It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

It seems to have been a real mix of up and downs this week. I followed Monday afternoon's stress-fest - 'I don't want to be in your class because I really don't like you' - with my performance management observation on Tuesday morning. With my bottom set year eights. One of whom has ADHD.

To make matters worse I felt like one of the science teachers was trying to jinx me. I told her I had an observation first thing she was saying that she only had one class she wouldn't want to be observed with: her bottom set year eights, without realising this was the scenario I was facing. She tried to backtrack a little: 'maybe my class is on the other half of the year, mine's the A half'. Yeah, me too. It was all very ominous.

So I was very relieved that the lesson was a success. So good that my head of department rated it as Outstanding. It was very satisfying, especially as I hadn't done anything differently just because someone had come in to see the lesson.

This was followed by our Open Evening for parents trying to decide which Secondary School to send their children to. I had a nice covnersation with the parents of one of my year nines who has apparently been singing my praises to them. A teacher could get big headed. I also had a very strange conversation with a parent of a bright child who she wanted strtching sideways as well as upwards. I wasn't entirely sure what she was on about her but assured her we stretched our pupils in the full compass spectrum of directions.

The only fly in the ointment the past few days has been my form. Soem fo the boys are getting rather big for their boots, with one boy who seems to think he's above turning up for detention after messing aroudn during a fire drill. I'm going to get some senior back-up in order to bash a few heads together.

On Friday the Head informed us that we were going down from a Red Ofsted alert to Amber. Under the old system Ofsted left a maxmimum of three years betweens visits to a school. We've already passed that so the Head had contacted her union who told her Ofsted were trying to be less predictable to avoid schools gearing up for them. Rumours of a man in a suit with a clipboard standing in the bushes behind A-block have yet to be confirmed.

I finished the week with a very sore throat which has since developed into a full-blown cold, though there's no sign of man-flu. This gives me two days to prepare for the next week of adventures.

Only two weeks have passed since the start of the school year but you already get the sense that not all is as it should be. You normally get a honeymoon period with a new class but the consensus is that there are already too many problems with behaviour and we’re straight into the marriage counselling. I think some of my year tens actually want to file for divorce already, as one pupil told me she didn’t want to be in my class because she doesn’t like me. I’m not particularly bothered whether she does or not but I don’t like pupils being rude, especially when it’s difficult to see how I’ve provoked them. That is, apart from referring to the old Bart Simpson quote of ‘sometimes I feels sorry for them, but then I remember they were trying to teach’.

With pupils like that I think the best course of action is not to take the bait and to try to be as courteous and respectful towards them as possible. I doubt this particular girl will ever take to me and that’s okay, but retaliation would only make things worse. Our school has a habit of bowing to pressure from pupils in this sort of situation when I can’t help but feel they should be made to like it or lump it. We don’t do them any favours by doing this, we only teach them that being rude helps you to get your way. Plenty of people have to work for a boss they don’t like; it’s just tough luck. So in short no I’m not going to be asking the teacher of the set above if he could take her, even if that would suit me fine.

From a personal point of view it’s very difficult to not end up severely disliking the pupil but it’s important to try and remember that often it’s because they don’t get much love at home and don’t know how to respond to anyone they don’t get on with without being hostile. That isn’t always the case, like many adults there are some pupils who come from perfectly nice backgrounds but inexcusably still end up being utter twats. However the main point is that our job is to teach and not to judge, tempting as that may be.

Aside from my own personal troubles I don’t think our school is the happiest place at the moment. OFSTED still loom large on the horizon and everyone wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. The Head referred to it in briefing this morning, she wasn’t quite so forthright as to say she wanted them out of the way but you could sort of read between the lines. It’ll be her first OFSTED since taking charge of the metaphorical ship and I think she must be feeling seasick about whether they find everything to be… er… shipshape.

There does seem to be some backlash against her at the moment with some staff whinging about her talking about consistency all the time. They feel she could do with practising what she preaches a little more. I understand what they’re saying but I go back to the point I made about not always seeing eye-to-eye with your boss. I fail to see how disagreeing with the Head would benefit anyone, we would only serve to undermine ourselves. I just hope everyone realises this. In our Head’s first year I heard from a pupil that one of their teachers had said he didn’t expect her to last long in the job. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

All of which leads me to wonder if a storm is brewing, I just get the sense that something big is about to happen. It’s not all doom and gloom though. The Deputy Head came into my lesson this morning looking for a pupil who was in trouble over something – which unfortunately for the lad in question isn’t a rarity. He wasn’t actually there anyway but she took a look round at what the rest of the class were up to. I think she caught the shoulder of one of the boys as she walked passed and he asked her ‘did you just put something on my back?’ Right, so the Deputy Head of all people is going to put a post-it on a fifteen year old’s back saying ‘kick me’. In spite of the less likeable pupils I love working with kids as much as anything for some of the daft ideas they have. There’s always something to make you smile.

It's important to have a good system of rewards. There's no substitute for good old fashioned praise but actual prizes as it were go a long way. The conventional wisdom is that small and many is better than big and few when it comes to such things so I have a stash of little goodies. I try to avoid going down the 'sweeties' route, partly because I find some children's obsession with sugar a little irritating.

One of my year tens had done some excellent work on a very difficult topic on Wednesday so I gave her a little reward badge. The next time I see the class she tells me that her mum's buying her a new phone for getting the badge. It's astonishing the knock on effects of how you deal with your pupils. After recieving a certificate from me a few years ago another pupil had been given ten pounds by her mum. I suggested she owed me a fiver...

Every Friday after school I run a Warhammer Club. When I was little I collected the models and it's nice to give some fellow enthusiasts a chance to get together and have some battles. When I was younger I only ever had battles with a handful of my friends and we all collected the same type of army anyway - Space Marines for any aficionados out there. I actually go to into running the club quite by accident. The teacher who I'd replaced had previously run it so the club's members were disappointed when he left and had asked the Key Stage 3 leader if it would continue. She'd flippantly suggested to them that I might like to run it without having the first idea whether I knew anything about Warhammer.

I often find it quite amusing that some pupils think I'm still really into it and would go home and spend a whole day rolling dice and telling people that their Orks are dead, I'd likle to think I'm a bit too grown up for that sort of thing. I find it even more amusing when teachers think the same.

The club's been on life support for the past couple of years with only three or four regulars in attendance each week. They've been going a long time now so know me very well and frequently remind of the time when I missed thin air when shooting - don't ask - and got five ones on five dice, a 1 in 7776 chance. This year we've kept the same people who came last year and now have some new year sevens joining, which is excellent news. We have two enthusiastic but less knowledgable boys and another who is like a walking encyclopaedia of Warhammer.

I found it nice at the end when they all said 'thank you' to me. I almost had to do a double take because as a teacher you very rarely hear anyone saying 'thank you' to you. It's fair enough really because we're just doing a job afterall, but it's always nice when you're appreciated.

I always put my classes in a seating plan. As much as anything it's about showing that you control what happens in your classroom. I'm not against reasonable requests for pupils to move places but it has to with my approval.

I was quite happy when one year nine came to me at the start of a lesson this week and asked if he could sit on his own. I told him there was an empty desk at the back he could have to himself if he liked.

A couple of moments later another boy asks why he's sat at the back. I explained that he'd requested to sit on his own.

'Oh I want to sit on my own too, can I sit next to him?'

Over the summer I was fortunate enough to obtain a kitten - who at this very moment is trying to walk all over my keyboard - from a colleague whose cat had recently had a litter. In true maths teacher form I decided to name her Pi, Paella for long or 'Oi stop scratching the carpet' depending on the scenario. The teacher whose cat it was has a daughter in year ten who was in tears when I took the kitten away. I can now say that I made a pupil cry, though it's perhaps not such a thing to be proud of.

This afternoon one of my year tens, who for the record I've yet to make cry, informed me that my cat isn't called 'Pi', she's 'Mini', which might mean that she was once a British icon but is now manufactured by BMW. Apparently one of her friends had wanted that particular cat and had chosen the name for her.

Tough.

The first week back is probably the best week on the year for behaviour, but the worst for lesson planning, frankly it all seems a bit of a chore and you haven't really got into your routine. These two facts make it all the more appealing to actually get back in the classroom and teach some kids.

Our morning is a bit of a false start. Only the year sevens come in at the start of the day with the rest of the school arriving in time for period two spent with their form tutors. The first pupils I saw then were my form. This was nice in a way but seeing as they're year nines they're very comfortable in their environment without being old enough that you can have a sensible conversation with them. It was amazing how much they'd changed over just six weeks, or I suppose to be more accurate how much they'd changed between last September and this July without me noticing because of seeing them more or less every day. Most of the boys were wearing hair gel like it was going out of fashion - for all I know maybe it is - and the girls had discovered make up. All except for the girls who'd previously discovered make up who seemed to have discovered fake tan and looked like they belonged advertising Tango. The most dramatic appearance change was a girl who arrived in my classroom with blue hair. I think we had every colour of the rainbow accounted for.

If I'm completely honest my form annoyed me a bit this morning, there's only so many times you can ask a class to be quiet without getting frustrated. My new year tens were far more receptive, which came as something of a relief as I'd been a bit nervous about them. Just so long as we can maintain the positive start. I'm always wary about getting too excited about a new class after the first lesson because you need to give it a while before you can relax even a little with them, but they seem like basically amiable kids so there's plenty to build on. At the start of the lesson I got them to decide on three expectations of behaviour and effort in class. Immediately one girl without a trace of irony or attempt at humour shouted out 'put your hand up if you want to say something'. I smiled at her and waited for her to realise her mistake. After this daft comment the lesson settled down well and I enjoyed teaching again. By the end of the lesson I had a great big grin on my face. When you consider that the last time I was teaching was July at the end of the previous school year when I was exhausted and the pupils extremely hyper it's quite a contrast.

My year sevens in the afternoon were fairly nervous looking, though actually quite confident compared to some I've taught previously. I'm not going to risk being too soft with them because that inevtiably leads to a very difficult time later in the year. I actually thought I was going to end up with a class of around forty because a worryingly high number of pupils got my classroom confused with another. Possibly because they seemed unable to tell the difference between the number two and the number five. I was stood under a sign saying 'A5' and they kept asking me if it was 'A2'. It's sort of sweet really but it's best to avoid laughing in their faces at such errors. At least it means we have plenty to teach them this year.

So plenty of positives from the first day, here's hoping the remaining one hundred and eighty nine school days this year are the same.

If you didn't know already and you haven't guessed from the lovely weather we've been having today, it's time to go back to school. Those long summer days spent staring out of the window at the rain are gone for another year and in their place come bells, bustling corridors, low on salt school meals and lots and lots of algebra. It's enough to make even the most enthusiastic of pupils want to stay in bed for those precious extra few minutes after their alarm clock rings.

For we the teachers it's back with a bit of a dull thud as we faced the monotony of today's INSET. Today being extra important as far as our Head is concerned as a few inches of learning outcomes are forecast with some thundery outbreaks of OFSTED. We're very much due a visitation as our last inspection was now three years ago.

The Head started the first meeting of the day by telling us all about a dream she'd had that OFSTED had told her she was a rubbish Head because she'd tried to give her staff too much information. It wasn't exactly a Martin Luther King style dream speech but I'm glad that she didn't describe anything involving zombie year elevens, which is pretty much par for the course in my subconscious at 3am. However she didn't take heed of the dream and went on to go on about... actually I'm struggling to remember much of what she said apart from one important bit.

She started to tell us all about Bobby Fidgeton in year seven who in spite of a being a pleasant and bright enough lad just can't sit still. I sort of knew where she was going straight away with this and it wasn't good.

I taught Bobby last year and he drove me round the bend with his hyperactivity. Anyway he'd told the Head that he'd been having a few problems in Maths so she'd come to see me to suggest I give him some blue tack to keep him occupied when he needed to be listening in lessons. I was actually quite impressed with her for taking time out of what I imagine is a very busy schedule to talk to me in order to help this boy out.

I was less impressed with her for telling this tale to the hundred plus staff sat in the dining hall at nine thirty this morning. I sort of sank down on my chair and tried to hide. I can't even remember what relevance it had to whatever she was talking about and I remember even less of the next few minutes as I tried to hide my embarrasment. I think it was something to do with teaching in some way. I like our Head but as with many people in senior positions in education she does talk some nonsense sometimes. She closed her speech by quoting the Nike slogan of 'Just Do It' and showing us a poster of a boy pissing against a wall. It made more sense if you were there, but only just.

The next little speech came from the Deputy Head who talked to us about Learning Outcomes and how not to write them, the trouble is I didn't feel she actually told us how we should write them apart from giving us a little handout which looked remarkably similar to a sheet I'd received at university and chucked out as being unneccesary when sorting through my files over the holiday. As with the Head I have huge respect for the woman but half the time I don't know what she's on about.

It was something of a relief to get away from the uncomfortable chairs and into the Key Stage Three meeting. The two teachers in charge of this Key Stage are two of the nicest at our school, so that's... er... nice. As my form are in year nine I'm feeling a bit of an old hand at the form tutoring lark so felt very confident talking to one of the NQTs about everything, even when she already knew my name after our Head's little blue tack story.

In the afternoon we had another speech from the Head which she called 'The Head goes on a bit more' and it certainly lived up to its billing. She kept asking us to raise our hands as a quick survey if we didn't know what something meant. I might as well have kept my hand up the whole time.

It was a relief to get into departments, until the Head of Department told us all that we had a new departmental code for the photocopier. He'd been speaking to Emily who works in reprographics and she'd some up with our code because of my telling her my way of remembering the numbers. I always try and think of sums to give the required digits and connect things in some way. So our new code is 26156 because 156 = 26 x 6. Pretty neat, but for the second time already in the new school year I died of embarrasment.

I picked up when I found out that my top set year elevens would now be a sort of super group. We split each year into two halves and then set the halves. Last year there were five sets on each half, but this time we have an extra set on the half I teach so we're doing some rejigging. The bottom line is that instead of teaching a class of thirty one of a reasonable range of abilities I will only have twenty three extremely bright pupils. Leaving aside opinions on setting it's quite a priviledge to have the opportunity to teach such a group, and also an opportunity to really go for it with some exciting lessons. It should be fun.

Hopefully the rest of my classes will be okay too, though I'm expecting a touch time with some of the groups, but there's plenty of time to talk about that on another day. For now it's fingers crossed and bracing myself for another full on year, blue tack and all.