End of Half-Term Blues

It's been a while since I blogged I think. Have been wonderfully busy doing fun stuff, yay!

It's now Sunday evening right at the end of half-term and I am feeling all kinds of glum. End of half-term blues I suspect.

I had the best week in Malta and generally an awesome 10 days (I think because I spent every single one with X and am now suffering quite severe withdrawal symptoms), but alas all good things must come to an end, and so it's back to school tomorrow.

In the spirit of my general feeling of tedium when it comes to my Y10s, I have decided not to plan any lessons for anyone at all this week until tomorrow. Good drama. Hopefully there will be the promised exams for at least some of the kids. Relying on this is a recipe for disaster but frankly not worth worrying about right now.

35 days to go. I can't wait for the summer holidays! But first reports and marking and planning and naughty kids to deal with. Sigh. I need more half-term. But I can't get that so instead I will distract myself by looking at the myspaces of some of the excellent acts we saw at ID-Africa last night. I think my personal favourite was Last Mango in Paris - wicked Streets like socially conscious/humorous/comedian chatter.

Hope you're feeling good wherever you are.

5th Week Blues

This is going to be a rant about school. Grrr it makes me so cross sometimes. I was going to try and be positive, but I have decided that it would be entirely unfeasible, and fictional even, to try and balance out each sore point with three good things (like we're supposed to balance discipline with praise i.e. 3 positive praises to every 1 telling off), so I will just rant.

I should have known it would be a tough day since I was nocturnal last night and thus bound to be a little wired. Further, my throat is so sore. In fact, it's been like this for ages...so much so that I can't even remember what my voice was like, only that I used to be able to sing much higher and clearer than I can now. Grumble. Anyway, hit the gym, this was good, I liked that, specially since I broke a time.

Arrived at school and my subject mentor informs me that I was in her dream last night. Apparently we were at a building site (maybe the school building site?) and she was watching me reverse my car into one of those JCB digger things. I crashed right into it and then got out and said "oh no I've done it again," while she looked on. I have decided to interpret it as her feeling she is unable to help me stop making the same avoidable mistakes.

Only taught 3 lessons today, and actually they weren't that bad. Was really impressed with my Y8s, where we did geometric constructions (finding perpendicular bisectors and angle bisectors using compasses and rulers) which is a level 6 topic, but they all go it. Y10s managed to work for 45 minutes, although then they started being idiots. Y7s were also great, lots of good work on function machines. Hmmm, so, having reflected on my teaching, I'm not that rubbish at it. I mean, the lessons went well and the kids learnt.

Oh yeah, I remember what made me cross. My sodding tutor group. They are just evil. It was assembly this afternoon, which is basically this huge stress. The kids just cannot cannot behave or be quiet or be orderly, and so I end up looking like a muppet cos my class is out of control. They are driving me up the wall - so so many incident reports, and they just won't listen to me. It's frustrating, I feel full of frustration, and it's exhausting. One of the girls called a boy a "fat c*nt" in assembly; another one is forging her reports; crazy H hit a girl in the corridor; Tall and Moody stormed in and out of the classroom slamming his bag hard against the desk. I'm lost. It's pretty stressful, although I saw two teachers really in tears today, so clearly the tough times are across the board. I was trying to think who I could go to to help me with them, but the new Head of Year doesn't have time, and there's no Head of KS3. My classroom and behaviour control is usually good, I don't know where I'm going wrong. Maybe a new seating plan would fix it...?

I tried calling some of the kids parents. It turns out that Tall and Moody is living in two different houses at the moment, and that school is the only stable thing in his life, so if he occasionally tantrums and storms and swears, well, it's surprising he's holding it together. Ended up counselling his mother a bit, so a bit of a dead-end there. "Blonde Attitude" is like a mini-version of her mother, who appeared to put the phone down on me, so again, no help. Gave up after these two, although I'd made two positive phone calls before the negative ones, so that was ok.

Oh some good news. My mother had the jewelery I bought for her on the weekend checked through and valued, and it's all good, and valued at a third more than I paid :) And we have a nice tasty bottle of red open. Not that drinking through is the answer.

I think it's just a case of 5th week blues. Roll on half-term.

That time of the term

Yes, we're at that time of the term already, where the kids have settled back, we're into the trudge of learning and meetings and assemblies and coursework, and the next holiday seems a decade away. As a matter of fact, we have three more weeks of school until half-term, but I can already sense they will go ever so slowly. It's kinda like 5th week blues, except it goes on for aaaages. Term-time blues.

The hecticness of last week made me thoroughly blue this weekend. Don't worry, I am perked up now. Friday was knackering, particularly because my Y8 girls' team had a Borough tournament after school. They got knocked out during the group stages, but I'm proud of them. I got home at 7:30pm and was in bed by 9:00pm, thus missing Ish's birthday party. Poor form.

Tiredness has been further exacerbated by the fact that our house has a big tarpaulin sheet over the roof due to the loft conversion that's currently taking place (err hello? who takes the roof off a house in bitterly cold January? Well, my family for starters...). During the day the sheet is quiet, but come night-time, it goes mad and shakes and rustles and essentially stops you sleeping. Grr. Consequently, I felt even more rough on Sat and so I missed Fi's birthday party too. Very poor form.

Today I feel better. Our match was cancelled so I made myself run 5km to get rid of any lingering miserygutsness. I have planned my lessons for the week and have vowed not to think about school again until tomorrow. Good plan. I have also spent considerable time belting our The Fratellis, thus returning the smile to my face.

Two new words for you Mouchio: munificent and grandiloquent.

Looking forward to Old Furies this weekend; they may conquer us physically, but our superior lexicon is interminable.