Hours of Marking!

Just finished marking my Y10 books. Took me almost two hours to get through the 23 books. Calculated that if I have to mark 5 sets of books each week, ranging between 20 and 30 books a set, and each lot takes me approx two hours, well, that's 10 hours and over 100 books being marked each week. 10 hours of marking! That's like a whole extra day of work, not to mention the time I spend on Sundays planning lessons. Gosh! And on top of that is my Y12 sociology group, who are admittedly only 7 students, but they write essays, which takes a good amount of time to assess.

Standard intensity of a school day. Highlights include a bit of a heart-to-heart with "Tall and Moody", reprimanding "Sweet but Annoying Blonde" for "simulating masturbation with a pen" in her maths lesson (yes, you read correctly, that's what it said on the incident report), and confessing my complete inability to deal with my tutor group and the corresponding imminent breakdown to my Head of Year and also the Head of now Y11. Good stuff. Am about to go have some hot chocolate and contemplate a life more ordinary. With less marking.

Naughty naughty

I got home at 1pm today. That was not part of the plan. I think I am officially a filthy-dirty stop-out for the the second day in a row.

Before I start my reflections aka self-ranting on the weekend, just a helpful hint to anyone looking for educational content in this post - there will be none. Except perhaps ideas for a behaviour support plan for myself.

Thursday night - BITC presentation. Might have gone better if I'd actually looked at the presentation any time before 4 minutes to kick-off, but anyhoo. Am pleased with my blagging skills and feel that while the content of my chatter was a bit wayward, the banter kept it entertaining. Drinks after and then slightly tipsy book marking, a good look.

Friday night - Steve's 25th (can't believe people are turning 25!) party at The Loop. This place is a vortex for me, there is just no way I can control myself in there. Not sure the Canadian Club helped. Had a good time with the Curly-Haired one, he makes me laugh. One of the many people I am confusing this weekend, excellent, clearly messing people around is a forte. Needless to say I am not following up on that.

Saturday, absolutely knackered and hungover. Spent most of the day swanning around. Managed to do my ironing and make a "student of the week" poster.

Saturday night - Krazy's birthday at his Notting Hill pad, very nice. Despite best intentions to get there early and get home early, the cheeky glass of wine with a matey beforehand warmed me up nicely and I decided instead to go on the rampage. Luckily Sanju was there to help me feel like my general poor behaviour was not as juvenile/ridiculous as it obviously was. She is such a role model, hahaha. Got on swimmingly with Krazy's sister, told her I was going to marry her little bro (news to her and to Krazy!), and then proceeded to flirt outrageously with her husband's brother. He was tri-lingual, you know I love words and he has three times as many, how could I resist? Before we got too friendly I figured it'd be a good idea to check on Sanju, given that we'd lost her about 2 hours earlier. Found her asleep in a room, and decided I should take a cheeky nap too, since it was probably bad form to fall asleep on the boy. Woke up in a minor panic at about 6am, when I realised the bedroom had got mighty cosy with two more entrants, and also that I was wearing someone else's top. Denial was the only option, just shut my eyes and went back to sleep. Still can't remember much of the night, except that I know I had a dance-off, that I got cross with some boys about something, that Sanju wouldn't let me go to the loo by myself (not because I was incapable, but because she was being a weirdo), and that Krazy called his maid at about 9 in the morning to come and fix the disaster zone (that made me laugh, he is so pampered!)

Sanju and I had a nice brunch in Notting Hill, was delicious, particularly because there was no way any of my kids would walk past and shout "Miiiiisssss!!!" through the door. Then we went to Portobello market, accidentally spent too much money, oh well. Right I am bored of this now. I am going back to bed to reflect on my whirlwindyness. The right thing to do this weekend would have been resting and relaxing. Whoops. Also, I don't think I actually feel that bad about all this, given the slightly comical spin I have given the title of the post. Come on now Miss, be serious.

Circle-Time

This is amazing. I think I may have another potential career to add to my list - "Circle-TIme Fanatic". This isn't a real job sadly, but anyway.

Before the amazingness of Circle-Time though, some updates. Soul is still ravaged but am sello-taping the bits together so that it lasts until Easter. Felt better because today my subject mentor was practically in tears herself about the absolute chaos the school is in. Just realised it is a bit vicious to feel good that someone else feels bad, but given that I was all ready to have a mini-breakdown, it was good to hear that it's not just me and that in fact almost all the staff are finding school pretty unbearable at the moment. I sense things will come to a head soon, great, more drama :)

In further awful news, some horrid Y10s have stolen my "happy stamps", which means that all the books I have marked this week are without colourful expressions of praise disguised as frogs and monkeys. Booo. Also, my Y8s are up in arms because one of them threw chewing gum across the room on Tuesday (gross) and so I got our Head of Department in and he threatened to write letters home to all their parents/guardians if no-one admitted to it. Luckily they're still at the age where they give one about what their parents say and so some of them told on the culprit. C is flatly denying it so I think a public dressing-down may well be in order tomorrow.

My Professional Tutor from Canterbury has sadly broken her elbow in two places, which means I think I will get away with a whole half-term without being observed once, good stuff. When someone finally watches me teach again, I think they're gonna be in for a bit of shocker since I have become a wee bit rubbbbbbish. Oh well.

So, onto Circle-Time. Today, period 2, in an attempt to get me some behaviour management tips (not to mention anger management tips!) I observed a session in the LSU. They had a specialist in from Behaviour Support Services, who comes in once a week to help pupils who have been identified as lacking in social skills. Now, in my opinion, most kids in the school are a bit weak on the old emotional intelligence, but the ones I saw today were probably pretty low even when compared to the others.

Anyway, the session was on identity, done through Circle-Time. This is basically a behaviour and social skills model pioneered by Jenny Mosely. It teaches kids all kinds of things, but principally how to think, listen, look and share using the safety of the circle, where there are no barriers, everyone is equal and everyone is included.


The model works through games and stories that help the children learn different skills and share experiences. For example, in today's session each child had a worksheet with some different aspects of their identity on it and they had to tick what they though described them (e..g I am tall; I have lots of friends; I always keep calm). Then we put all the papers in the middle and took turns reading them out to try and guess which paper belonged to which member of the circle. Then, later, a special box was handed around and it had a mirror in the bottom. The specialist told the kids that there was something very special and unique in the box - when kids looked in the box they saw themselves! This led to a good discussion about how we should be proud about our uniqueness and what makes us who we are.

I was thoroughly amazed at how the specialist had all the kids under control, and not just that, but actively participating! It was a joy to watch such awkward and "baggaged" children feel so safe and confident - the dynamics within the circle were just great!

I've now got lots of ideas to try with my Y7 groups. It's so important for kids to learn how to be in our society, but we never really think about teaching them. The Circle-Time resources are all about teaching kids how to interact in positive ways. Further, they made me reassess the way I behaved in class too. I'm going to try and be much more positive and instead of criticising poor behaviour, praise positive behaviour instead. The first step is to switch from writing "bad" names on the board to writing only "good" names on the board. I'm going to try and be calm and speak quietly and slowly. And I'm gonna try to realise that I'm not always right (a tricky one!)

So, yes, any teachers out there, please check it out. I think it's aimed more at primary school kids, but I'm sure it's good for our secondary kids to learn this stuff too. At any rate, I really enjoyed getting away from maths and going back to working with kids. In all the hustle and bustle of targets and reports and standards, I think sometimes we forget that we're working with people here and that there's more to learn than solving equations.

Very Inefficient Lesson Planning

By lesson planning, I mean procrastination. I hate lesson planning. I think I've said this before. Woo hoo, only two more Sundays of planning and then it's Easter break. Let's woo hoo one more time...something to aim for!

So during my procrastination I have:

1. More or less read the entire Sunday Times Online.
2. Messed about on Facebook
3. Eaten half the Rococo plain chocolate bar we got for free (yum yum, although now I feel a bit sick)
4. Chewed 3 pieces of gum
5. Drank 2 glasses of water

On the plus side, I have now managed to plan two lessons. Well done me.

Anyway, I'm going to have lunch now, but I will probably be back later. In the meantime, here and here are some good short posts by other teachers, with whom I can most definitely sympathise. Seems like teaching is tough for everyone, just gotta focus on the old light at the end of the tunnel. And by that I mean the Easter break!

Happy birthday Mouchio! Another year older, another year wiser, another year sillier :)

Update 17:00
Lessons for Y7 and Y8 planned, including one super-duper group work lesson on birthday parties and making formulae to figure out how many balloons, pizzas, cups etc. we need. Got the idea mymaths and am risking the old group work since am being observed with Y8 on Thurs. Have decided not to plan too enthusiastically or look forward to this lesson since this could jinx it.

Y11 lessons still to be planned - covering probability for the last time before GCSEs this week. Am being observed on Tues with Y11 so this will require some work. Two observations in one week, bang.

In other news, am still obsessed with Extreme's "More Than Words", have sung along to it approx 11 times already this afternoon. Time for a tea break.

Update 20:38
Lesson planning complete for the day! Whoop! Hilariously inefficient though. Oh well.
In other news, my Mum is very pleased with her mini-roses pot plant and Belgian chocolate egg, which makes me pleased. Also listened in on an interesting discussion my parents were having with a doctor friend of theirs about the best car to buy right now (best car = the nicest car that won't actually get nicked by the various criminals who come to our road just to rob stuff). Realised I wouldn't be able to buy aaaaaany of these cars for about 50 years with this crummy pay, and even then only if I am willing to live in said car because I sure as heck won't be able to afford any kinda house independently. Decided that tomorrow I will find out how long it will take me to earn £30k a year, before allowing the shocking answer to lead me to once again contemplate my "coulda been" life in the City, and to drive me to ginger bread men.

Tough Day?

Think you've had a tough day? Join my club. Currently I am the president, treasurer and secretary, and there's only one real member on our roll, but I'm sure we'll expand with time.

So before I start the ranting, a shout out to Jade for such a lovely piano lesson that took me away from the madness of the day. A shout out to me too for being able to concentrate on things and have some perspective - if teaching does anything for me, it'll be how to keep perspective and look at the big picture (though having re-read this post, it appears I have no perspective at all. But trust me, this is a massive improvement from about 6 hours ago!)

But forget the big picture for now. Let's delve into the toughness of the day.

There were a lot of things that weren't fun today. I won't go into all of them but what they shared in common was complete disrespect by the kids. And I'm talking the kinda back-chat and attitude and downright abuse I still couldn't even bring myself to inflict on anyone, let alone at 11 years old. I can't think when I was most shocked - when a crazy girl stormed into a detention after school and threatened to beat up one of my detainees, or when the detainee in question said to his mate "she's gonna suck my c*ck" after she'd left. His mate in the detention had already shouted out to the class that he was gonna get himself excluded and an ASBO as well.

I've had numerous kids today storm outta things, shout rudely, knock things over, hit each other, walk out during conversations, give attitude, and just behave entirely inappropriately. By the end of the day I was harbouring real fantasies of quitting. Another maths teacher told me that most teachers feel like this because the job is just so stressful. She said that there were times when she'd just gone home and cried after work cos school was so tough. I'm kinda pleased that I still haven't cried over school, but today was definitely a very close call.

I guess my problem boils down to three main things. The first is that I don't know how to command respect. Actually, let me rephrase that - it's more than I have never had to earn respect, I've just always been in situations where people just respect each other. So it's really hard when the kids are practically running riot all over the shop and it seems like there's nothing you can do. This is probably all down to classroom control and behaviour management, which I can't help but think I must be rubbish at.

This brings me to my second thing - my almost complete inability to accept shortcomings or look for help. I've always been good at most things, so I find it tough to deal with the fact that this isn't easy for me. Plus I kinda see flaws as weaknesses, and I refuse to show weakness, so when I feel rubbish about teaching or something, I hardly ever say anything, I just bottle it and then take it out in the gym or something like that. I feel like it's not fair to burden someone else with it, which makes it worse because then I can't help but feel I'm all alone in this when really I should know I'm not.

Don't get me wrong, I always try and improve and fix the things I'm doing wrong, but with teaching sometimes it feels so futile. I guess that's the third thing - frustration. Teaching at my school in this situation is just so frustrating - it feels like you take one step forward and about nine steps back; it also feels like everything is against you sometimes, as if the whole system is conspiring against you ever achieving anything, let alone just keeping your head afloat. When it comes to trying to improve things, It's never a simple, do this and this will happen type thing; it's so complex with so many variables and random factors that the solutions are never easy or obvious.

Despite having some really good lessons, I'm still not confident in my abilities to really do this, to actually stick it through for two years and feel like I'm a good teacher. I take the negatives so much more seriously than the positives. This is weird for me since anyone who knows me would say I was an optimist. And in fact this morning I got outta bed really excited and ready for school, but then it just went downhill and I ended up wondering what the hell I was doing, putting myself through all this sh*t for what?

Anyway, I am over it now, it's fine, forget it. Can't be dwelling on today, it's done, I just need to stay focussed and in control. Besides, I'm visiting my old school tomorrow and it's a great time to feel like the grass is greener on the other side. Even if it's really not.

PS After a shower, here are some positives - always end on a positive :)

1. The respect I have for people who've dedicated their lives to education
2. The joy I get from actually teaching something to someone
3. How funny the kids are sometimes
4. Knowing that I'm really challenging myself rather than taking the easy option, and that no doubt I'm actually learning from this job
5. Having this as my biggest worry - I need to get over myself; I mean how many millions of people are in a worse situation?

By the way, check me out with my sharing and stuff....I am getting so much better with talking about all this kinda stuff. Well, writing about it. Although I kinda miss being a clam of a person....

Things that probably wouldn't have happened if I'd worked in the City

Obviously there are trillions of things that could go on this list, so I'll keep it to events from the last three days that probably wouldn't have happened if I'd worked in an office:

1. I wouldn't have had to write a police witness statement.
2. I wouldn't have had to run two meeetings with two groups of "colleagues" simultaneously, one meeting of which I had no idea about (substitute "run meeting" with "teach lesson" and that'll make more sense).
3. I wouldn't hear profanities continually all day (including "f*ck off you f*cking c*nt" and "you f*cking Muslim" - two delightful highlights, neither of which were aimed at me, luckily, although I was told to "piss off" today).
4. I wouldn't have to deal with stroppy/sulky/hyper/whiney/smelly/dopey etc. colleagues.
5. I wouldn't have had to intervene in a fight, which led to me being shoved and all my books being dropped to the ground (ooooh, how dramatic, looking forward to absolutely nothing being done about these monsters).
6. I wouldn't have to change offices randomly all day every day because the whole office building is falling apart, with my "colleagues" using any excuse they can to avoid their meetings.
7. I wouldn't have to find random "colleagues" wandering the "office" and then having to baby-sit these colleagues alongside a whole other group of colleagues in the hall because there are no spare offices, when all the time I was meant to be in a PE meeting.
8. My colleagues wouldn't set off the fire alarm almost weekly so that we all have to evacuate the office and stand in the playground under the evil seagulls, who use us innocent people as target practice.
9. I wouldn't have to constantly battle with my colleagues over just about everything that needs to be done each day.
10. I wouldn't feel like I was working in a zoo.

Heehee, I can sense my analogies are getting mixed up so I will stop now. Essentially school has been tough these last few days; it's a general build-up of chaos and lack of management. I'm not too impressed, but still managing to keep going and fight my way through it. But right now it seems to me that the biggest problem in my school (and probably other Teach First schools) is behaviour, in that the kids just cannot behave appropriately and so learning is disrupted. I wonder if there'd be a straight-forward way to tackle such poor behaviour, especially since the causes of it are numerous...All I can think of at the moment is getting those "SuperNanny"/"Boot Camp" soldier people in. Cos at the moment, the kids rule that school. And they know it.