Silly season

What is wrong with this picture?

Oh nothing really. It's probably just me. 

But, isn't that a really, really weird place to put a public bench?

On the far side of the fence is a school's sports pitch. This side is a public footpath. Just WHO is this bench meant for?

Anyway, I've taken to affectionately calling it the paedo-bench, and the name is beginning to stick amongst colleagues. What do you reckon I can get it removed by the powers-that-be through the power of a silly name and Chinese whispers?

I hasten to add here that I have no genuine concerns that paedophiles are using the bench to observe gym sessions. I'm not a sabre-rattling-peados-on-every-corner type of gal. In fact the only person I have ever seen indulging urges on the bench is a colleague eating chips and enjoying an off-premises smoke. 

It's very slightly 'silly season' in school (you may have noticed). Exams are nearly done with. ALL my Law students are on study leave and whilst I have plenty of work to do, it's generally of the 'pushing paper' variety.

It's been a real delight to spend some days with colleagues in the staffroom with similar workloads, indulging in the kind of water-cooler gossip that is largely impossible during normal teaching life. Before I started teaching last September it never really occurred to me what a lonely job teaching can be. In terms of adult interaction, it's been a desert. As someone new to the area and the job it's been very hard to grow a social life out of my new school. Here's hoping that a few more days sweltering in the staff-room will lead to some more burgeoning friendships.

Exam Board Shenanigans

Ok, so I'm a bit of a stickler sometimes. A tad pedantic. I also have a strong 'mother-hen' streak where my students and their potential exam results are concerned. There's a healthy amount of self interest there too of course; I expect them to make me look FABULOUS on results day. 


It was with perturbation (what a great word, hitherto unused by me!) that I read over one of the recently-sat GCSE papers and found the following question:

a) Judges take may factors into account when deciding upon sentencing, including aggravating and mitigating factors. List below THREE factors which may be considered 'aggravating'.


So far so good. I actually taught them this schizzle! Possible answers are things like ' racially motivated crime', 'use of a weapon' or 'vulnerability of the victim'. 3 marks in the bag. Get IN! (God! I'm good. Etc etc ad nauseum)

b)Discuss what any TWO of these factors influencing sentencing are seeking to achieve.


OK, here's the 'rub'. I have enormous issues with the question. Mostly of the 'WTAF?' nature. When you've finally unravelled the excruciating grammar, just what are they asking? The literal, logical translation might be: 'What is use of a weapon trying to achieve?'


Unanswerable nonsense. This Utter B*ll*cks accounts for ten percent of the marks for this entire paper! That's ten percent of my FABULOUSNESS at stake. Let's put this in perspective!


Naturally, being me, I couldn't shrug this off, so I contacted the relevant exam board to raise my concerns. Their response wasn't as reassuring as I'd hoped. "Question papers are put through a number of quality assurance checks and this question was considered to be fair and answerable".


Well that's OK then. Oh, wait, no it's not. 


The rest of the reply was of a slightly 'arse-covering' tone. My concerns will be tabled before the marking panel apparently. Fingers crossed for a sensible approach. This is all virgin territory for me as an NQT. 


I'm quite grateful really, for the distraction of exam board complaints. With ALL of my law students off on study leave, and some very dull scheme of work tasks to deal with, little intrigues and outrages like this make my life bearable, and offer some relief from the malaise of staff-room moaning.


We KS5 teachers with no pupils at the moment are a rare and smug breed in my school. Today a colleague and I entertained ourselves for the entire afternoon asking passing, rushing, harassed-looking teachers 'Are you still teaching this term?' on receiving an affirmative answer, we'd look at each other knowingly and say 'Oh! How QUAINT!' followed by gales and cackles of laughter from us and (generally speaking) a single-digit symbol of annoyance from our victim. We'll get our just deserts, I'm assured.


On a personal note, bad educative news in the LawTeacher household. #2 has been denied a place in grammar school despite all of my best efforts in the appeal process. The appeal panel, rather annoyingly, have accepted all of my (excellent) points.

They accept the evidence that she's both able and appropriate for grammar school. They also accept that the system is unfair to those who move into an eleven-plus county without opportunity to practice and prepare.

But still, it's tough shit because there are no spaces. The grammar system is broken. There's a multitude of good reasons that 80% of the country have abandoned this system, you know. Still, the traditionalists nobs of Tunbridge Wells environs will have their say and continue to buy extra coaching for their little darlings, ensuring that opportunity is the preserve of the wealthy and they can continue to spend what they save on private schooling on ski holidays and pricing the rest of us out of the housing market. Deep, deep joy.

My job makes me SMILE

My job teaching 16-19 year-olds amuses me more than just about anything. Every day brings a new portion of complete and utter sheer-daftness. Some of it emanates from me. This entry is of my last three working-days worth of nonsense.

Last Thursday brought an all-staff email entitled 'new silly thing boys are doing', just when I thought I'd seen just about all of the silly things that boys do. Apparently a load of boys from the lower school, so aged about 13 and 14, have been spending their lunch breaks "snorting" their drinks. This has created a spate of severe nosebleeds. I remind myself at times like this that, as Whitney once said, 'the children are our future.' God help us.

Friday afternoon brings with it a double lesson of my most tricky characters. Last week, I dashed out mid lesson to avail myself of the restroom facilities. On my return to the room, a student asked where I'd been.
"To the loo." Cue an audible intake of breath from most of class. They stared at me, slightly agape and one student said "Miss, I think you're the only teacher that has ever admitted to going to the toilet." The others agreed and I tried then to shrug nonchalantly while thinking "God, I  must have missed the 'don't admit to peeing' lecture on the PGCE!".

Today, I have had fun by turning some teen-talk back on the students. Exam stresses have turned the GCSE class extra-petulant. I suspect this new party trick of mine which both amused them and shut them up has limited mileage. I'm giving it until Wednesday. I shall sketch out my new approach below:

Student: Miss, these exam questions are sooooooo stupid!
Me: So's your face.

Student: Miss, Billy's being really annoying!
Me: So's your face.

It works on so many levels. Well, one, actually. But we all enjoyed it. I'm really hoping I carried it off with enough irony so they don't think I'm actually one of the try-hards. Like the poor young maths teacher in my school who tried to "talk their language" and called a bunch of middle-class white boys from Kent "blud"  in a blunder that is now legendary.

Add to the above the class my year 13 boys (all 18) presented themselves, entirely performed in Phone-Jacker style and you'll understand why very often on the quiet drive home I realise that my face aches from smiling all day.

Soft Porn in school

The tween and teen girls in school are sporting various versions of the Hollister 'Hunk' (90s' word alert) on paper bags that they transport their teenage gubbins about in. My objections are threefold.

Firstly I'm a bit of an unreconstructed feminist. If the boys in school were brazenly flashing about 'glamour' pictures of scantily clad females I'd feel obliged to object. Forget all that nonsense about the women making a choice and rejoicing in the body. It's porny and creepy. I live in abject fear of being caught in a double standard, so the bags will have to go I'm afraid.

Secondly, having grown up with a deep and generally unfounded fear that my body doesn't cut the mustard, the proliferation of ANY blatantly airbrushed body 'ideal' in an education setting makes my sensitive little hackles rise. I'd like to do any small thing I can to protect my students from the ridiculous body-image obsession in the world around us. School should be a haven where the pressure is to do something you haven't done before, to learn something previously unknown or to make something you've not made before. The pressure to be like something other than you are should come from parents, and in the future, spouses.

Finally,a practical point: the bags are made of paper. They turn to mush in the rain or the bottom drops out on those days when you've got both PE and cooking. I'm quite tired of forlorn girls sadly sticky-taping over the weirdly shiny groins of headless men.

So, in my view the bags will have to go. I now have a choice. Do I take my concerns to the governers? Let them have a meeting. Then perhaps there will be a meeting about the meeting. A decision will be made about the time that trends have moved on and students are sporting Femidoms as rain hats. The alternative to the ominous 'right channels' is covert brand subversion.

I have discovered that apart from being a brand associated with clothes for the young and beautiful, Hollister is a brand name for a company in an entirely different sector. Still bag related. I think if I can build a synapse connection in these young, malleable minds to these products, the power of branding will eat itself.

Stage Fright!

Today was the return to school after the two week break. Last night I slept very little. In the general routine of things I'm fairly confident as NQTs go I think. I don't have a great deal of pressure on me, my classes are generally populated by decent kids and my boss is perhaps the most laid-back person in the world.

None of this assuaged my feeling of dread last night, or on the drive in to school this morning. I felt mortified at the thought of all those people looking at me. What if I say something wrong and they laugh at me? Supposing I get one of those impromptu visits that the headmistress is always promising and I'm suddenly found out? (The last of these is unlikely, to be frank, as I am a department of one in a quiet non bacc-water of the school.)

I wondered last night if these spasms of self doubt are a peculiar neurosis of mine, or if it something more endemic to the profession. A quick unscientific poll of my teacher friends was revealing. K an NQT in primary agreed with my use of the words 'stage fright' and said that she feels knotted inside on Sunday evening as she practices her 'lines' for the next day's performance. C, a primary teacher with 8 years' experience, while less dramatic than we newbies, admitted to getting 'very bad back-to-work dreams at the end of holidays - they always involve me screaming at children who don't even turn to the sound of my voice'. 

So, I am not alone, we all feel slightly as though we are performing for 5 hours each day. I wonder if this is heightened in me, because of my academic and professional volte-face relatively late in life. I didn't do A'levels. (I stayed on to sixth form but the things I did with my time did not amount to any qualifications.) I got    a job at 18 in the civil service, got married, had a number of children, became a housewife until suddenly at the age of 30 I realised *WHAM* that I needed more.  So I got a degree (and an extra child during) followed by a PGCE and most recently a brilliant job 300 miles away from my (now estranged) husband. It's been a whirlwind and I often find myself staring at my reflection thinking 'who are you?'. I keep wondering when someone will notice that this brilliant new life is not mine; I don't deserve it. That I'm really not this fulfilled and independent woman with an ID card that reads 'Law Teacher'. When will the curtains come down?

Procrastination

Today I'm mostly drinking tea, trying to ignore dieting pangs and looking at a pile of text-books and specifications without feeling the slightest inclination to GET ON WITH IT.

I'm fairly sure that I have some sort of psychiatric disorder that involves getting a kick out of leaving things far beyond the last minute. Planning lessons and learning the syllabus actually in the moment is certainly adrenaline-laden but perhaps not an OFSTED approved approach.

I need a plan and structure for today, a giant pot of tea (check!) and someone standing over me with a big stick.
Someone who is variously not:

• distractingly attractive 
• fascinatingly unattractive
• entertainingly bright
• amusingly dim

. The entire cast of The One Show seem to fit the bill.

I hasten to add I don't watch The One Show deliberately. It has an annoying habit of slipping under my shit-telly radar after the news for a few minutes occasionally. It's a surprisingly wily thing considering it seems to lack any sort of wit, guile or intelligence. Perhaps it operates like white noise in a sci-fi, delivering simpering 'celebrity' and presenters drinking from (clearly empty) teacups while you drool.

Enough nonsense. There are word-games to be played.

Half term woes

So it's February. A bleak sort of month. And my school has a 2 week half term so I am now wallowing my way through the 2nd chilly grey week. I am feeling glum and lazy. I should have booked a cheap ski trip. But my children's schools are in this week, oh! and I am broke. (£350 gas bill that arrived makes doubly sure of this)

We had 2 weeks off in October too and by this point in week 2 I was actually slightly mad. Over-thinking every decision I have ever made and hiding from all the actual things I ought to have been doing. Crying a lot.

I think I largely have avoided the madness this time around. I haven't cried at all this week. There was a momentary slip where I indulged in a bit of seriously unhealthy cyberstalking. It's never a good idea to go and re-find those accidently unsecured photographs that tell you "yes she really is much thinner, prettier and richer and 'yes' she has the man too".

Still have a lot of NQT business to attend to before next Monday too. I have an A2 unit to teach that is feeling very foggy at the moment. I  MUST get to grips with that. It's a new unit, so there are no resources to bastardise on the usual websites. Lots to do from scratch. That will keep me out of trouble. Mostly.

introduction

Hello there

I'm an NQT (although not a fantastically young one) and am halfway through my first year of teaching in a large comprehensive school in the South of England

I feel extraordinarily lucky to be teaching the subject that I love and I am continuously amazed, amused and exasperated by my students. I feel pretty confident they feel the same about me.