well to it. She had marks altered due to stress and such forth and I believe dropped out several times only to come back. It's the Higher Education version of 'doing a Sunderland'. I think she's eventually completed her course, or at least has been awarded a degree by a university who probably had had enough of her. I said this was the 'best' story and here's why: she's now a stripper. I know I'm being all snooty and middle class here but that's a hop, skip and jump away from the rails. I'm not sure where teaching would rank on a list of worthiness of jobs. It's not going to rival building huts for impoverished people the Third World, but it must beat being a hitman. And it certainly trumps stripping. Teachers love to advertise their subjects for A-Level by saying things like '14% of people who studied maths went on to become actuaries', I guess my old school would have to have a section on their pie chart for pole-dancing. There'd be a way round it but if you're a parent and you see a chart saying 'other' it probably means stripping.

I've lost touch completely with the last, mainly because I didn't know him very well in the first place and possibly never ever spoke to him. I do know however that while he was still at school he had to have a brain tumour removed, that's definitely evidence of a curse. I don't know what he's up to now. Maybe he's building huts in the Third World.

I of course went on to become a teacher. Where this ranks in the 'what went wrong?' scale of things is open to debate, but for some insane reason I did at least choose to be a teacher over everything else. It's not like I'm a failed accountant (would there be anything sadder to be?) or I had a desperate urge to stare at a computer screen all day but got rejected by some IT kind of people. And yes I'm aware of the irony of being so dismissive of such choices while writing a blog entry, staring at a computer screen.

It's scary how messy the lives of the others became, but thankfully most of have got through it in one way or another. However it's a stark warning: take Further Maths and you'll either become ill, a screw-up or in the worst case scenario a Maths Teacher.

For our INSET on Friday I was volunteered to go to a special day at another school where there were staff from several schools meeting together. Ideally more teachers would go from each place, but the staff in our department are quite long in the tooth and don't particularly like anything that resembles change, so left it to me to go along on my own.

Fortunately there were some Teaching Assistants there that I could talk to over tea before the main bit of the day. My mum's a TA so it was a bit like talking to her several times over.

The actual training bit featured lots of different maths activities, which is always fun for maths teachers because we're all great big geeks. I'm also seriously competitive and like to get answers to things before anyone else, which to be honest I usually manage.

We also had a bit of time looking at this new DVD resource that has been brought out. It's a series of case studies presented in videos and with lots of activities and problems that need solving. It looks very slick but while I was hoping that the toher teachers would have some good ideas on it they had less of a clue than I did. One person accessed the software and put on a video about it from the DVD. I'm sure he meant well but it nearly sent me into a coma, so I had to get stuck in, took charge and got everyone actually doing one of the activities, featuring an alien invasion. I was shocked at myself for being so in command but I was getting dangerously bored.

I spoke to several teachers from other schools during the day, which is always an unusual as I'm shocked to find that other maths teachrs under the age of forty exist. Our department is on the older side.

The best bit about the day was finishing at two-forty, leaving me plenty of time to get Sainsbury's.

Today was the first of two-consecutive INSET days. Tomorrow I'm off to another school nearby but today was a home encounter with no particular plan of action. Normally there are at least a few meetings to pad the day out but the only thing on the agenda was performance management interviews. These take about fifteen minutes, leaving around six hours to kill by tidying and sorting.

I decided to give my room a good clean and brought in a bucket and some flash. I've never seen so much dust in my whole life. There were some corners of the room where the it was so thick that I swear the dust was actually older than me. It can't have been cleaned in years.

It took a lot of sweat and elbow grease so rest assured that I'm nto abouot to give up teaching to become a cleaner. It's sort of thing isn't going to impact massively upon the learning in my classroom but it makes me feel much better that my classroom is now a little less like someone's dusty old loft.

I made a hugely emabarrassing gaff yesterday. At the end of the last lesson Bert, a year eleven 'character', came into my room with one of his pals in tow, not a boy I recognised but there are plenty of pupils at our school. He claimed to have an after-school detention in my room. Seeing how I've had several run-ins with him before I thought he was talking crap, in all honesty it's the sort of thing he'd think was funny so I told him to clear off.

Ten minutes later and he's been escorted to my classroom by an assistant head. Whoops. I confess my error to a colleague who tells me that she'd just made an embarrassing mistake too. Pupils are supposed to be picked up from their lessons to be taken to detentions: 'I just asked him why he hadn't been picked up for the detention, but only realised after I'd said it that Bobby Football [new PE teacher] was stood with him.'

I groan in the realisation that I'd made an even bigger mistake by telling another teacher to leave my room under the presumption he was a teenage boy. It's not my fault though. I mean, I look young but this guy looks pubescent.

I later explain what had happened to the assistant head. 'I wondered why Bert said you we an idiot' he says.

Sounds about right.

It's been one of those days that's left me wondering if anyone - including myself, in fact mainly myself - thinks before opening their mouth.

At about quarter past eight I came across a very early pupil getting something from their locker. I don't know the girl particularly well and was very confused when she told me that crazy people walk. I took a moment to ponder this, was it some philosophical statement, was she infering that we should never give up on things and walk away? After looking at her like an alien for around ten seconds it dawned on me that she was soaking wet and meant that walking to school on a rainy day isn't the smartest move. I'm guessing the reason she was so early was due to her running all the way from her house.

In period one I accidentally called one pupil 'a little short'. He was writing an answer on his whiteboard and I told him he was a little short. What I meant was that his answer was slightly less than it should have been but it just came out wrong.

By break I'd managed to describe a girl in year ten as fat. I was being quizzed by some of my pupils if I knew their friends. In trying to prove that I did they were asking me if one particular person was fat or thin. I said 'no they're not fat', but in such a manner as to imply that they're not exactly thin either. Which is true I guess but what I meant was that they're of an average sort of build but was struggling to find the words to say that. I could hardly say that they've got a nice figure, I could get sacked for that.

I'm glad it's nearly the end of term if I'm getting myself all tongue-tied. Thankfully I'm not the only teacher suffering from verbal meltdown as a colleague explained to me that a set of tests were printed on paper. My comment that they weren't going to be on slate wasn't appreciated.

On Wednesday a boy gave his friends some special kind of cakes, without them knowing what they actually were. Initial rumours suggested that one of them had ended up in hospital, however this turned out to be hearsay and he merely went home ill.

The supplier, as it were, is no longer welcome at the school but our Head has shown great mercy towards him by not letting it go down as a permanent exclusion, even contacting another school he could possibly go to. He's not a notorious character and probably deserves this treatment. It's an impressive bit of Headship because as far as the pupils are concerned he's been expelled, the subtle difference with the actual situation makes little difference to them and sends out a clear message, whilst not ruining the boy's life too much.

Seeing as he was in my class we now have an extra spare seat. Whilst handing out the books last lesson a girl asked what she should do with his: 'should I burn it with his drugs?'

Actually that class seems to be falling apart. Aswell as our young druggy, we have a girl who recently got hit by a car - thankfully she got away with a slight ankle injury, and a few weeks ago had a another girl turfed in because she was being a cow towards her previous teacher. Yet another girl recently told me it was a week since she'd been home, I do hope she'd been staying somewhere rather than simply wandering the streets because she'd forgotten where she lives.

God knows what's going to happen next week.

'You do have a habit of getting yourself into some silly situations' my head of department remarked on Thursday.

He was refering to my helping some of my year elevens with a media project. I had a starring role and was a scientist/superhero. I had to run down a corridor throwing my lab coat to one side and save some geeks. It's a good job they got me involved as I think filming would have taken about five months otherwise as they were completely unfocused, with me hurrying them up it took about fifteen minutes. I was eager to get it done as I couldn't take too long out of my busy marking schedule for filming.

I'm not quite sure how I managed to be persuaded to take part, but I do have a policy of saying yes to pretty much anything. They pointed out that it would help them get a good grade in media, but seeing as this would mess up my school residual (how well my pupils do in my subject compared with other subjects) it wasn't a particularly good argument.

It goes to show what a varied job teaching really is. In just the past year I've been a dancer, a sprinter, a climber, a horse-rider, a chauffeur, a cyclist, a game show host, a singer and now an actor. it's amazing that I ever actually have time to teach anything, though thankfully I'm much better at this than any of the rest.

Today was a Dress Your Best Day, for reasons I have still yet to figure out after two years we insist upon calling our non-uniform days this when really it's simply dressing down. We're training our students into a way of thinking that could result in them turning up at weddings in hoodies and going to funerals in fluorescent socks.

A colleague quipped that it was more like 'Dress Like a Tart Day', which I think was a little unfair on the majority of the students at our school. Admitedly there are a few girls who could cause servere nausea with their clothing - or lack thereof - but mostly it's quite sweet as they all try to dress up in what I presume are the latest fashions.

My own choice of attire was a Mr Bump T-Shirt, which is reference to my famous ability to fall over/trip over things. The only trouble was that with a hodded jacket round it some of the letters were obscured so it actually read as 'R. BUM', fortunately this was pointed out by a nice boy in my form so I was able to remove the jacket ahead of my year eleven lesson.

The students also love to take advantage of the day to wear gloves or scarves inside, often failing to even consider the fact that it's highly impractical and that the heating makes extra layers unnecessary. It's sweet really, though I was concerned when one girl asked me if I thought her gloves were fit, I can only guess that she's misunderstand the phrase 'fit like a glove'. Most bizarre.

There was big news this afternoon after a year eleven had to go to hospital when he unknowingly ate a space cake, well it's either that or he went home. Reports from pupils varied from 'he went a bit funny' to 'he had a fit'. No doubt it will all come out in the wash as they say.

He'd been supplied the cake by a supposed friend who'd passed it off as a perfectly innocent confectionary treat. There's no news as to whether they're still friends but it seems unlikely.

The supplier is actually in my class and is a nice lad but a little stupid form time to time, I guess this was one of those times. It meant a disrupted afternoon for all teaching year eleven and I even had to reassure the girl who claimed to have 'grassed him up' that she'd done the right thing. She was tearful about it after seeing the boy in tears himself, but to be honest he deserves to be, it's no good crying once you've been caught. I explained that if she hadn't told anyone he might have tried the same trick on someone else and how she's done everyone a huge favour. I was quite pleased with myself as I don't get on especially well with this girl so managing to be sympathetic towards her wasn't easy.

Later in the maths office there was lots of hypothesising about what will happen to the supplier. One teacher even said that he should swing, which I'm assuming is saying he should be metaphorically hanged rather than sending him to play at the park. It's somewhat hard to imagine him being especially welcome among his peers after a prank like that, though at the same time expelling pupils is extremely rare, but this is an exceptional case.

Meanwhile it fell to me to explain to my sligtly older coleagues about what a space cake actually is, which seeing as I'm so completely naive and innocent probably means I was talking rubbish. They were confused as they thought of cannabis as being leafy and couldn't see how you could turn it into a cake. If I didn't know better I'd swear they were looking for a recipe. I think it's something to do with the resin rather than simply throwing the leaves into a sponge mix, but I'm certainly no expert.

We're not sure what the outcome wil be but it'll probably turn out that the whole situation has been massively exagerated and they were actually eating flake cakes and not space cakes and that the other lad had a previously undiscovered chocolate allergy.

Watch this space (cake).

A pupil was telling me today that he's been on stage with the Foo Fighters.

Git. Git. Git.

I'm sympathetic when my pupils struggle with maths. Equations can be hard sometimes, but there are moments of pure idiocy that have me baffled. Brace yourself for this: one of my year elevens today tried to claim that the more recent Star Wars films were better than the originals.

And I'm supposed to get him a C, what hope do I have when he's clearly a muppet?

In my more egotistical moments I sometimes think that being a teacher at a secondary school is a little like being a minor celebrity. It's difficult to get from one end of the school to the other without being mobbed. Today was no exception with a swarm of year eights buzzing, very loudly, around whilst I was on my breaktime duty.

I'm sure these particular girls would laugh at anything. You could tell them the world was about to be hit by an asteroid and they'd probably double up and roll on the floor in a fit of giggles. It's an admirable quality really.

They were telling me that two of them were going out with boys in my form. I said it was really sweet, cue much laughter. They then really confused me by saying that they were scared to go over and talk to them. I've never been a teenage girl so I might be missing something but that sounds a little odd: 'so you're going out with them but you're scared of them?'

More laughter. 'No we were only joking sir, don't be silly', I was none the wiser whether they were joking about actually going out with them or being scared of them. I wonder if the boys even realise they're in a relationship.

The highlight of the conversation was being told they they'd even kissed... on the lips! Someone alert OK magazine. It's really quite adorable when you compare it to year elevens going on about sleeping with their mates' boyfriends.

I quite like wearing bright shirts, it's nice to have a change from the normal white/pale blue path that it's so easy to go down every day. Previously I've even worn a pink shirt to school, which received a mixed reaction from pupils and staff. On Friday I wore a shirt you could describe as bright blue if you're being generous, or purple if not.

Comments from pupils were largely along the lines of 'I like your shirt', and I think they were being geunine or at least I'm going to choose to believe that they were. Other reactions were just outright laughter, which is a little rude I think.

Most female staff passed comment too, one maths teacher was relieved that I was wearing a shirt that didn't make me look like a pupil. The fashionable psychology teacher smiled at me, I aked her what the funny look was for.

'I'm smiling, are you not used to people smiling at you?'

To be honest pretty women don't smile at me that often, so no not really.

When your year nines struggle with their timestables you worry that you're doing your job wrong. But that's easy to sort out, they'll learn their tables eventually but I'd have a nightmare teaching a subject like science when you have to get across actual ideas.

We were in a computer 'room' which is on the top floor of our atrium. Two girls were looking up through the glass roof at the clouds: 'sir we're moving'. Well I suppose Copernicus wouldn't argue with that, but they were basing this on the movement of the clouds across the sky, as though the clouds themselves were stationary.

'If we stop we'll fall off the world because then we won't get to be on top anymore.' I put on a science teacher's metaphorical cap and asked if we were only staying on the ground because of being on top of the world then how come people in Australia weren't floating off into space. This was because they get a turn on top eventually, hence the problems it would cause if the world stopped moving.

'So it's nothing to do with gravity?' I ask them.

'Gravity's there to stop the air floating away.' Which is kind of true.

Later they told me we'd stopped and were going to fly into space soon. I'm still waiting for this but I was actually quite impressed with how they'd thought the whole thing through.

I try to find something to like in all my pupils but some of them make it very difficult. There's a girl in my year eleven class who I just cannot get along with.

She had her phone out in today's lesson (not a rarity unfortunately) and when I asked her to hand it over she was argumentative. She'd never get away with impersonating Catherine Tate because she always looks extremely bovvered. She was adament that it was really important to send this particular text. I had to get a little back-up courtesy of an older teacher. This other teacher took her out of my lesson to sort it out and justice was served with her phone (and also her belt) sent up to the Head's secretary's office.

And what was so important that she had to send the text? She'd slept with her friend's boyfriend (at twenty years old he's closer to my age than hers) and was trying to find out if they were still friends. I'm guessing not. What I find utterly baffling is that this guy would want to sleep with her anyway. He has a girlfriend and he's prepared to blow it for someone who is unattractive, unlikeable in the extreme and let's not forget underage.

Equally baffling is why someone would kick up a fuss over having their phone confiscated with parents' evening less than a week away. It's just not good sense.

It's always a little daunting when you have a cover lesson. You never know what the works going to be like, you don't know who's going to be in the class and it's a bit annoying losing your free.

Today I had a cover for a science lesson, which should be good as I got an A* at GCSE in the subject but bad because it was eight years ago. The bizarre thing was that I knew all the pupils anyway, through teaching them either in either year eight, year nine, currently teaching them, because they went to Warhammer club, from year nine camp and even because one of them is friends with some other pupils I used to teach. It was a case of 'I remember you!' over and over. Though not that many times as even though this was a high ability group there was only around fifteen pupils in the class. God knows what we're up to in maths; I have thirtyone in my top sets year tens this year.

Unfortunately the work set was very very very boring and insufficient in quantity to keep the pupils busy for a lesson. I think the normal teacher was at a funeral so I won't complain about it to anyone (but it was bad). I was left to use my charm and good humour to stop them revolting, which seeing as I'm completely lacking in natural charm was hard work. We found a multiple choice Science based game to project from the computer to the board which was enough to keep them occupied. It also brought out the competitive side in myself as I kept shouting to them that it was B and celebrating when I got them right. Quite why I'm so proud of being able to do work intended for fifteen eyar olds I'm not entirely sure, but it was good fun.

It was actually a reasonably nice way to spend an hour because it was a class of nice children, but I hope my next cover lesson has some decent work to go with it.

Some kids are just plain dozy. A year seven left his calculator behind at the end of his lesson today. It's fair enough really as everyone forgets things from time to time (I've forgotten to do my breaktime duty for the past three weeks. My bad). I passed it onto his form tutor to give back to him tomorrow, but at the end of the day he came to see me. I greet him and tell him his calculators with his form tutor now and she'll let him have it in registration.

'Oh,' he says, 'I left my calculator aswell?'

It turns out he'd come up because he'd left his PE kit in the room nextdoor. He's a nice enough lad but I've yet to see any evidence he's living on the same planet as the rest of us.

It's fairly typical for pupils you taught the previous year to ask if you miss them if you bump into them in the corridors. The honest answer in most cases would be: 'God no' or 'Did I used to teach you? Are you sure?' but the correct answer is always 'Of course I do!'

I was fielded one such question from a year ten I'd taught last year only to be asked by two more who I know for sure that I've never taught. I pointed this out to them but they didn't really understand, 'but do you miss us anyway?'

I don't think they get the idea of missing something. It'd be like me saying I miss being on Jupiter or I miss teaching brilliant lessons all day every day.

We have a PSHE day just around the corner. Rather than having regular lessons for the pupils they go off timetable every now and then to have a day of lessons about drugs, for instance.

As a rule of thumb we shouldn't have to teach more than four lessons - out of a possible five - on one of these days, mainly because the lessons are very involved and wear you out. However this time I seem to have been scheduled for a full five, which is okay because it's my job to teach lessons but I thought it was a bit odd so when I bumped into a colleague who works in the pastoral side of things I brought it up. She was an NQT at the same time I was and has gone on to be a major player in running Key Stage Three, whereas I still look and occasionally act like I should actually be in Key Stage Three myself. It's not really her area but she much less scary than the other Key Stage leaders.

She reckoned it was either a mistake or the person in charge of timetabling the day thought I'd be a safe pair of hands to be teaching five lessons in the day.

So it's definitely a mistake then.

Whilst I was at it I mentioned that one of the lesson plans refered to a website that doesn't appear to exist anymore, rendering one of the activities obsolete. My colleague said that two people should have checked it out and the lesson plan shouldn't have even been given out with duff information on it. She praised me for being organised enough to have spotted it in advance. So from starting a conversation with a bit of a moan I get to look like a hero and end up make someone else look like a dickhead. Isn't life great?

Insanity prevailed at our school today. The heating was off and it was just marginally cooler than normal. I'm sad to say but the staff at our school showed themselves to be completely nesh. Gloves went on in the maths office, coats were wrapped round bodies and everyone had a embattled look about them. It was like being at some kind of emergency centre suitable for The Day After Tomorrow.

The Head even came round to see how things were. If there had been something seriously wrong at the school I would have been impressed with her frontline approach but it just seemed odd. I quite like our Head but she looked a bit daft stood in the Maths Office with a massive coat on, she would have looked more in place in the centre of Moscow in December.

There were pastoral meetings after school. Ours lasted ten minutes because the teacher in charge of it wanted to get it done so that everyone could get home as soon as possible. I didn't particularly mind as I have a habit of zoning out and daydreaming during meetings but the siege mentality everyone had made it seem as though we were in the middle of a blizzard and could be cut off from civilisation at any moment.

If they don't get the problem fixed then school will be closed tomorrow. One of the Assistant Head people came round the meetings to inform us of this. He said he would put a message on the website one way or the other by about seven-thirty because he couldn't imagine anyone would set off before then. Try six-fifteen, for a seven o'clock arrival. Oh yes, I'm raising the bar for insane (and completely unnecessary) dedication, it's about time senior leadership joined me up here.

The weird thing is that during a year seven lesson on probability one of the questions was what is the probability of school being closed tomorrow. It was ominous and spooky as normally the answer would be close to impossible, but today it was a little closer to evens, though I had to disappoint them and point out that it was still unlikely. If they were a bit brighter I might have started talking about conditional probability but I was just happy that they could recognise that the probability of getting a tails on a coin was a half.

I would imagine that we will be in school tomorrow. I can understand the mentality of wanting to make the situation seem more exciting and dramatic than it really is but I do hope everyone stops being so drippy. None of my classes seemed to be complaining about the temperature so perhaps the teachers should take a leaf out of their book.

That's an actual headline from the News of the World. Copied and pasted, unchanged, unadulterated, exactly as you can read it here:

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/article38640.ece

It comes from a union leader saying that teachers who have sexual relations with sixth formers shouldn't be criminalised, though it's nopt something they should be doing as professionals.

It's a bit of a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. If you're the sort of person who would want to sleep with someone only seventeen years old then teaching probably isn't the right career choice anyway. The legal and professional issues associated with doing so should be irrelevant, just like there'd be something wrong with you if the only reason you can think of for not murdering your nextdoor neighbour is because you might get in a spot of bother with the police. I'm not even going for the moral viewpoint here, more of a 'why would you want to?'

Even having said that a national newspaper running a headline like that is a little over the top, albeit slightly predictable. I would like to take the opportunity to make it very clear that I'm not interested in having the right to bed any of my pupils, no matter how old they are.

My year sevens are very special. There's so many pupils in the group who for one reason or another have that bless 'em factor. It's terribly patronising but they just make your heart bleed.

At number five: The girl who constantly puts her hand up to answer questions... but gets half of them wrong. At least she's giving it a go and doesn't seem to get discouraged.

At number four: The boy in the wheelchair. It's an obvious choice really, but it speaks volumes for how nice and normal the boy is that he only appears at number four.

At number three: The boy who has no idea how to relate to other pupils. I think his home life is pretty bad so he struggles to get along with the other pupils. In one lesson on probablity last week he was describing something that was impossible and said it was impossible that he'd ever go out with one particular girl in the class. He genuinely didn't understand why it wasn't okay to say that.

At number two: The boy with extremely poor vision. He has a talking calculator, a special computer magnifier and the thickest glasses you will ever see. Nuff said.

At number one: The girl who got 2% on her SATs test. It's hard to describe how much she struggles with maths. I gave her a test to do to see where her strengths and weaknesses were but she struggled to do any of it. An example was 9 + 5 = 13. The shocking thing is that whilst she appears on the SEN register it's for behaviour. This term can cover a range of different things but I'd say that's the least of her worries. She was handing out worksheets the other day and couldn't even manage it so that everyone got one.

In order to gain an extra day's holiday in the summer we postponed an INSET day to several twilight sessions. This evening was the first of these and was based on Teaching and Learning - which might sound obvious but it's amazing how often teacher's overlook this as an idea in itself. The model for it CREPE, which stands for Challenge, Risk-taking, Engagement, Progess and Enjoyment. In short the five things that our lessons should involve, leading to lots of jokes that the evening was going to be crepe or that it's all a load of crepe etc... We can be a cynical bunch, us teachers.

I quite enjoy such sessions as we invariably get to try out lots of different activities and I sometimes come away with lots of good ideas. I do have some reservations though as the big movers in Teaching and Learning at our school are based in the humanities department, so we had lots of quite wooly ideas that don't necessarily translate well into the maths classroom. For example in one activity we were shown a picture and had to come up with answers to: Who? What? Why? Where? When? It's the sort of 'In my opinion...' approach that doesn't work when the answer is sixteen.

Some of the other maths teachers are quite grumpy about such evenings as they hate being told how to do their job. My own view is that we should use any good ideas but not stress too much about doing things for the sake of of fitting some criteria.

My 'highlight' of the evening was being put on the spot by the school's Teaching and Learning coach. We were shown a picture of a banana and had to come up with two questions to which 'banana' was the answer, one low order (name a yellow fruit) and one high order (name a fruit high in potassium, or as one teacher suggested: complete the film title 'Herbie goes...') When put on the spot to say a question though I struggled to think in front of over a hundred teachers and support staff and came out with 'what is, er, that a picture of?' which got a laugh at least. It'll make me think very carefully about my questioning technique in the classroom as I couldn't concentrate for the next five minutes. I now understand why some pupils look daggers at me when I ask them even the most straightforward of questions.