Yet again...

Excerpts from my year 10 group:
"Of course you 'do' ski, the French do everything!"
"Miss, what are you doing tomorrow after school?" (he meant could he come and work on his assessment script, but it still sounded the way it sounded)
"Vowel clash! I knew I would find one!" (Lovely that he gets this excited about the language, but no, it wasn't a vowel clash at all)

I know I'm not updating as often as I could/should. I blame the little time I have for myself and the lack of own laptop (RIP).
Yet again, I'll try to be better...

A rant

You can only do as much yourself. You can put them on report, tell them off, give them detentions, call parents, but at some point the person above you needs to take over. Who that is depends on school policies and structures, most of the time it won't be the same person for subject as for form etc. Anyway - one of my such people is mostly useless. She is trying, don't get me wrong, but things are not being chased up as quickly as they should if at all.
And of course the little buggers feel untouchable.
So all your effort, the fact that you chased everything up and did everything you could, just gets wasted.
Seriously frustrating.

On top of that, I had a fight in my classroom today. Chairs being thrown onto people, people being thrown onto tables, serious fight, not a fun 'let's-wind-the-teacher-up' fight. And of course, without thinking, I got right in the middle of it. I managed to separate them, they got removed to isolation and higher powers will deal with them now (much higher powers, so they actually will) but I can't help but think: I could have gotten hurt...

Bottom line: I need a glass of wine and a cigarette. Now.

On weights and measures

One of the biggest problems I've had to deal with these days was the problem of what 30g of dry cat food looked like. I settled for 5 spoon fulls, the cat was acting as if he was being starved, friends on Facebook suggested half a glass, failed however to specify the type of glass they had in mind, I ended up buying kitchen scales (a useful item in a kitchen anyway) and found out that 30g of dry cat food were... 3 spoon fulls. The cat was acting as if he was being starved while being overfed.
Moral: don't trust your cat with food measurements.
Quite refreshing not to have bigger problems than that (or to be capable of pushing them away to the very darkest corner of the head where no one can see them).
Good girl.

On furry sausages

Is half term. Brains are resting, bodies are sleeping until undecent hours of almost early evening.
We both brought quite a lot of work to do home this week but so far the big pile of bags has been shifted once or twice for the benefit of visiting friends (so they would not trip on it) but that's where our interaction with it ended. Which is not good really.
But to be quite honest I am much more interested in interacting with the newest addition to our little family - a big pile of black hair requiring regular brushing and stroking and emitting some serious purring. Much more interesting than marking!

On English books

There's a girl in my form who would not respond to me, well, even react to me. As if I didn't exist. She would answer to the register but that's as far as our interactions went. She ignored instructions, left classroom before being dismissed, lost counltess reports, forgot countless detention slips, missed countless detentions and I ended up having to refer the case to the Year Learning Manager and we were seriously talking about having her move forms.
Since Christmas she started taking her jacket off when instructed to do so maybe once a week, then twice a week, by now I still have to ask but she does it.
She does not leave the classroom before I dismiss them anymore.
She actually talked to me about options (probably because I spoke to her and her mum at the Options Evening and then nagged and nagged until she spoke to me) - then she came back cause she changed her mind and asked my advice(?!).
This morning she came in early and said "Miss, do you want a look at my English book? I'm working really well in English."
Of course I wanted.
And it doesn't matter that the book was thrown to me rather than handed over.

On not blogging

I have not written anything in over two months -I'm sorry. Countless times I would think to myself 'I have to blog about this or that' but somehow I never did. It was probably somewhat related to shorter days, general fatigue and the modification of my time allocations and instinctive priorities (as opposed to actual priorities) due to the load of work and to moving in with a boy.
And then there was the NYE and I was not going to blog about any of that - there was no way I could make it sound entertaining.
Anyway.
That's done with, for the time being at least, the days are getting longer and here I am again!

The bully

On Friday everyone is on their last nerves. Especially in this longest, darkest, worst half-term of the entire school year. Everyone is stressed out, everyone is exhausted, everyone feels like they would rather get an important part of their body chopped off than spend one more day at school. For me this has been a particularly trying week with lots of drama in my form, a year 8 student destroying my favourite jumper using the ink from a pen he personally dismembered instead of working, and the usual lot of gobby cows and cheeky arseholes who think they don't owe respect to anything or anyone never mind the teacher.
Until yesterday however I didn't think such states of mind and emotions justified rudeness.

Yesterday morning I went to reprographics hoping to get a worksheet copied.
'Can't do it' the copy lady snapped 'I have an urgent job now'.
Fair enough, I really should have brought it in earlier. The lack of 'good morning' and 'sorry' did not put me off too much as she has made me rather used to that.
I apologized profusely and decided to try the staff room machine.
The copy lady had beaten me to it.
'Can't do it now' she snapped 'we're doing maintenance'.
After which she told me that I'm not allowed to use this machine for more than a couple of copies (I wouldn't have if she hadn't refused to do them for me on her machine) and I'll have to be better organised, all in a tone of voice that implied that I had offended her majesty by suggesting that she was there to help me do my job and not the other way around and how dare I the little nothing that I am.
I was speachless. Emotionally exhausted as I was, for a minute I actually thought that I did something terribly wrong, broke a rule I had not known existed or something? Until one of the cover teachers who witnessed it all came around and said she admired me for not saying anything because the copy lady had been plain rude.
And as I spoke to people along the day, I realised that as it is, people stay long after hours to sneakingly do their copies in the staffroom because that is the only way they know their copies will be done right (right number of pages, right number of copies, right size etc.) and they won't get told off for daring to want any.
Magalie, who is in my department, said she tries to plan without worksheets so that she won't have to go to reprographics. And if she has to, she sends a kid.
Charlotte (my head of department/mentor) said that had never happened to her but she knows that the copy lady can be like this when stressed out (as if that excused anything!) and that I shouldn't worry cause she will have forgotten all about it by Monday. SHE will have forgotten?!
I am outraged. I am paid to deal with rude children, but not rude colleagues! And she is clearly bullying a lot of teachers (if not all staff) and no one is doing anything about it! But I am not sure if anything can be done. I am however sure that going on any crusade here would cost me more than it would benefit me or others. So I suppose that the only thing for me to do is to start staying longer after hours than I already do and make my copies sneakingly in the staff room...