It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

On Wednesday my year ten class seemed to metamorphose into a scene from the film Mean Girls. I had to step in to prevent an all-out war between the goths and the clones. Except more precisely it seemed like one goth against several clones. It's unfortunately predictable that the slightly make-up obsessed teenage girls don't like anyone who stands out even the tiniest bit.

I've had to discuss some issues with them previously but Wednesday was especially bad. It started as soon as they came into the room when clone-in-chief came in complaining that Goth-girl had barged her out of the way in the corridor. I hate it when that happens: when pupils drag in disputes from the playground into the classroom. I try to keep on top of all the variables that make for a good lesson but when something happens beyond the realms of my room it's very frustrating having to spend time sorting it out. In this instance I took the Goth-girl to one side to discuss the accusation, which I think was probably a lot of fuss over nothing but I had to be seen to be taking it seriously.

If it had been left there it would have been okay but then another clone starts whinging that Goth-girl is threatening to make a voodoo doll of her by pointing to a safety pin. Right, much as the whole thing irritates me I've got to have some respect for Goth-girl because she was able to thoroughly scare some actually rather unpleasant girls using nothing more than a well placed gesture and a safety pin. Next thing you know and I'll be being asked to search her bag for PMDs (Pins of Mass Destruction). She even managed to freak someone out by smiling at them. It really was all a storm in a tea cup.

In an attempt at a resolution I spoke to the main protagonists on both sides about respecting each other and encouraged them to take the philosophy of 'if you've nothing nice to say don't say anything at all', though I'm not sure it was massively effective. I refered the incident to the Head of Year as I don't think it was isolated to my lesson.

And this is a class who had an exam on Friday.

A few weeks ago in the Maths office we were discussing numerous teachers who were off due to illness or stress or whatever reason. Our head of Department told us all how thankful he was that we all turned up every morning. We all warned him not to jinx us and I bet he's regretting the kiss of death he gave us after today.

One teacher was off sick on Friday and today, another looks like being off all week due to falling off his bike and yet another is having to have a number of lessons off here and there because her husband has had a stroke. We're falling to pieces here.

The knock on effect is that we remaining few are left to pick up some of the slack. Our school is fairly well resourced in terms of cover-supervisors, but we all need to chip in occasionally. This morning I was called upon to cover a year eleven top set, which actually was quite a pleasant experience as I knew some of the kids in the group from a trip to Scotland a couple of years ago and we had a bit of a catch-up. Mainly this was to do with recalling the time I 'fell down a hill', which is a gross exageration as I merely tripped and never broke my crown with Jill tumbling after.

I also managed to greatly embarrass one of the girls in the group. They were working through some questions from a textbook when I spotted her looking in this little booklet. I picked it up to check what it was only to reveal the booklet's title of 'Dealing with Homosexuality'. Very much a case of curiousity killed the cat.

I myself felt a little embarrassed hearing the pupils whinge about their normal teacher, mainly to do with her being a little short with them when they don't understand things. Not that she's a dwarf you understand. Even so it was actually quite nice to teach a different class as you sometimes get a bit tired of the same pupils day in day out. Though I wouldn't complain if their regular teacher was back tomorrow.