It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

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.