Wherever I end up in September, it will be a holiday

When a visit to the dentist’s is the highlight of your day, something’s definitely wrong.
I’ve had two unusually nice days at work, probably because of the training on Monday that made me miss out on one of my year 9s. But yesterday and today were just dreadful, year 9s, year8s, year 10s, you name it. If it wasn’t for year 7s I would seriously start questioning myself as a teacher.
At lunch break, I was sitting in Tabitha’s car, smoking a cigarette and ranting, feeling that I don’t want to go back to school, I can’t go back to school, please don’t make me go back to school.
My mentor meeting was all about me not being able to keep it together.
And everyone says it’s not me, it’s them. According to Ute, my mentor, I’m actually doing really good (sic!). And I know it is them, but I can’t help thinking that I’m failing. Cause I’m fighting and fighting and nothing changes. Cause when you have a group of 30 and 25 of them are playing up, there’s not much you can do really.
Every day, after school, my classroom looks like a battlefield.
First thing I do every morning is put my display into some order all over again and sort kids’ books into neat piles all over again.
And yes, this is a rough school and the kids are more difficult then elsewhere. But then, I have the same kids in my Spanish lessons, and those are all right, not perfect, not easy, but not dreadful to a point when all you want to do is sit down and cry.
The difference?
Well, there’s 30 of them in my German classes, and 15 in Spanish. There’s your difference. So maybe the important people up in London, who came up with the wonderful yet unrealistic policies of Every Child Matters and Personalised Learning, should go back into a classroom and see for themselves. How the f*** do you want me to cater for the needs of each of my students if I have 200 of them? How the f*** am I supposed to give attention to each and every one of them when I have 30 of them in a classroom? Maybe instead of putting shitloads of money into rebuilding schools, you should just build new ones, create more teaching posts, and reduce the number of kids in each class? Cause as it is, I am not teaching. As it is, I’m just growing more frustrated each day. And I seriously would not mind working in an old building with smaller classrooms with less modern equipment if that meant I had less kids in each lesson and could teach each and every one of them instead of hoping that the good ones learn something inadvertently while I waste my energy on shouting at the rest of them just to keep them in their seats.