The class sizes at my Academy are enviable. Year 7 form groups average 15; the one I shadowed today had only 13. This is a great pupil-to-teacher ratio - one that even the independent schools in the area would find it hard to improve upon. With so much more teacher attention, why aren't parents flocking to send their kids to the school?
Well, out of the 5 lessons I observed today, 4 of them were cover lessons i.e.the timetabled teacher for that lesson was not present. This might have been a one-off for today, but still, having only 1 lesson in a day with your "proper" teacher is a bit of a joke. Their tutor wasn't here either (off sick) so the poor kids just spent the day doing cover work rather than having actual lessons. Luckily they're only 11 year olds so they still turn up to lessons and don't cause the supply teacher too much grief. If that had been year 9 or 10s, it would've been chaos. Hopefully in the future these problems will be sorted out, but given the school's reputation, exam results, high staff turnover, and problem pupils, no wonder it's the last choice for parents (even with the small class sizes).
In the first lesson (Music) the cover teacher tried to get the kids to write raps. This was actually a pretty successful endeavour (especially since he made it up on the spot), with most groups coming up with some quite good rhymes. Rather alarmingly, one group of boys rapped about guns, weed and fighthing. They even got into character for their performance, with "low batties" and "braps". When I asked them where they got the inspiration for their lyrics, they said from the gangsters on TV. Even worse, they said they'd started making up rhymes about guns etc. back in primary school. This actually quite horrified me, and I did my best for the rest of the day to persuade the boys that guns aren't cool and that a brain was what they needed to succeed. Not sure the message got through (although the "brapping" did stop).
Spent aaaages faffing, consequently have loads of work to do tomorrow. On the plus side, got football tomorrow, woo, and then it's only one day to the weekend! Some of the other teachers seem to be having nervous breakdown type things, so I'm counting myself lucky, despite seemingly wishing my life away! I'm not really, I love school...guns and all.
Well, out of the 5 lessons I observed today, 4 of them were cover lessons i.e.the timetabled teacher for that lesson was not present. This might have been a one-off for today, but still, having only 1 lesson in a day with your "proper" teacher is a bit of a joke. Their tutor wasn't here either (off sick) so the poor kids just spent the day doing cover work rather than having actual lessons. Luckily they're only 11 year olds so they still turn up to lessons and don't cause the supply teacher too much grief. If that had been year 9 or 10s, it would've been chaos. Hopefully in the future these problems will be sorted out, but given the school's reputation, exam results, high staff turnover, and problem pupils, no wonder it's the last choice for parents (even with the small class sizes).
In the first lesson (Music) the cover teacher tried to get the kids to write raps. This was actually a pretty successful endeavour (especially since he made it up on the spot), with most groups coming up with some quite good rhymes. Rather alarmingly, one group of boys rapped about guns, weed and fighthing. They even got into character for their performance, with "low batties" and "braps". When I asked them where they got the inspiration for their lyrics, they said from the gangsters on TV. Even worse, they said they'd started making up rhymes about guns etc. back in primary school. This actually quite horrified me, and I did my best for the rest of the day to persuade the boys that guns aren't cool and that a brain was what they needed to succeed. Not sure the message got through (although the "brapping" did stop).
Spent aaaages faffing, consequently have loads of work to do tomorrow. On the plus side, got football tomorrow, woo, and then it's only one day to the weekend! Some of the other teachers seem to be having nervous breakdown type things, so I'm counting myself lucky, despite seemingly wishing my life away! I'm not really, I love school...guns and all.
