It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

It'd be nice to let the funky music do the talking, but a low ability year nine French cover lesson doesn't bring the word funk to mind. Though changing the third letter and adding '-ing hell' was my response upon finding the cover slip in my pigeon hole.

I shouldn't complain really as it was only my second cover lesson of the year, the other being for a nice group of year tens. These year nine though were out to cause chaos. A brief summary of their antics include throwing a football across the room, making fart noises and generally being eardrum-burstingly loud. I'm so glad I don't have to teach them on a regular basis as I think I'd throw myself out of the window. At one point one girl asked if she could sing happy birthday to her friend who turned fourteen that day.

She got as far as 'hap..' before I told her to get out.

Since the dawn of time schoolchildren have been writing song lyrics in their homework. I remember copying Manic Street Preachers' lyrics because I thought it political and profound. Admitedly it was kind of pretentious as I only half understood what they were on about but at least the lyrics were sort of about something. I think, though not the bit of stealing suns from hearts.

Today whilst checking the homework diaries of my form I came across the following:

Cause' you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up and you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black and it's white
We fight we break up, we kiss we make up
You! you don't really wanna stay no, but you don't really wanna go-oh
Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up and you're down

There's nothing wrong with Katy Perry, it's a perfectly good pop song, but why the hell would they feel the need to scribe the lyrics into their diary? It's just a few steps up from the Teletubbies.

Still it's not so bad as finding one of my year elevens had written 'She's just being Miley' on the front of their maths book.

One of the other teachers was looking through the resources she has to use in tomorrow's PSHE day. Her year eleven class is doing about STIs and she had some flashcards with names of a number of infections: Chlamydia, Hepatitis B (and C), Gonorrhoea, Public Lice....

Well I suppose it's good of the lice to not go private, but I wonder if it means we'll have to start borrowing books from pubic libraries or going for a pint in the pubic house. You'd think someone would check these resources before laminating them.

You'd think.

The maths department is dominated by women in their forties and fifties. They're all really nice and I'm glad to be in a department where there's so much experience but lunchtime conversations are usually such that it is all but impossible for me to make a meaningful contribution. Favourite topics are bitching about senior leadership, children/grandchildren and women's issues. Oh and the food section at Marks and Spencer.

A typical conversation from my perspective marking my books at my desk will go as follows:

And so-and-so bought a dress that was a size twelve, but it must have been an old size twelve because you should have seen it, it... white noise... and our Keith is coming up for tea on Tuesdays, he always comes on Tuesdays because... white noise... Can you believe the Deputy Head missing the PTFA meeting to go to Marks and Spencer... white noise... at least you save money on sanitary towels... white noise... I got one of those Marks and Spencer meals for ten pounds the other day, it was lovely, I had...

And so on. The whole meal for ten pounds conversation has been held about twenty times, I'm beginning to wonder if they're actually moonlighting for the Marks and Spencer marketing department. It's no wonder I always go off at tangents in my lessons, I can't wait to have a decent conversation about football or television programmes other than Midsomer Murders.

One of the nice things about having been at a school for a few years is that you know so many of the kids. It's always good to bump into pupils you've taught in previous years and catch up.

At break time today a swarm of girls in year nine who I'd taught last year came to see me. To be honest they drove me mad because they hardly ever stopped talking but you don't really worry about it when you know you don't have to teach them anymore.

They'd come with some posters they'd done for their current maths teacher to see if I'd put them up my room. It was odd because they said they could remember learning it with me last year and the particular messing around they'd been doing in that lesson: 'that was when we were putting post-it notes everywhere'. Amazingly they came out with great results in their end of year test. I'd thought it was inspite of the mucking about, but perhaps it acted as a hook to their memories and the learning was somehow because of the mucking about. I really hope it isn't because I'd like to think learning shouldn't be so stressful.

They even wanted to come back to my class as they'd enjoyed the lessons so much. I'm glad somebody did because I was always tearing my hair out. Nevertheless it was actually quite nice to see them again as it's reassuring to know that you've made an impression.

The posters are now on my classroom wall.

After school on Fridays I run a warhammer club. The sort of boy - and it's all boys - that comes along is usually in top set for maths, has far too long hair and a dry sense of humour. I enjoy it as it's nice to be able to relax a little and have a joke now and then.

'Sir, Bob is making fun of my Orks, can I hit him?'

'No, it's not a good idea.'

'What if I hit him after school?'

'That'd still count as bullying.'

'No it wouldn't sir, it'd be assault.'

My year elevens have no concept of self-deprecation. A few of the girls were using my classroom to film their media project this afternoon. Quite why they had to use my room I'm not sure. I had a sort of cameo in their film but I'd like to think that secretly they love maths and wanted to look in the textbooks for a bit of illicit learning.

One of them was dressed as a geek, though the effort was minimal as she'd only put on a pair of glasses. Perhaps that's me being ignorant and not noticing her wearing a wig but I'm fairly sure the glasses were it. She said 'I look like a girl version of you sir', to which I commented along the lines of 'poor you'.

They didn't really understand why I would say something mean about myself. I tried to explain that it's called self-deprecation and it's supposed to be funny and endearing, but it was lost on them and they didn't get how it was humorous to make fun of yourself. They then commented that I was very sweet, which I think kind of proved my point.

Today was our annual mentoring day. The puils effectivelty have the day off as they only have to come in for a ten minute individual mentoring interview with their form tutor. Parents generally do come but it isn't required of them.

I enjoy the average school day anyway but sometimes it's nice to have a change of pace. Plus I love my form so greatly appreciated the opportunity to talk to them and about them. Bringing family members into school gives a rare insight into my form members' home-lives.

I have a boy in my form who's twin brother I also teach. They have an older sister in the year above and based on the number of little kids following their mother around I figure there's more on the way soon. Either that or they started following her round one day and now she can't get rid of them. I didn't count how many children there were but I wouldn't be surprised to wake up tomorrow and find that somehow I was also her son.

A girl had her little sister in tow. The girl in my form is really nice, polite and quiet but her sister must have just discovered how to speak. She was obviously worried it might not last as she was determined to make the most of this new skill while she could and never shut up. She couldn't quite understand how a teacher could be male and kept calling me Mrs.

Recently a boy in the form had gone back home on non-uniform day to change after he'd forgotten to come in civilian clothes, this made him twenty minutes late. I'd pulled him up on this at the time but what I hadn't realise until talking to his mum about it today that she was actually driving him back. Priorities.

Most of my form are succesful. Out of twelve girls, eleven are on the school's Roll of Honour. Of fourteen boys a grand total of zero have made it. It's a disturbing contrast. The one girl who isn't up there is a little bit stroppy soemtimes so it's not a massive surprise she didn't make it. During her interview today I asked why she thought she'd only got a C in music. her response: 'my teacher doesn't like me'. And the B in PE? 'my teacher doesn't like me'. I'm beginning to see their point.

It's back to a normal school day tomorrow but I'll go into registration armed with a little more knowledge of my form tutees, some of it I'm not sure I wanted to know.

It's a turbulent time with my year elevens. I can never be sure who's going to be in the lessons. Partly because some of them have at best poor attendance, and partly because the set list seems to change by the day.

Today a new boy joined our group without me having any prior warning. This is always a shock to the system but is especially annoying when you have enough resources for twenty-four pupils and suddenly find twenty-five people in front of you. Thankfully the aforementioned poor attendance solved that issue. Incidentally our school recently decided to reward pupils who had improved their attendance from atrocious to simply mediocre. This caused uproar from the pupils who had great attendance anyway and even more ridiculous was the fact that they had to come out of their maths lesson to receive certificates. One girl actually had a certificate rewarding her for improving from 78% attendance to 93%, and written on the certificate was her target of 95%. I'm all for praising pupils when they improve at something but the whole thing seemed a little ludicrous. One of the girls receiving a certificate was on an unauthorised holiday the next week.

My group really is all over the place in terms of who'll be there. We've lost one boy because he's been moved to another school after giving his friends spacecakes one lunchtime. We've also had a girl moved down to us from the top set because her relationship with her teacher had deteriorated to George Bush/Saddam Hussein levels. Bizarrely I actually get on quite well with her, mainly because she's really quite bright and it makes a refreshing change from wanting to bash my head against the board when I'm explaining Pythagoras' Theorem. I actually felt quite sorry for her last week when an assistant head came in and told her to sit on her chair properly. She wasn't really doing any harm and left the room in tears. She's completely highly strung because an assistant head should pick up on any little issues and she should just get over it, but it didn't do her any favours. Ironically it might actually have aided my rapport with her as to her I look like a hero for saying to the said assistant head how well she's actually doing.

I'm hoping the one-in-one-out way of thinking will now have the knock-on effect of removing a girl who I just can't seem to get on with. She throws a huge strop over everything. Today she stormed out when I told her that if she didn't complete her work she'd have to catch up at break time. Even her friends looked at her as if she was nuts.

In happier news we have a new Posh and Becks in the class after two of the pupils got together at a party recently. Alledgedly they were up to something behind a bush that a year ago would have been concerning but now they're sixteen is perfectly legitimate. Quite what bearing the earth having been around the sun sixteen times since they were born has on their readiness for such relations I'm not sure, but I guess lines have to be drawn somewhere. More to the point surely they could have found somewhere better than behind a bush. A cider-fueled fumble in a prickly bush on a cold wet November night isn't exactly the stuff of Mills and Boon.

At least they turn up to lessons, don't storm out when they get in trouble, don't bring drugs into school or deploy Gobs of Mass Destruction against their maths teacher.

Each term we have to do 'Tracking'. This involves giving each pupil a grade for attainment and one for effort. Due to a fool-proof system in the maths department the attainment part is easily dealt with. However the effort grade, or 'Behaviour for Learning' grade, is a little trickier.

I really do question how a teacher can accurately assess how hard someone has been trying. Okay you can have a good stab at it but when there's four grades - A, B, C, D (plus an X if you don't think the pupil has been in enough lessons to judge them) - to pick from there's a good chance you'll get it wrong on a good few occasions. It was easier before because we had a simpler A, B, C system.

This time though I think I've got it horrendously wrong. Plenty of form tutors have come to me querying grades their tutees have been given, including one where I have failed to give a girl in year seven a National Curriculum level, I would put it right but she doesn't actually have one. She's not even on the scale yet.

One form tutor said a pupil was upset I'd given him an X. He's not been in that many lessons so I did find it difficult to tell how hard he'd been working, that and I wanted to play with the new grade X.

My year tens were particularly upset over it. One girl was really put out that I hadn't given her an A and to be honest I was struggling to think why not. She even did an impression of Puss-in-boots from Shrek looking all sad. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing so got her to wait back at the end of the lesson so I could give her some Milky Way Magic Stars as compensation. An out-of-court settlement if you like.

In my form there's a girl who is pretty much perfect, unfortunately her art teacher gave her a B and she was quite down about it. From experience of my form producing posters for competitions I know she's not exactly Rembrant but she always gives it her best shot. I know 100% that she really deserves an A in art, even without having seen any of her work because she's that sort of kid. She's got the right attitude though and is determined to work even harder in art. Though I reckon it'll be difficult to change her teacher's view as we're terrible for forming an opinion and sticking with it despite new evidence to the contrary.

It all makes me think that the notion of grading our pupils in this way is absurd bordering on cruel. We need to have some method of highlighting if there are any issues but it doesn't make much difference if we give them an A and B. All it seems to achieve is to make them feel bad and me feel guilty.

Next time I'm just going to give them all As and be done with it.

Next week we will be having a Meeting Free Week. There'll be lots of activities for us to sign up to to let of steam and relax. In other words it's the school's way of saying thank-you for all the hard work the staff do. Though I'm not sure if the amount you can get involved is in any way related to how hard you actually work.

Most of the activities are aimed at people less male than myself such as yoga. I know I'm stereotyping and I'm not saying yoga isn't strenuous activity, it's just that all that flexing and bending isn't particularly good for someone who struggles to wave at their toes let alone touch them.

Not that I'm unfit you understand, I'm just completely inflexible. As such I've signed up for playing lacrosse, largely because you get to run around with a big stick. It's the bizarrest thing though, no one else has put their name down. It's almost as if they don't like the idea of pegging it around a field on a cold November afternoon.

If there's any competitive element to it then I guess I must win by default.

On Thursday there was a staff quiz. Our maths team (The Four Significant Figures) came in second on a tie-break. We had to colour in a map of the American states with blue for states that voted Obama and red for those that voted for McCain.

We wrongly assumed the winner would be the team who had the most correct states, however our oppsing team won because their colouring in was better. It was like losing on penalties.

Gutted.

We seem to be having lots of 'Dress Your Best' days this year, it was only three school weeks since the last one. Though on the evidence of some pupils turning up in their pyjamas perhaps it was actually a 'Forget to get dressed day'.

In truth it's more a dress-down day than it's name would suggest but this time I actually put in a bit of effort to look smart rather than just throwing on a hoodie. It made a change from simply blending in with the kids.

We were trying to raise money for Children in Need and given the number of pupils in the school probably made well over a thousand pounds, my form all managed to remember their pound this time. I was shocked on the last Dress Your Best day when some told me they'd forgotten their money. Strange how they'd remembered to not come in uniform though.

Some teachers seem to think that behaviour takes a dive on non-uniform days, but I always quite enjoy them as the atmosphere seems more relaxed. I don't have to worry about nagging anyone about coats or another other garments worn purely to appear rebelious.

The top things to look out for on these days are: excessively white trousers, unnecessary outdoor clothing, neon socks and hoods, lots of hoods. One girl was wearing such a combination of hoodie and coat as to give the effect of a burka. It could be a new trend.

I always try to be polite to my pupils. I expect the same back from them too. Sometimes in a classroom scenario things get a bit sressful, you feel frazzled and you say something that you wish you hadn't. Sometimes the atmosphere is ever so calm but due to an inability to regulate the words coming out of your mouth you still say something utterly stupid.

I wanted a girl in my year eleven class to stop talking. I carefully chose my words, very slowly and deliberately. What happened next is best described as being a bit like when you're writing something and you want it to be really neat. You put so much effort into the presentation that your spelling goes horribly wrong and you put the same the same words in twice. What came out of my mouth was 'shut your mouth', which frankly wasn't what I was going for, even if my tone was calm and polite. I frantically apologised and went bright red.

I might as well have just told her to shut the fuck up, which in some cases is actually quite tempting.

Getting around corridors between lessons is always hard work as a hundred teenagers trying to get through one set of double doors causes something of a crowd-flow problem. It's even more so when year ten are coming because I seem to know just about everyone in that year, which is good in some ways, but there are some pupils you'd rather just avoid.

It does mean I get a mass of hands waving at me with cheerful hellos from pupils who do like me, or ironic thumbs ups from pupils who don't. I'm left to send out a flurry of 'hey, you alright Paul?', 'Long time no see Fred,' 'Nice hat Polly' (technically she shouldn't have been wearing it inside, but it was a nice hat) and 'no you can't style my hair again.'

My level of sincerity varies massively, but then so does that of the kids. I always appreciate the attention though.

Just before the start of the last summer holidays the drama department announced that they would be putting together a pantomime this Christmas and wanted staff to volunteer to get involved. In school-land time in July seems to slow down. There are less pupils around who need teaching and the whole atmosphere is more relaxed. It's definitely an end-of-term vibe, which isn't surprising as that's exactly what it is.

So I put my name down, things happening months away never seem too daunting. The casting has now been done and I will play 'Vertically Challenged Freelancer #2'. It's not exactly James Bond but it's quite exciting, or to be more precise terrifying. We'll be performing in front of the kids, always an honest audience. I think I'd have been better cast as Harry Potter as all I'd have had to do would be to paint a scar on my forehead and... well, that'd probably be about it.

I've seen the synopsis and my role is rather limited, which might be a good thing given my mediocre acting potential. I was understudy to Aladdin in the school play when I was in year 3 and nearly got to stand-in, but Aladdin obviously used a wish on some calpol so i ended up playing rat #1.

The story is all about a Princess being abducted and being rescued by a hero. It all sounded very jolly and should be good fun, though I am a little concerned about the amount of jokes in it that will be more directed at staff rather than pupils. For instance, everyone's name seems to be based on exam predictors. In year 7 pupils take tests called CATs (Cognitive Ability Tests), which we use to predict future attainment. One of the characters is called Princess CAT, there's a similar thing called FFTD, so there's a character whose initials are FFTD. It's one of those things where the people writing it got hooked on a particular idea, lost all sense of perspective and put in lots of in-jokes. I guess it's the sort of thing that sounds good after a few pints in the pub.

Predictably it ends with the Princess being rescued and there's a big mass wedding. For some reason I end up marrying one of the Bennett sisters from Pride and Prejudice.

I'm already getting nervous about my curtain call.

The Maths department were discussing the days when the PTA did pub quizzes in the dining hall. They were enjoying reminiscing about how the Languages department went by the name of the Cunning Linguists. They had a good old laugh about it but unfortunately it's gone right over my head and noone would explain it to me.

My top five theories are:

1. It sounds a bit like 'cumulo-nimbus', so it is some kind of cloud reference/dig at the Geography department.

2. It's not actually funny at all and everyone else was in on a prank to thoroughly confuse me. If so it definitely worked.

3. The Languages department are actually retarded so the thought of them being cunning is inherently amusing. Interestingly at the end of today a German teacher came up the maths office because he'd left his coat in one of our rooms, adding credence to this theory.

4. I misheard them and the name was actually 'w***ers'.

5. The most probable, but also most dull option: that it's some sort of play on words with maybe a sexual inuendo. Possibly some kind of spoonerism in the same bracket as 'cunning stunt'.

...messes up the computer systems. I'm in the habit of arriving at school as early as possile, sometimes I get thee even before the caretakers have unlocked the gates to the car park. It's safe to say that I like to get on with things.

This morning I followed my usual routine of switching on the computer ahead of registration in my classroom and loading up 'SIMS', which is our electronic register software. This is a good habit but unfortunately this morning I was a little too quick off the mark. The ICT engineers frequently update the software, usually after half term breaks. Somehow, and not being particularly knowledgable about computers I'm puzzled by this, my being logged on to the system meant that they couldn't get the upgrade to work and no one else was able to load the software.

To cut a long story short there was a message in briefing explaining that it wouldn't be possible to take registers this morning due to a computer glitch.

I've never been called a glitch before...