Sunday, October 28, 2007
Flogging a dead horseI’m still fresh from the joys of being the PPA cover teacher… apart from those afternoons with Year 6 – the collective attention span of a gnat. The special education needs children work in small groups during the mornings, but there is that afternoon slump when they don’t have individual attention. The academic term is ‘learned helplessness’. Some afternoons it’s more like ‘flogging a dead horse’. [This term alludes to the difficulty of getting any extra work from a crew during a celebration held by British crews when they had been at sea four weeks and had worked off their initial advance that was often one month's pay. At the expiration of the first month of the voyage it was at one time customary to hoist in the rigging a canvas effigy of a horse.]
We’ve also got our fair share of children that have done the ‘Grand Tour’ this involves trying out all the local primary schools before the parents finally run out of options and realise the problem is their child and not the school. During PE Eric (who was expelled from his last school for hitting the teachers) runs off out of the playground. I have to take everyone back in to find him.
You always have to give children some leeway, make allowances. That horrible pupil can grow up into a sensitive, caring adult. On the other hand there are some children… well it wouldn’t surprise you if they turned out to be a complete wretch of human being. Katie has come into school reeking of nit lotion and Adam has made a few sly comments. This afternoon he excels himself by going up behind her pointing and shouting in a loud voice, ‘Urhh, they’re crawling everywhere’.
Some of the children laugh and I have to usher Katie out in floods of tears to find the learning mentor. I blast the class and later our learning mentor comes back and talks calmly to the class. She gives each child a note and asks them to write something positive about Katie and to admit if they did laugh. Children are refreshingly honest and apologise to Katie.
There are compensations, those interesting conversations at break time. Keith is always rushing to tell me about his birds of prey. He goes into great detail about feeding the birds day old chicks. But last night they must have forgotten because the sparrow hawk has eaten the owl.
Later I return to one of my favourite themes which is ranting and raving about full stops and capital letters (this is Year 6)! I catch Peter drawing but he informs me it’s his sketch of the new Titanic and he’s offered me a job as part of the crew, I decline his generous offer.
Near to the end they start throwing rubbers behind my back and I go into ballistic mode and threaten a class detention, the day grinds remorselessly to an end.
Karen asks for a ‘private word’ at the end of the lesson, I’m a bit worried. But she tells me that she’s heard about my pet mouse dying, am I ready for more pets? Her stick insect has laid 79 eggs would I like some? I decline this offer as well.
Next day I’m back with my favourite class Year 1, you can always ham it up there. I’m left with a bag containing lower case letters and I inform the children that they have to be very quiet because a family of earwigs is living inside the bag. I take out each letter very gingerly and carefully, the children are captivated. Naturally as I take out the last one I get ‘bitten’.
Minimal amounts of planning, no rotten testing, Year 6 only on occasions – cover teaching? I’m Lovin’ It!
Labels: Humour
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Training at Pet PrimaryI wasn’t in the best of moods, the start of a stinking cold, a day with Year 6 (afternoons the collective concentration span of a gnat) and a training session (in lieu of a staff meeting) at the local authority’s pet primary – 3% Free School Meals and excellent SATs results.
Let’s just say that Pet Primary isn’t universally popular with other teachers. Those in ‘intensive support’ schools are routinely sent there for ‘re-training’. You’re guaranteed to get that supercilious smile, ‘Welcome crap teachers from the slummy council estate school, we will show you how to teach’.
Needless to say they never take up that reciprocal invitation to come and teach some of those ‘challenging’ classes at Crap Primary.
Pet Primary has a Media Room, Parents’ Room and myriad other facilities. When we’d fought off the council’s closure plan, despite not having a library, or parents’ room, or any storage space, they insisted that we give up two spare classrooms.
Pet Primary seems to have plenty of smiley teachers who could audition for the ‘Stepford Wives’. But away from the manufactured utopia of Pet Primary the reality is that there is a high turnover of teachers who really don’t want to work 14 hours a day and triple back every display. The school constantly recruit NQTs who move on once they discover there is more to life than wall to wall planning and laminated resource sheets.
Normally I hate graffiti, it really looks ugly and disfigures buildings. However, I’d have to make an exception of ‘Adbusters’ who make changes to advertising hoardings. On this occasion I was really tempted to get out my indelible marker pen. All round Pet Primary were wooden plaques with ‘This school is a magical place to learn – Ofsted’.
According to research by the London School of Economics 90% of schools in special measures are in poor areas, schools in the leafy suburbs rarely, if ever, fail an inspection. What could failing schools put on their plaques?
‘An underachieving school that fails its pupils’
‘Children should be achieving more, the teaching is poor’
‘This school does not give value for money’
I know it is on a different historical scale but on the same theme, how about these plaques?
‘A lively church that serves the community well – The Inquisition’
‘A well-run concentration camp that gives value for money – the Waffen SS’
‘This court is a credit to the justice system – the Khmer Rouge’
Why give these monsters credibility?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
A Tank Full of PiranhasThere are moments in teaching when you feel a complete and utter heel, usually because a careless or unintended remark upsets a child. Through experience you know where some of the potential land mines are sited, you have to carefully navigate around them. ‘Mothers’ Day’ can be problematic for children in care or those being brought up by their grandparents.
This year as cover teacher for PPA (that’s Planning, Preparation and… something beginning with ‘A’) I get to teach in different classes. You know that some children will always try it on with a supply teacher or any new face. That class you had under the thumb will chance their arm. The permanent primary class teacher has a whole arsenal of weapons at their disposal, in particular those all-important jobs to bestow or withdraw like pencil monitor and merits or house points.
Discipline should of course be a whole school issue; here the key is consistency and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!). In our school we follow the three strikes on the board and detention rule (we also have the ‘smiley side’). It generally works firstly because the children hate losing a playtime and secondly it is instantaneous.
It wasn’t always so, our old headteacher Erica didn’t really ‘do’ discipline, along with most of the other parts of her job description. I discovered the ‘discipline issue’ early on when I sent a child to her; they returned after half an hour with stickers all over their shirt and within a few minutes were worse than they were before. ‘I’ll send you to the head,” is usually one of your trusted reserve weapons in primary schools. Sending children to Erica was about as effective as feather duster in a bare-knuckle fight.
One child, Marvin, was a trainee psychopath; he was constantly pinching, kicking and thumping other children. One day I found a child lying in a heap in the corridor. Marvin had repeatedly slammed his head against the door handle, he cheerfully admitted it all, the child had been, ‘winding him up’. Erica started to give him a stern lecture, I had to walk away, later she told me that he was ‘so sorry’. Marvin appeared back in class with an evil grin plastered all over his face. I was convinced that if he did succeed in killing anyone Erica would send a stiff letter home to his dysfunctional family.
Luckily we had a succession of capable deputy heads who took on the role of enforcing some semblance of order and disciplining the small minority of miscreants. Mrs Moore could have fun with the children but when push came to shove she had the kind of scary voice that could penetrate the deepest reinforced concrete bunker, and a stare that could turn children into stone, verily she could have frozen hell. Detention meant children sitting in silence doing work. Such was her fearsome reputation that even some of the most recalcitrant Year 6s still quail at the mention of her name.
Last week I was teaching partitioning with Year 3. It was one of those mornings when you became aware that the bright promise of the new school year has begun to fade. Maybe it was the dull weather, but a collective lethargy had set in. You begin to wonder, ‘Is it me?’ Have you not explained it clearly enough? I got the class back together and clarified it again… glazed expressions, children fiddling with shoes, staring out of the window.
Teachers should always be patient, but you can have bad mornings too – the memory of the holidays a distant blur, the long stretch until Christmas, another imposition from the government, a chance remark by a colleague that throws you off balance, that costly repair on the car, the darkening mornings. Eventually I snapped, ‘If I don’t see more effort some of you will stay in at break time with Mrs Jones’ – our new deputy head.
I carried on with the explanation but still the glazed look of utter incomprehension from half the class. Then I spotted Peter with tears rolling down his cheeks, as I carried on he was desperate to answer every question although it was hard to understand his replies.
After I’d sent the class back to their desks I called Peter over, he was accompanied by his friend Chris who had his arm around him trying to console him. I taught Peter’s sister last year and you could tell the parents wanted their children to succeed, homework was always excellent, reading folder completed, notes from school replied to.
I asked Peter what was wrong. Now he has a speech impediment and in his highly charged emotional state the words came out in flood, a relentless unstoppable torrent at high volume, ‘DEE, DUM, DAT, DOO, DAT, DEE, DAH…’ Every thirty seconds or so he would pause and his lungs would heave in more air. I sat and listened sympathetically, after a few minutes he dissolved into tears. ‘OK don’t worry’, I sent him back to his desk. Peter carried on with his maths work, tears welling from his eyes like an unquenchable spring. Tiny blots of salt stained tears marking his book.
Later I called his friend Chris over and asked him quietly what was wrong, ‘Sir, he’s terrified of having a detention with Mrs Jones’. I summoned Peter over and gravely examined his Maths book. ‘Peter, we only give detentions for very naughty children and that isn’t you, is it?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve tried really hard this lesson and that’s all that counts.’
Thinking about it I’d been way too harsh, Year 3 for goodness sake. You forget those school landmarks, those rites of passage; the journey from Infant to Juniors is a big leap for some children. There’s that fear of the unknown.
Detentions in our school are usually confined to the usual suspects and for the old lags it holds no fears – in the same way that Norman Stanley Fletcher viewed prison as an acceptable risk in a criminal career. Peter just couldn’t bear the thought of explaining to his Mum that he’d been in detention.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression, rewards have always featured strongly in our school, all stick and no carrot never works particularly for the vast majority of children who do want to learn. In nearly every case our ‘problem children’ come with a lot of baggage. I’ve taught in schools with perfect order and discipline but it was like being in a penal colony. Schools should be happy places. The other side is that children have a right to learn.
Luckily children have short memories, at playtime Peter and Chris were racing round the schoolyard. In the afternoon I moved on to gym with Year 2 and got them walking along the upturned benches. ‘Next week you’ll be balancing over a tank full of piranhas’. ‘Whatever!’
Friday, September 07, 2007
Big Issue?It’s all change this year, I’m the cover teacher for PPA (that’s planning, preparation and something else I can’t quite remember) so I get to travel round different classes. It saves on supply costs and the children are taught by a face they know, rather than a succession of different teachers. The position of ‘cover teacher’ is on the increase, most headteachers don’t want the stress of teaching alongside all the other pressures of the job.
The morning assembly and all the children are there resplendent in their new school uniforms; those tattered cuffs, holed trousers and scuffed shoes have been consigned to the bin. At break time the infants are staring at the bare wooden structure for the Japanese garden, I tell them it’s a base for my rocket to the moon, ‘Yeah, whatever’.
As the teachers are settling their new classes in I start the long delayed PE audit – sponge balls, small balls, plastic balls, large balls, hockey balls, cricket balls… the more discerning reader may have spotted a pattern here.
When Year 1 starts queuing for dinners I distract them with the puppet I’ve found in one of the boxes, ‘have you met my pet cow Ermintrude?’ ‘He’s a puppet, we can see your hand in the back!’ Children, no imagination today.
Some of my old class are worried that, ‘I’m not a proper teacher anymore’. Katie thinks I’m looking lost. There are swings and roundabouts with the job – no assessment, planning, reports, parents’ evenings, SEN reviews; on the other hand you lose that close connection with one class and the supply teacher is the one that children will ‘try it on with’.
It’s strange not having a base to work from and I’m threatening to sell ‘The Big Issue’.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Freaky Friday and the Fridge Repair ManIt really does take me about a week to ‘recover’ at the end of the school year. I doze off in the middle of the afternoons, forget what I was meant to be doing and find it hard to concentrate. Fact – teaching drains your mental and physical energy.
You still get those annoying people who give you a patronising smile and mention ‘all the holidays’. I’ve gone past the stage of wanting to inflict irreparable physical damage, I just stare at them and say ‘try teaching’, and there are never many takers.
I read an article in the TES a few years a go about a power station manager who had a sort of mid life crisis and decided to retrain as a teacher. He got a job in a “challenging” inner city school. He only lasted a year. In the power station he had 10 under managers and 400 staff, every decision he made was implemented almost instantaneously and there was only one main target – producing electricity.
Teaching was entirely different, a large percentage of the children didn’t want to be there and he had to devise strategies to keep them involved and interested. There was the paperwork and the host of different targets to meet and fulfil. Also the job never ended at 5 pm. With a sigh of relief he returned to the sanity of the power station.
At the end of term you usually stagger over the finishing line and collapse, but it always important to keep going right to the tape – my best marathon time was 3 hours 25 minutes, it helps if you can avoid walking the last few miles – it’s agony.
Every year the pressure seems to increase, we’ve had reports, ‘optional’ tests, reading tests, spelling tests, SEN reviews, observations, performance management interviews and Key Skills to highlight, the list really is endless.
Still, there’s ‘Life in the Old Dog’ yet. The other week it was Friday the 13th and the talk in the class was that Freddy Kreuger was going to pay a visit on ‘Freaky Friday’. That morning I snook into the ICT room and loaded up pictures of Freddy (nothing too gory you understand) onto every PC. There were shrieks of laughter when the children turned the screens on.
At this moment the Head walked through and inevitably the class snitch grassed on me. The newspaper headlines from the GTC hearing flitted through my mind, ‘Sick teacher downloads horror pics!’ Fortunately he saw the funny side of it.
At the end of the year there’s the sadness of seeing the Year 6 depart with that part bravado, part fear of the unknown (secondary school). I wonder how some of them will fare? We’ve got three boys who are still at Level 2, Eric spends his spare time getting chased by the security guards at the shopping centre. His ambition? To be a policeman so he can ‘arrest people’.
We’ve got our ‘Golden Girls’ as well, who should make it to university, they’re bright and intelligent, and they always come up to me at playtime asking for questions, ‘we’re bored off our cake sir!’ That’s apart from the time when the hunky student teacher was in, I didn’t get a look in then.
The Year 6 teacher always gets the pick of the presents, a tiny compensation for the worst job in primary. They’d all written notes and letters. James typed one on the computers extolling the virtues of his teacher and ended with, ‘I will miss you like a dog’ and a picture of two cute puppies. The thought was there…
I’m musing on all of this when there is a knock at the door, the memory kicks back in, the fridge repairman has arrived, one of those long delayed tasks I’d postponed indefinitely. I open the door and we take a mutual step back, it’s Peter my pupil from my first class ten years ago.
I only just recognise him with his smart blue uniform and he’s shot up. I usher him in and it’s obvious he has been well trained because he sucks the air in thorough his teeth, shakes his head and asks me, ‘who did this last repair?’ As he dismantles the fridge we talk about old times and I fish out the old class photo from the bottom of the drawer. Gazing at the cherubic smiles he goes across them, ‘drugs… had a child… lost the plot… drugs… left home had a baby… trouble with the police… expelled.’ Only Peter and one or two others have survived.
Peter shows me the fridge manual and starts a long and detailed explanation of the problem, looking at my glassy expression he breaks off and smiles, ‘this is weird, me, teaching you sir!’ As he departs we shake hands and I realise that I’ll always be his teacher.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Is This The Way To Amarillo?The School Summer Fete is a tradition long established in our seasonal cultural heritage, along with Tim Henman losing gallantly at Wimbledon, Glastonbury festival goers being caked in mud and Big Brother contestants being branded the most brainless, moronic, selfish, egotistical contestants - ever!
With school fetes the class divide is always evident, some of them are organised in a balmy, idyllic village setting with cream teas on the lawn and expensive stalls like – ‘Guess the Weight of the Champagne Bottle’, ‘Find the X and Win a Holiday in St Tropez’ and the raffle for the Fortnum and Mason’s Hamper.
Our school fete is sandwiched in at the end of the school day, our hall is stuffy, cramped and heaving with humanity. We usually have a problem involving parents, in anything. A high proportion of them never come to parents’ evenings, don’t read with their children or ensure homework is completed. The same old faithfuls keep our PTA going.
We make a huge effort with the fete for a return of a few hundred pounds. Our parents just don’t have the money, most of the children wander around the stalls eking out the £1 or £2 they have to spend.
As a way of keeping the parents around for the past couple of years we’ve organised a Children’s Talent Contest. This year the standard was incredible and we even had two boys participating.
After the seven acts had finished we had an interval while the judges conferred. We were promised two ‘guest appearances’. The first was one of the performer’s mum’s (now I know why he is such a shy, retiring violet – not). We got a teeth jangling version of that old Gloria Gaynor standard, ‘I Will Survive’. If that wasn’t bad enough the volume was cranked up and we had ‘Simply The Best’.
Next up was ‘Club Singer Dad’, the volume ratcheted up even more for ‘Amarillo’. By this time it was 5.15 pm and after a hard day’s work, an hour of the fete and the talent contest, thoughts were of home. No chance of that. As an encore we were treated to ‘Live and Let Die’ – the extended twelve minute version. All the hall marks of the hackneyed club singer were evident – greasing up the audience, getting everyone to clap along, involving the children and embarrassing selected members of the audience.
Even as people began to vote with their feet, he couldn’t take the hint. Now I love a sing-a-long, but in the right place at the right time and preferably with a few cans of lager down my neck to blot it all out.
If there’s a Parents’ or Teachers’ Talent Contest then it ‘Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin’. Our old Deputy Head was a bit of a stickler on most things but one thing that I did agree with her on was, ‘the children always come first’.
The Children’s Talent Contest? Somehow we’ve got to get the genie back in the bottle in time for next year.
Labels: Humour
Thursday, June 14, 2007
‘Has anyone got an INTELLIGENT question?’School visitors are usually welcomed with open arms, a break from the daily grind, a chance to chill, relax and watch other people perform, although you’re always thinking, ‘can they cut it?’
For some visitors this doesn’t necessarily apply, most of the so-called Literacy Consultants resolutely refuse to teach, but of course they’re quite happy to watch and then carp and criticise. They’ll spend hours showing you how to plan lessons in minute detail (9.38 a.m. turn page 125 with your right hand and ask the following question…). If the test results aren’t in line with the targets then you as teachers just aren’t up to the mark. After years of these intrusions LEAs finally realised that they were about as popular in some schools as the Black Death was in medieval villages.
Increasingly poets and authors are invited into schools, some of them teachers who have made it as writers and they actually try to inspire and enthuse teachers and children by communicating and transferring their love for writing. We had the poet Ian Bland in teaching the children limericks and how to use rhythm and rhyme. It was also cross-curricula because we got the atlases out to find exotic place names, or the mundane, ‘There was a young woman from Ealing…’ no on second thoughts he didn’t missed that one out.
The children’s writer Alan Gibbons has written some edgy books on controversial topics like bullying, racism and religious bigotry. He got our children writing in shorter ten-minute slots. He’s also pioneered ways to engage boys with literacy through sport, factual writing, gore, snot and other unspeakable bodily functions.
With Jamie’s School Dinners, the battle against obesity and the impending London Olympics millions of pounds is being poured into sport. The Schools Coordinators project has allowed schools to meet together to organise events, it’s also helped by freeing secondary specialists to teach in primary schools and whenever Mark from our local secondary comes in the female members of staff always seem to manage a stroll through the hall.
We’ve had different sports that our children would probably never get the chance to try. The best was a judo taster, Terry the instructor was so gentle and patient, he got some of the real problem children bowing and using faultless Japanese, and there was never any hint of aggression but only Eastern calm. Only at the end of the six weeks did we discover that he is totally blind.
The only problem is that every agency, trust or charity is involved with sport; we seem to get a phone call every week. One day an ex-professional footballer arrived, he was setting up his own training company, he brought in a huge bag of full-sized footballs booted them all over the field and got the children running after them… and that was it, a load of balls. The worst was the cricket coach who was teamed up with one of the less sporty members of staff, he started belittling him in front of the children, “Can’t you catch? ‘ow can you teach them if you can’t do it?” Then he started insulting the children, “Hey dozy, come over here!” After a couple of weeks we rang up to say thanks, but no thanks.
Some visitors just disappoint, the other week we had the Safari Park in and I’ve got to admit I was winding the class up by saying there was a huge trailer outside with a hippo in, that the giraffes would only fit in the hall and the chimps had escaped, were there any volunteers to find them? I was still expecting though a hint of the exotic an African land snail, a giant stick insect or huge beetle perchance? Instead we had a long lecture on life cycles and just to confuse everyone she threw in parthenogenesis in aphids, no males appear in summer until the weather gets colder and eggs need to be laid to survive the winter (a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle). Finally we were promised some eggs to hatch out, an exotic butterfly or endangered species? No, it was the cabbage white! Could do better.
You always get the regulars and we have two lovely old boys who introduce classical stringed instruments from violins to double basses. It’s based on a comedy double act with rude jokes and innuendo the only problem is that after ten years they haven’t changed the jokes or the routine (I know this was the principle that music hall was based on, but look what happened to that). You can telegraph every joke and they must be saying them in their sleep.
There are the one-offs never to be repeated or invited back. Mr Cuddles dressed up in a clown uniform and mimed to songs, prancing up and down the rows of children, the music blasting out from an ancient cassette recorder. He started getting mobbed by the children and disappeared at one stage under a pile of Year 2s. It was all we could do to stop a full-scale riot, the children were so hyper we had to abandon lessons for the rest of the afternoon. Still at £130 an hour there was a queue to join Mr Cuddles.
The one we all remember was “Crabby” Crabtree, he acquired this title due to his attitude, demeanour and sociability. He’d announce his presence by opening the door of the staff room at dinnertime with the imperious command, “You need to move your cars I’ve got to get my equipment in!” No “Hello, how are you, would you mind…?” Bill the caretaker would always make himself scarce and “Crabby” would spend ages staggering in sideways through the doors with his projectors and slides. From his shows you could tell he had an affinity with barnacles, prawns and those vicious eels that hide in holes.
It was always a slide show of the animals he had encountered on his latest holiday. Now I know that in the era of chap books and blackboards the magic lantern shows were bound to be a hit, but when you’re competing against ‘The Blue Planet’ and ‘Natural World’ there just isn’t much of a contest. The whole school would file into the hall, there you were in a dark stuffy atmosphere with hundreds of sweaty children, “Crabby” droning on for ages. On one occasion, much to the amusement of Year 6, I did begin to drop-off, I had to walk about and get a strong coffee, match sticks on the eyes, anything to stay awake. After an hour or so he would see that children’s attention was flagging, glower at them and ask, “Has anyone got an INTELLIGENT question?”
The only thing I can remember was that there was one species of gull that would protect its nest by projectile vomiting the entire contents of its stomach all over its hapless victim, ensuring that you would smell of oily fish for days. Somehow I know where that gull was coming from.
Of course it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning theatre groups, we’ve had some excellent ones that have involved the children, by getting them to dress up, putting messages over through songs, allowing the children to laugh and shout at the tops of their voices. Oh, and embarrassing the teachers as well. The difficulty community theatre has is the skit by the League of Gentlemen with their ‘Legs A Kimbo’ group of primadonnas and thwarted thespians, who constantly argue bicker and squabble. There are also a limited number of actors attempting to portray a mass of bewildering and perplexing characters. One group we had into school attempted the whole of the Old Testament in one hour - with three actors. They raced through Daniel in the Lions Den in two minutes, a whistle stop tour of the Ten Commandments and rushed through Joseph and his Coat of Many Colours. There were numerous baffling costume changes, everything delivered at full volume, slapstick used at inappropriate moments and no attempt to involve the children until the end. “Sir, we’re getting bored.”
School visitors – from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Knowsley ‘Experiment’ – Bluffers GuideKnowsley Council have become increasingly concerned that certain technophobes (a.k.a. ‘teachers’) may not be able to grasp the new terminology, so just to assist them here’s an essential guide…
Old - New
School - Learning Centre
Teachers - Facilitators
Support Staff - Networkers
Headteachers - Webmasters
Classrooms - Gamezones
Writing - MSN time
Lessons - Podcasts
PE - PS3
Music - iPod
Geography - Google Earth
Timetable - Computer slot
Books - You must be joking!
Local Education Authority - Microsoft
Chief Education Officer - Bill Gates
Blog up date – Joke of the Week has been suspended
Thursday, May 03, 2007
That Overwhelming Aroma of AftershaveSome jobs or occupations you really have to question their worth to society – traffic wardens, estate agents and second-hand car salesmen would be high on my list. If a strange kind of neutron bomb or weird selective plague finished them all off somehow the wheels of industry would still turn, their loss would not be mourned. As a teacher I’d also have to add to the list those Stasi of the Literacy Strategy – the “consultants”, ‘our informants are everywhere’.
For years our school was deemed to be in need of “intensive support” our poor results were obviously the result of inadequate planning and crap teaching, therefore teams of “consultants” went through our planning with a fine toothcomb and observed our lessons.
Enthusing children? Inspiring teachers? This was some kind of incomprehensible foreign language to them. Naturally they never taught any lessons themselves. They did produce a literacy magazine that was posted out to every school. There weren’t any book reviews, in fact books weren’t mentioned at all, nor were there any examples of children’s work. Just those scary, ‘how I got my children to Level 4 by using connectives, punctuation and adverbs’, articles. As a result of popular indifference the magazine only had a short life span.
There was an award winning children’s author in a nearby school, who could have inspired other teachers, but as he was a loud and prominent critic of the Literacy Strategy he was kept strictly under quarantine in his own school, lest he infect other teachers with his dangerous ideas.
One day I was working away in the ICT suite on our community newspaper when I was introduced to the new writing consultant. I shook hands with Billy and immediately noticed something different. Most consultants keep their distance as though ‘fraternising with the enemy’ is a punishable offence. Billy maintained eye contact, asked questions about me, my family and interests, he listened intently to the replies. There was also that million-dollar smile when we parted company.
Next week we had a quick chat and he’d remembered my name, what my children were called, where I’d been on holiday and what football team I supported. These days I keep a low profile in school, one of the governors mistook me for the caretaker recently, so it’s nice to get recognised.
Billy didn’t exude charisma it positively flowed out of him. Now when it comes to male primary teachers, you’d have to say that some of us look a little care-worn – the shiny trousers, frayed cuffs and stained tie. Not Billy, he was as crisp as a newly printed £5 note, he looked as though he’d just concluded a business deal at the local golf club – the gold cuff links, that overwhelming aroma of aftershave, the keys to his sports car dangled around his fingers. The Year 6 girls instantly fell in love with him, there were chocolates for the staff and a frisson of excitement not seen since the secondary PE teacher taught a lesson in shorts. Young maaaaaan!
However… not all members of staff were won over, there was the way he gave all the children nicknames and that habit of calling the girls, ‘darlin’ or ‘sweetheart’. Maybe there was a tinge of jealousy that someone relatively new to the teaching profession had landed this high-powered well-paid job.
For me Billy was a blast of fresh air, too often the school-to-teacher training college-to-school circuit produces dullards without experience of real life. People from other careers, disc jockey, the SAS, all in wrestling, lion tamer, all bring with them transferable skills.
A few weeks after Billy had been teaching I saw our Year 6 teacher who is normally a good judge of character. There had been rumours about the class being out of control, inappropriate remarks and questionable language. I enquired how Billy was getting on, no reply, her eyes just averted towards the heavens. She showed me the children’s work that was meant for the community newspaper, even the more able students hadn’t produced anything of worth.
I showed it to Jean the teaching assistant who takes the Year 6 SEN group. She rifled around in a folder and produced some of their work on ‘Our Town’. They weren’t literary master pieces, Jean had helped them with spelling and punctuation, they’d slaved away on the computer, editing and checking spellings, but it was infinitely better than anything Billy had fashioned (there was also the knowledge that Jean’s salary was an eighth or a tenth of Billy’s).
Later on in the term I was on a course and got talking with other teachers, they’d had the same experience with Billy – he’d charmed them all to death but the children’s work had been terrible. One of them had discovered Billy’s previous occupation – second-hand car salesman.
Labels: Humour, Lessons, Literacy
Friday, April 20, 2007
Another PlanetSan Francisco is famous for being full of odd balls and fruit cakes. I hadn't really experienced it before today... I was gagging for a cup of coffee, so I dived into the nearest cafe. Now let's just say in most corners of the planet the service can be tardy or even brusque, but they do let you drink your coffee in peace. I went up to the counter.
'Welcome!' (a broad smile)
'Hello.'
'What is your name?'
'Er...'
'We have a question of the day.'
'Oh really?'
'What do you think the meaning of life is?'
By now I was ready to be recruited by a crazy bunch of wackos who believed in UFOs and the mystic cosmos.
(Nervously) 'I'll need time to think...'
'What would you like to order?'
'Just an ordinary coffee.'
'That's cool we're a vegan restaurant so we don't serve dairy milk but you can have hazlenut milk or walnut milk. We grow them and press the milk everyday and the coffee is fully organic.'
(Thinks - Oh My God, I just want a coffee)
'I'll have hazlenut.'
'Thank you for choosing our establishment. Your coffee will arrive shortly.'
I sit down but can't escape.
'We have some cards on the table which may help your karma. I love working here.' (Smiles broadly)
They're the type of inane comments which you get in 'Chicken Soup for the Soul'. I go through them reading intently trying to blend in.
After a ten minute wait the coffee arrives and surprisingly it tastes OK. I finish and try to slink out.
'Goodbye, may your life be joyous and fruitful.' (Broad smile)
When I visit the nearby school the staff fall about laughing.
'They're on another planet, we'll get you some tacos.'
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
World Exclusive – Iran Hostage Speaks!Teachers’ TV have secured an exclusive interview. Their intrepid reporter Trevor McDonut has talked to one of his former pupils, freed ship’s navigator Arthur Bumbly. His tale of psychological torture, starvation, dehydration and forced physical exertion will shock the nation.
McDonut is confronted by an over weight, pasty-faced youth with spots and a bad skin.
McDonut: How did you get captured?
Bumbly: The sat nav broke down and we didn’t have clue where we were.
McDonut: Didn’t you have a map?
Bumbly: What’s one of those?
(McDonut is thought to have taught Bumbly Geography for five years)
McDonut: Some people have criticised you for surrendering so easily.
Bumbly: Those Irinains had guns… we’re used to stopping defenceless people in sailing boats. We weren’t trained for that.
McDonut: After you were captured did you get any food?
Bumbly: It was horrific all they gave us was fruit and then… vegetables. I was gagging for a Big Mac and chips. After a day or two I couldn’t cope…
McDonut: Did you get…?
Bumbly: All we got was water, I couldn’t think straight without Coca-Cola or a thick milk shake. It was a living hell!
McDonut: Were you cold at night?
Bumbly: We had blankets but it was still cold I kept asking for…
McDonut: More blankets?
Bumbly: No, I wanted a hot water bottle and a nice hot cup of Ovaltine, but the guards just kept laughing.
McDonut: What else did the guards do?
Bumbly: They… called me… Mr… Blobby! (Wipes tear away)
McDonut: Were you bored?
Bumbly: We had nothing to do, I asked them for a Playstation 3 or Sky but the guards fell about laughing. Eventually they made us play… chess.
McDonut: Chess!
Bumbly: It was really difficult, after ten minutes my brain was dead.
McDonut: Did you get any exercise?
Bumbly: They let us out into this big yard and said we could WALK! After five minutes I was knackered and had to sit down for a smoke.
McDonut: Were you lonely?
Bumbly: At night I was on my own and really missed Mr. Biggles.
McDonut: Mr. Biggles?
Bumbly: He’s my teddy bear he goes everywhere.
(Draws arm across nose and wipes snot away)
McDonut: Some hostages wrote grovelling apology letters.
Bumbly: I couldn’t copy it down from the board in time. I did offer to text Tony Blair.
McDonut sighs and writes out cheque for £50,000 and pins gallantry medal onto Bumbly’s chest. The national anthem is playing in the background.
Labels: Humour
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Nobody DrownedPolitically correct PE teachers who hate competitions are killing school sport. Rubbish! I’ve never met any of them, my own experience has been exactly the opposite, PE teachers who could have auditioned for Brian Glover’s role in ‘Kes’ nearly put me off sport for life. Our local swimming gala confirmed that this species, far from being extinct, is multiplying and thriving in a school near you.
In a bygone era sports stars were genuine role models. My all-time hero was Muhammad Ali, he gave up the world boxing title because he wouldn’t be drafted into the army, ‘No Vietcong ever called me nigger’. In the excellent film ‘When We Were Kings’ after he beats George Foreman in ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ he dedicates his victory to the homeless, the drug addicts and prostitutes. Sporting heroine? Billy Jean King risked her career by fighting for equal prize money for women and set up the breakaway Virginia Slims tournament, she thrashed MCP Bobby Riggs who had derided women tennis players and at a later stage she ‘came out’ as a lesbian.
Today narcissistic millionaire drug-cheats live isolated in their gated mansions miles away from every day reality. There’s also the way that the media present sport with their overblown hyperbole. I wince every time I read the words ‘heroic’ or ‘courageous’. A firefighter rescuing a child from a burning house? Maybe that fits the bill, not a player scoring a winning goal. A few years ago Boris Becker lost an important match at Wimbledon just to prove the hacks lack of any sense of proportion they were describing it as a ‘disaster’ and using that catch all question ‘How does it feel?’ Eventually in exasperation he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Nobody died out there!”
Our head was keen for the school to participate in the swimming gala so we had two weeks at the baths to practise. Assembling a team was fairly easy, we picked anyone that could swim a length. Every year our Year 3s start lessons with a large proportion of them never having so much as dipped a toe in a swimming pool.
I’ve got bad memories of the last gala we went to four years ago, our swimmers were struggling to finish and already the next race was being started. The large sports mad primary school came 1st, 2nd and 3rd in every race and scooped up all the trophies.
The Council’s Sports Development Team were ‘organising’ this gala and I use that word pejoratively and in the loosest possible sense. Despite a whole team of people with stop watches no one had thought to book a PA system, a large echoing swimming pool, hundreds of children screaming at the top of their voices – Hello! Chaos ensued we couldn’t hear a thing.
I gazed open-mouthed at the practise session a lithe young lad with swim cap, sleek goggles and one of those expensive swim suits, dived in, glided half the length of the pool and then cut through the water with the speed of a barracuda.
When the races began we had the emergence of ‘Competitive PE Teacher’ – running up and down the side of the pool screaming at his children and bawling out those who lost with the full Alex Ferguson hair dryer treatment. It was one of those rare occasions when I wanted to inflict physical damage on a member of the human race. Maybe I should have nudged him into the pool, I’d have a ready-made excuse, whenever our children hit anyone it is always “by accident”.
Our children dutifully clapped in the last swimmers. Shy Sidney from Year 3 tried his best, but Mouthy Melvin bottled out, it’s usually the quiet ones who don’t wilt under pressure. Sheila, bless her, reassured everyone that, “it’s taking part that counts”. Somehow our involvement was on a par with ‘Eric the Eel’ Moussambani the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who achieved worldwide fame after finishing in the slowest time ever recorded in the Men's 100m Freestyle finals at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Moussambani had never seen a 50m pool before the competition. Laura began to throw up because she wouldn’t drink the water provided. We had a snowball in hell’s chance of winning any trophies so I passed on the humiliation of the relay and we crept out to get changed.
Arriving back ot school the head came out of his office, ‘How did we do?’
‘Nobody drowned’.
Labels: Humour, PE and Health
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Extracting the Bodily FluidsAfter school activities? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I’m not someone who’ll readily volunteer these days. Aside from being dumped on from a great height by the media and by assorted governments, our school was deemed to need “intensive support” for years. The LEA operated the neat syllogism: poor results- equals useless school - equals crap teachers. Consequently we had teams of ‘consultants’ poring over our planning and appearing like spectres in our lessons scribbling furiously on copious sheets of paper. This wasn’t a great inducement to stay after school and teach children – without pay.
After school events take time – organising lifts, sending letters home and sorting out replies. Then there’s the parents… most of them weren’t a problem, there was the odd moaner but you get that everywhere. However, if I’m honest what finally ground me down was that no one ever used that simple word “thanks”.
The latest “initiative” is ‘Gifted and Talented’, so LEAs are pressurising schools to arrange events and other organisations are getting in on the act. At our staff meeting we were informed that a Premiership football club were hosting a series of media training events at their study centre – I won’t ‘name and shame’ them, but let’s just say that last season they were one of the top twenty wealthiest football clubs in the world.
Six evening sessions were being prepared from 4 pm until 6 pm, so by the time we got the children back to school and saw them off home, it would be a 7 pm finish, all this without pay, free, gratis, on the house. I’m sure it didn’t cross the minds of the organisers, failed to register anywhere in their consciousness that teachers would get any remuneration.
So here’s this Premiership club that spends £37 million on wages (the bulk of which doesn’t go to the programme sellers or catering staff) but can’t afford a bean for teachers. Yes, it’s the Premiership folks! Extortionate prices for season tickets, it costs nine times more to watch Real Madrid than Wigan; dodgy owners, West Ham’s new proprietor Icelander Bjorgolfur Gudmondsson was convicted in 1991 of embezzlement and accounting offences and given a suspended prison sentence and then there’s the pampered, privileged, mercenaries a.k.a. ‘the players’ – the sexual mores of an alley cat, the intellectual prowess of a Big Brother contestant and the same standards of loyalty as Vidkun Quisling. Is there any Evertonian that can forget that moment when Wayne ‘Once a Blue Always a Blue’ Rooney scuttled down the M62 and accepted Alex Ferguson’s thirty pieces of silver? Mind you with Colleen’s horrendous shopping bills who can blame the poor lad? Then there’s Ashley Cole who threw a hissy fit and accused Arsenal of “taking the piss” when they offered him a new contract on the paltry wage of £50,000 a week.
In teaching there’s always the emotional blackmail that we should do it “for the children”. I’ve got a different take on it, the best thing we could do “for the children”, is to have teachers who aren’t stressed out by long hours, feel valued by society, don’t have to jump to the latest “initiative” and won’t be expected by all and sundry to work for nothing. Lest we forget, up to half of NQTs leave teaching within the first five years.
At the staff meeting there was muted agreement about covering the event, talk about a rota, no one asked me, maybe it was the body language – arms folded, jaw set, teeth gritted, eyes wide open staring into the distance in disbelief. Teachers really are fools to themselves, their own worst enemies.
An evening at a Premiership club’s study centre – without pay? To quote once again that wise old philosopher Ashley Cole, they really are, “taking the piss”.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Inspector Read investigatesIt was another nondescript, run of the mill, ordinary kind of morning – filling in the register, collecting homework (and excuses), filing notes about PE kit, handing out spellings, putting cough sweets in my drawer and trying to get the class reading quietly, shhhhhhhhhhh…
Glancing up from the register I noticed that Peter (he’s a sensitive lad lives with his Nan) was looking upset and tearful. I called him over and he told me the yellow football he’d got for Christmas was missing from class. True this was only minor league, not on a par with the kidnapping of the plastic baby Jesus from the nativity scene or the case of the missing Maltesers, but I couldn’t let this one go.
Peter told me that Eric had been seen running out of school with his ball. I called the suspect over, now in primary schools there are always tell-tales, informers and stool pigeons who are willing and able to assist with enquiries, this is in contrast with secondaries where the code of omerta reigns supreme. A sea of hands went up, “We saw him take it sir!”
At this point the suspect (Eric) vacated the classroom, at speed, proceeding in a westerly direction. I ushered the class out for assembly and called for back up. My old colleague DC Smith (famed for solving the Case of the Phantom Crisp Thief and investigating the Mystery of the Dirty Knickers Behind the Radiator) immediately arrived. Years of experience narrowed down the possible hiding places for the fugitive and he was duly apprehended hiding behind the door of the boys’ toilets.
A tearful Eric sobbed inconsolably and managed to heave out that it wasn’t him. Despite the suspect’s previous form and ignoring instinct and intuition it is always best to proceed on the basis of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. We questioned the suspect as to his whereabouts on the afternoon in question. Were there any witnesses he could call on to establish an alibi? Who did he walk out of school with? “Scott!”
I went into assembly and beckoned Scott over to me, I took him to the interview room away from the suspect and he informed me that he had gone home with his mother in the opposite direction from Eric. After confronting the suspect with this information the alibi was withdrawn, DC Smith escorted Scott back to assembly and assured him that he would be placed in the witness protection scheme during the next break.
The suspect then tried that well-known tactic “It wasn’t just me…it was someone else as well” and incriminated his friend Colin. Once again I took the witness or potential suspect out of assembly. No he hadn’t walked out of school with Eric, he’d caught up with him and yes, Eric had a yellow football with him.
Confronted with this evidence it was plain to see that the suspect’s case was as we say in the service, “falling apart at the seams”. I left Eric with DC Smith. Now long experience has taught me that you don’t need lengthy interrogations, thumbscrews or the tortures of a Torquemada you just leave them with DC Smith, head on one side, gazing into their eyes with a quizzical look.
Any old lag or Mafioso hit man would wilt and confess. In floods of tears Eric admitted, he’d taken the ball home, it was in his garden. We rang home and mum agreed to bring it in to school straight away and when she got her hands on him… So another case solved, the accused sentenced to detention, Peter delighted to get his ball back and I was spared the wrath of his Nan.
I always feel an affinity with those fictional sleuths Inspectors Rebus, Frost and Wexford they’re always battling against bureaucracy and they’ve never ascended the promotion ladder (I’ve managed to climb to the giddy heights of PE Co-ordinator) but give them a complex crime to solve and they’re in their element. For me it’s all part of the job description, teacher, social worker, nurse, counsellor, psychiatrist and…. detective.
Labels: Humour
Friday, September 08, 2006
The New TermI’ve inherited another classroom as all our teachers move about due to new building. My classroom has also received a new coat of paint – the first in over thirty years.
The process of changing classrooms can be quite traumatic, it’s a bit like moving house except this time the previous owners leave most of their junk behind. My worst experience was taking over a classroom that had had a succession of NQTs, supply and teachers on temporary contracts. It was a bit like an archaeological dig, except there was no ‘Howard Carter moment’ when the buried treasure was discovered. I found a packet of digestive biscuits that could be carbon dated to the time five years ago when there was a child with diabetes in the class. There were old textbooks that quoted the new popular music group ‘The Beatles’ and extolled the virtues of Lancashire’s coal industry. There were minutes of staff meetings from the dim and distant past and resources from long abandoned skills like sewing and knitting.
Teachers are dreadful hoarders, our former head wouldn’t allow us to throw anything out, so once she was out on one of her many ‘training days’ you’d surreptitiously lob stuff in the skip and cover it with mountains of paper.
In my classroom the painters have thrown all the computer wires together in a knot of Gordian complexity and there’s dust all over the files. The worst part are those draws that contain the following – three marbles; staples (loose); felt tip pen (dried out); coloured pencils (blunt); a sweet (wrapped); bits of Lego; a rubber (incredibly dirty); a protractor (dusty). Overcoming the temptation to bin everything you have to sort it into the correct place.
Tina the Nursery Manager comes into class and gives me a big hug, she tells me she’s getting divorced. She’s had a really hard time, her pet dog drowned in her pond, Ofsted came in during the building work, the hunky TV star she was drooling over moved in with his gay lover and after thirty years she’s bin-bagged her husband. [Bin bagging: A woman dumps her male partner’s clothes, artefacts and Nuts magazines in bin bags and places them outside the front door to signify the end of the relationship.]
She was a bit tearful when she went to see the lawyer, but instead of getting out the paper tissues he went for the jugular. “Ditch the bastard, it’s the best thing you’ve done, let’s do him for everything, this is the start of your new life.”
So if anyone WLTM blonde vivacious F for TLC GSOH photo essential GOOP get in contact below.
Meanwhile the launch date for the book is September… or possibly October, I’m getting past caring now.
Labels: Humour
