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.