It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

Our school has gone completely bananas about uniform. There's an obsession with getting it cracked. The main issue is making sure the pupils aren't wearing jackets within the building but it's all getting very confusing. We seem to be losing sight of what's important in teaching: finishing at three-thirty and long holidays.

The biggest example I've personally met of this fervour is a boy in my year ten class being hoiked out because he'd refused to remove his coat in the corridor. He was given the option of handing it over to the Deputy Head but refused so was frog-marched away. At least that's as much as I can make out from eavesdropping as the Deputy Head didn't bother to explain to me why someone who was sat working quietly in my lesson needed to be sub-excluded. As the person trying to actually teach the boy something I'm clearly not significant enough. I understand that if we have rules about uniform then it's important to actually enforce them, but it was all a little daft. The boy doesn't have the best attendance record anyway so he could have done with staying in the lesson.

Rumour has it that the next big push will be to do with girls wearing skirts. I've not heard anything about boys and skirts yet so there may be a loophole to be exploited. I think the issue is to do with 'tassley' bits, apparently they're a big no-no. I hadn't really noticed anything particularly wrong with any skirts as I don't have an obsession with looking in detail at the legs of young girls.

The truth is that the girls look quite smart in skirts. It's not like there's anyone going round in mini-skirts, it's all quite sweet and innocent. It's certainly a million times better than those awful trousers that are in fashion at the moment that seem to be not quite big enough so reveal the top of the knickers. It's a bit gross really, God knows why they think anyone wants to see them.

I'm not sure what the policy will be on skirts as when there are uniform issues the offending items have to be removed. I think that might cause a problem. People often comment on my blog about the ridiculousness of school uniform but I sort of get it: it's important that pupils dress appropriately, just as grown-ups do when they go to work, and having a defined uniform removes any grey areas about what this means. It's just that it'd be nice to just get on with actually teaching and not acting like the Nazi equivalent of Trinny and Susannah.

I normally have so much respect for our Head but I think she's lost the plot on this one. She's trying to do staff memos on computers to save on paper, which is perfectly noble. But this morning we all found memos in our pigeon holes telling us where to find this week's staff memo on the computer system.

Good grief.

You know it's been a bad day when you can't get your year eight form to shut up. We had a PSHE day today, which meant each form group went round together to lessons on PSHE rather than their normal Maths, English Science and Colouring In (Geography) lessons. I was with my own form group periods two and five and I felt like screaming because they were so bad.

Period five was with an lady from a Theatre in Education group who had performed a piece about the environment and the consequences of not recycling in the morning. You'd expect having a different person leading a fairly easy going lesson would be enough to keep them on track but apparently not. There was a man from the council watching the lesson too, presumably carrying out an observation. I was so annoyed with my form because they weren't shutting up and weren't listening to the lady taking the lesson, no matter how hard I tried to get them to quieten down. It was so disrespectful. The man from the council went out to fetch another teacher they were being so bad. Even with four adults in the room they still weren't as good as they should have been.

I felt so ashamed that I couldn't control my class and feel like sending a grovelling apology, complete with flowers, to the poor woman who was only trying to get them interested in looking after the environment, it wasn't like she was forcing some instimulating academic work down their throats. As a teacher you know you have to deal with silly children occasionally but someone from outside shouldn't have to put up with that kind of shit. She's going to go away with such a bad impression of the school now, as will the man from the council, who I presume has a proper name and doesn't get greeted at home by a call of 'hello man from the council' by his wife and kids.

I was nearly in tears after the lesson talking to my colleague who'd come into help out, it was that bad.

I teach some really strange girls this year. I'm not saying I dislike them but they're a bit weird. On my way through the corridor one of my year eights shouts out to me, 'Hi sir!'.

I reply 'Hi Sue'

'Wow he knows my name!' From anyone else I'd assume they were taking the piss, but my year eights are so slow that I can almost believe her surprise that I'd know who she was after teaching her for the past six months.

My year sevens are even more peculiar. All the girls came in complaining that my room smells:

'It smells like food'

'It smells like sweat'

'It smells like Shut Up!' chimes in one of the boys getting increasingly impatient with the girls being, well, girls. Seeing as the lesson before I'd been teaching my year tens who are quite boisterous I guess it actually smelt like teen spirit.

Later in the lesson one of the girls says she'd seen me driving my car last night, according to her it's purple. I'd call it blue but I'm not going to bother getting into a debate about the colour of my car with a twelve year old girl. She couldn't stop going on about it though and on her way out of the lesson she made motions with her hands as if she were using a steering wheel, supposedly to mimic me driving my 'purple' car. Which was kind of missing the point as it didn't accurately describe the colour, in fact it could have been anyone driving any colour car.

In some respects teaching such lunatics is quite handy. I heard on the radio this mornng that the average adult laughs just fifteen times a day. Even pessimistically assuming I have nothing to laugh about outside my classroom that'd make it an average of one laugh every twenty minutes. It's more like every twenty seconds with these kids.

They're bonkers but I should really appreciate the inanity, by the time they reach year ten girls have a habit of sulking for England. I asked one of my year tens if she was alright and she said I wouldn't believe it if she told me. I didn't pursue the issue any further but I was left wondering where it lay on the unbelievability scale, probably somewhere between 'I'm moving to Belgium' and 'My best friend's been turned into a vampire.' In truth I was proud of myself for not patronisingly asking if it was about a boy.

My pupils need to work harder at their joke telling, I'd say most of them are on a Level 3 at the moment. On Wednesday a year eleven told me a joke that her science teacher had told her to tell me because apparently I'm really clever and have a sense of humour. Clearly my colleague doesn't know me very well.

The joke, as told by a sixteen year old, was:

Two atoms were walking along and one says to the other 'I've just... something'

'I'm positive.'

'Lost an electron?' I suggest.

'Yes that's it!'

It's a good joke but it kind of loses something when you have to fill in the gaps for yourself. In fact most jokes fall apart when you miss out key words.

Q: What do you do if a [blank] throws a [blank] at you?
A: Pull out the [blank] and [blank] it back.

Your [blank]'s so [blank], she made a [blank] kid [blank].

(Answers on a postcard please)

My year eights are no better, 'sir what's orange a sounds like parrot?'

'Carrot, don't you mean sounds like a parrot?'

Missing out that 'a' ruins the joke because 'sounds like a parrot' puts in mind things that squawk, 'sounds like parrot' simply tests your poetic ability. They are a relatively low ability group so I can forgive them but worringly this joke had their English teacher completely flumoxed.

As you would expect on a day like Comic Relief we had a non-uniform day, except for the female science teachers who came in school uniform but in a chavved up style. The weird thing was that some of them actually looked quite good as chavs - hooped earrings, fake tan etc... - and I'm concerned that I found them strangely attractive. I didn't point this out to them as I don't know if they'd have taken it as a compliment.

We of course have to collect money from our tutor groups into envelopes. The Deputy Head handed me one during staff briefing in the morning but gave me a really mucky look when I asked for one for the person I sit with. It was almost as if she was scorning me for daring to speak to her. She didn't seem in the spirit of Comic Relief, though seeing as the spirit of Comic Relief ususally involves things getting shaved or covered in custard I guess it's a reasonable stance for a Deputy Head to take.

Worringly one of the boys in my form was wearing a red wig. I say worringly becasue I didn't notice until about five minutes into registration. You could tell it was near the end of the week. My year elevens were in the spirit of things but I don't think the girls had coordinated themselves very well as they were nearly all wearing black jumpers, which is kind of ironic as the normal uniform is a black sweater.

My year nines were drawing on the whiteboard at the end of their lesson this afternoon and I think they were getting in touch with the comedy side of things as they wrote 'sir is cool'. It was the funniest thing I saw all day, I might be many things but cool isn't one of them.

In the morning I'd heard Is this the way to Amarillo on the radio so I'd had it buzzing around my head all day long. It's aggravating but it's hard to be grumpy when you hear that song, so by the time we got to the end of period four and I was walking back to the maths block I was in a great mood. I kept bumping into my pupils and exchanging cheerful hellos, I think they were in good moods too. I love my job sometimes.

Increasingly I find pupils trying to add me as a friend on Facebook. One of the other teachers who I happen to be 'friends' with has allowed some pupils to add her and from there they keep finding my profile. It's all well and good her adding pupils seeing as she's a fifty year old woman, but I think as a twentyfive year old man I could get myself into a whole world of bother by adding pupils. Though having said that most pupil-teacher horror stories seem to involve a scruffy looking boy chav and a slightly haggard looking middle aged woman.

But anyway if I was friends with any teenage girls my friends (as in actual real-life friends) would call me a paedo.

I really want to start teaching more A-Level work. Currently I teach one lesson of Further Maths a week. I enjoy it but the class is too small seeing as it consists of the only pupils able and willing enough to do even more maths.

I keep dropping some subtle and not so subtle hints to my Head of Department that I'd like to teach more sixth form. He was complaining - sarcastically - the other day that he was the only maths teacher who taught last thing on a Friday. Seeing as it was a year twelve class I suggested he could avoid the problem by giving me more A-Level to teach. This afternoon he was working through some Mechanics questions and I chirped in with 'I really like Mechanics, it's fun', hoping he'd pick up on my enthusiasm. Failing that I keep saying 'Please give me more A-Level next year.'

At our school the current teachers of the main A-Level maths are well-established so I'm kind of relying on someone leaving or bumping one of them off, which might be a little excessive.

I feel sorry for my pupils when their parents are hell-bent on aiding them in breaking the rules. During my year seven lesson this morning a ringtone blasted out playing the Saturdays. The poor girl whose phone it was was in two minds whether to turn it off as soon as possible or try to keep her head down and hope it'd go unnoticed. The latter was never likely as the class was told repeatedly that the group 'just can't get enough'.

'It's my mum' she says and sure enough on the phone as she takes it out of her bag it says 'mum calling'. 'She keeps thinking lunchtime starts at twelve o' clock.' I took the phone off her until the end of the lesson but didn't send it up to the office for keeping until the end of the day. I'm not sure what hope my pupils have when their parents go about sabotaging maths lessons.

'Sir when's your birthday?'

'November'

'I'm going to get you a joke book because you're rubbish.'

'Thanks, do you mean at jokes or as a person.'

'Bit of both.'

It's a fair cop, on a beach on a school trip I told this joke: 'why is the beach wet? Becase the sea weed.'

Chortle chortle.

'I said exclude me you knob!'

I have one lesson a fortnight where I man the Isolation Facility, in other words I keep an eye on any pupils who have pushed it too far with their teachers and have been removed from their lesson. There were two year ten girls there who had been sent out of English and the Assistant Head was dealing with them. He sent one of them to wait outside the Head's office and was discussing matters with the other, he said that she needed to improve her behaviour or she'd be excluded. As he walked out she called after him 'go on, exclude me you knob!'

Oh no she didn't. Oh yes she did! I sat there wide-eyed and completely gobsmacked.

The Assistant Head came back into the room and asked her to repeat what she'd just said. You'd expect the girl to back down and pretend she hadn't said any but she was beyond caring, 'I said exclude me you knob!'

And so she was sent home.

I can sort of see why pupils love it when one of their peers has a row with a teacher; it's certainly entertaining. On the plus side from my point of view I wouldn't have to spend any more time with the girl, if she was prepared to call a senior teacher a 'knob' who knows what she'd have called me. She might even have dropped the C-bomb.

The girl originally sent outside the Head's office was brought back in like it was a strange version of musical chairs but without the music and with a lot of swearing. I'd taught this girl last year so knew what to expect from her: phones, frequent toilet requests, oh and she once called me a wanker. Sure enough the phone came out. Given it was only me and her in the room it was actually possible to hear her tapping away on the keypad so she never stood a chance.

Later on she asked to go to the toilet. I escorted her to the nearest toilets, which happened to be for staff but I wasn't going to take her for a stroll around the school. A minute later an office staff lady came out and told me how rude the girl was. 'I told her these were staff toilets and she told me to get over it.' The awful thing is that I wasn't shocked by it.

When the girl told me her side of the story - actually identical to the original version - and how the lady had called her rude I told her that I reckoned she'd live. She called me on it and said 'but aren't you being rude to me by saying that?'

Touche. I'd argue that it's different because I know her and also knew that she'd take it in the vein intended - which she did - but she's got a good point, sarcasm isn't necessary. I smiled at her in acknowledgement.

She's clearly made progress as she managed to go the full fortyfive minutes in the room without calling me a 'wanker'.

Teenagers these days know their rights. Which most of the time is a good thing. You wouldn’t want teachers going around punching pupils in the face or copping a quick feel, it’s just not on.

Unfortunately they seem to ‘know’ some rights that don’t exist. Such as apparently the UN charter contains an article about going to the toilet or that you have the right to eat non-stop – if you don’t you will certainly starve to death. On Wednesday one of my year elevens turned up a full twenty minutes late. His excuse was that he’d gone home for lunch and had burnt his pizza, so had to cook another one, ‘would you rather I starved sir?’ I really wish my pupils wouldn’t ask me rhetorical questions as they expose me to such temptation. I could have said any number of things: ‘you must weigh around fifteen stone so I think that’d be unlikely’, ‘I didn’t know you were at death’s door, have the money I was going to donate to Comic Relief’, ‘you could stand to lose the weight’ or simply ‘yes’.

One of my year tens has a lawyer-like comeback for everything. It’s odd as he rarely does anything wrong himself. I admire his spirit and willingness to fight for justice on the behalf of others but most of the time he talks complete bulls***. I’d confiscated some make-up off one of the girls and said I’d give her it back the next day when she brought me the work she’d failed to complete in the lesson. He claimed that I could only keep it if she’d had it out five times, it was the week of a full moon and I hopped to Glasgow and back, or some other such nonsense. I wonder where they get that kind of rubbish from. I’m not even sure we can legally take anything but given that I rang her parents I could actually do pretty much what I wanted with the make-up, as long as they were okay with it. They were.

The same boy once told me that I should let a girl keep her hoodie on as there was a petition going round to allow them, until that had been resolved they shouldn’t be removed. By that logic I could start a petition saying that my pupils have to pay me a pound every time they talk crap and I’d end up a millionaire.

'How old are you sir?'

'Twentyfive.'

'But you said you were twentyfour last year!'

Spoken by a top set year ten pupil.

I do worry about my year nines sometimes. This morning I gave them a worksheet, which when marking their books later on I realised I'd given them a few months ago. Not one of them had noticed, nor the Teaching Assistant, nor perhaps most worryingly myself.

It wasn't my only dozey moment of the day. In registration I made eye contact with one of the girls and she said, 'No, please sir!' I barely had time to think 'what's she on about' before she'd followed it up by offering to put it in her bag.

Seriously. What is she on about? Talk about a guilty conscience. Still totally clueless I go my instincts and say 'no you'd better hand it here until the end of the day.' Which turned out to be absolutely correct as the next moment she's handing me a bright blue non-regulation belt.

I wish it was always that easy when I have to confiscate things from my pupils.