The Head of my Department told me way back last term that the wind makes kids lala. Well, apparently, it doesn't seem to do the adults any good either.
I guess most of you experienced the craaaazy 80mph winds today. Here in sunny Clayhall, a massive pine tree was blown down by the park gates at the end of my road, causing the pavement to be blocked and lots of emergency metal fencing to be put up (not the best plan, since these fences too soon rapidly blew over). Further up the road, another tree had been uprooted and spilled across the tarmac. Exciting stuff.
However, nowhere near as exciting, dramatic, or chaotic as school today.
But let me start at the start.
I made a list of things I had to do today because I knew it would be one of those busy stressful days. Busy and stressful because basically my Y11s have their coursework due in tomorrow and I have told them to do the wrong thing. Well, not completely the wrong thing. I feel it was more that I was poorly instructed on the purpose of the task, and have thus told my kids to do things that we should have done differently. Consequently, we have looooooots of fixing to do. All well and good if the kids were ICT-literate, or even just literate. But, alas, alack. I had one of the most stressful lessons with them today period 2. Thankfully they didn't blame me for having to do more work again, but really, I would be quite happy if such a lesson were never to take place again. On the plus side, lots of them were amazed by the concept of formula and the graphs they made, so that is good.
Anyway, on to the real drama. Period 4 with Year 8. This lesson on a Thursday is always a nightmare. But even worse today. Usually the kids are pretty distracted by the building works taking place next door. Halfway through the lesson, D shouts, "Miss Miss things are falling off the school". I tend to ignore his outbursts. But this time he was serious: things really were falling off the school. Basically one of the sections of roof from one of the school blocks had blown off and crashed into the top floor of windows of another block. Luckily no-one was hurt, but this lead to mass evacuation of everyone to the main corridor and hall for safety reasons (just in case anything else flew off and hit them). Very tricky with over 700 pupils in a tight space, especially since it was coming up to lunchtime. Needless to say, utter chaos ensued, with the naughty ones taking every opportunity to make the situation worse. Fights broke out, kids took out their (banned) mobile phones and made emergeny calls home, girls sat down in protest in the corridor. It was a nightmare.
Anyway, I have just about recovered from the drama (I thought about running to de-stress, but then sat and ate flapjacks and pizza instead). And sadly, school is open for business tomorrow. On the plus side, I told my year 8s that they should enjoy me teaching them primary school work because once they get out into the big bad world, no-one will care enough to teach them anyway - how's that for "raising expectations"? Oh yes, when I'm bad, I'm aaaaawful.
Shreqa, lovely to hear from you, how're the legs, what's the latest?
Yeen, how's that for procrastination? Si.
Fingers crossed for more fun tomorrow. I am still trying to be positive. But really, roll on the weekend.
I guess most of you experienced the craaaazy 80mph winds today. Here in sunny Clayhall, a massive pine tree was blown down by the park gates at the end of my road, causing the pavement to be blocked and lots of emergency metal fencing to be put up (not the best plan, since these fences too soon rapidly blew over). Further up the road, another tree had been uprooted and spilled across the tarmac. Exciting stuff.
However, nowhere near as exciting, dramatic, or chaotic as school today.
But let me start at the start.
I made a list of things I had to do today because I knew it would be one of those busy stressful days. Busy and stressful because basically my Y11s have their coursework due in tomorrow and I have told them to do the wrong thing. Well, not completely the wrong thing. I feel it was more that I was poorly instructed on the purpose of the task, and have thus told my kids to do things that we should have done differently. Consequently, we have looooooots of fixing to do. All well and good if the kids were ICT-literate, or even just literate. But, alas, alack. I had one of the most stressful lessons with them today period 2. Thankfully they didn't blame me for having to do more work again, but really, I would be quite happy if such a lesson were never to take place again. On the plus side, lots of them were amazed by the concept of formula and the graphs they made, so that is good.
Anyway, on to the real drama. Period 4 with Year 8. This lesson on a Thursday is always a nightmare. But even worse today. Usually the kids are pretty distracted by the building works taking place next door. Halfway through the lesson, D shouts, "Miss Miss things are falling off the school". I tend to ignore his outbursts. But this time he was serious: things really were falling off the school. Basically one of the sections of roof from one of the school blocks had blown off and crashed into the top floor of windows of another block. Luckily no-one was hurt, but this lead to mass evacuation of everyone to the main corridor and hall for safety reasons (just in case anything else flew off and hit them). Very tricky with over 700 pupils in a tight space, especially since it was coming up to lunchtime. Needless to say, utter chaos ensued, with the naughty ones taking every opportunity to make the situation worse. Fights broke out, kids took out their (banned) mobile phones and made emergeny calls home, girls sat down in protest in the corridor. It was a nightmare.
Anyway, I have just about recovered from the drama (I thought about running to de-stress, but then sat and ate flapjacks and pizza instead). And sadly, school is open for business tomorrow. On the plus side, I told my year 8s that they should enjoy me teaching them primary school work because once they get out into the big bad world, no-one will care enough to teach them anyway - how's that for "raising expectations"? Oh yes, when I'm bad, I'm aaaaawful.
Shreqa, lovely to hear from you, how're the legs, what's the latest?
Yeen, how's that for procrastination? Si.
Fingers crossed for more fun tomorrow. I am still trying to be positive. But really, roll on the weekend.
