Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Teacher Without Portfolio - One Term in Limbo: Day 55 - TwP Fights Back
Teacher Without Portfolio - One Term in Limbo: Day 55 - TwP Fights Back: I hadn't even taken my hat and coat off this morning before being involved in two incidents with rude, disrespectful and utterly repellent c...
Day 55 - TwP Fights Back
I hadn't even taken my hat and coat off this morning before being involved in two incidents with rude, disrespectful and utterly repellent children, and for the first time this term I felt an excessive outrage exacerbated by witnessing 3 of my colleagues receiving treatment that they do not deserve.
The first was the harrassment and deliberate provocation of one teacher (which has, she says, been going on a long time), involving a pupil directing variations on the phrase "All right, babe?" at her on 3 separate occasions within the space of 7 minutes; the second an incident involving the phrase "He pushed me first!" so you can imagine that one for yourself. The third incident involved my friend and colleague being accused of pushing a pupil as she passed him, which in a way directly led to my outburst at that pupil who was whinging about some other little scroat pushing him in the corridor, so he bore the brunt of my dissatisfaction with pupil behaviour this morning.
But it's not so much these petty little incidents that have me riled.
It's the fact that these little (insert expressive negative noun of your choice here - but scroat, I feel, is particularly good one!) know that they can treat teachers this way and pretty much bog all will be done about it.
Seriously thinking about getting my mother up the school.
The first was the harrassment and deliberate provocation of one teacher (which has, she says, been going on a long time), involving a pupil directing variations on the phrase "All right, babe?" at her on 3 separate occasions within the space of 7 minutes; the second an incident involving the phrase "He pushed me first!" so you can imagine that one for yourself. The third incident involved my friend and colleague being accused of pushing a pupil as she passed him, which in a way directly led to my outburst at that pupil who was whinging about some other little scroat pushing him in the corridor, so he bore the brunt of my dissatisfaction with pupil behaviour this morning.
But it's not so much these petty little incidents that have me riled.
It's the fact that these little (insert expressive negative noun of your choice here - but scroat, I feel, is particularly good one!) know that they can treat teachers this way and pretty much bog all will be done about it.
Seriously thinking about getting my mother up the school.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Day 46 - I'm....re-viewing. The situation...(to the tune of said song from Oliver!)
My fellow teachers are really under it at the moment. There are targets to set, stats to read, data to analyse, results to input, assessments to mark, reviews of assessment procedures to undertake, PLCs to which we must contribute, meetings to attend, twilight training to tackle, Literacy Strategies to put into action, reports to write, and somewhere at the bottom of the pile there is teaching to do as well, which is the (supposed) fun part of the job, and what we chose this job to do. Increasingly, it isn’t fun. Behaviour is poor, mainly because teachers have very little time to spend on producing 25 mentally stimulating lessons every week because they’re so busy doing all the data analysis, setting the targets, writing the reports, inputting the results, assessing the pupils, reviewing the assessment policies, being members of PLCs, attending meetings, taking part in training and implementing Literacy Strategies across the curriculum… have I forgotten anything? Oh, yes, managing the admin for discipline procedures which is necessary to maintain the façade of actually having some jurisdiction in the esteemed institution we call Education – which, let’s face it, seems to have very little to do with education at all these days…
Before I'd even reached half way across the school car park this morning, I'd had two separate conversations with two very disgruntled teachers. Something is not right in the state of Denmark and I think if Hamlet were a teacher, he would come to a very different conclusion about slings and arrows... The Head had better not go hiding behind any curtains, that's all I'm going to say.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Day 45 - A Blast from the Past
I was going through old emails so that I could delete the ones that were clogging up my mailbox, which Office assured me was about to self-destruct, and I came across a copy of an email I had sent to a member of the Pastoral Care team to explain why I needed to give more detail regarding a pupil's behaviour during one of my lessons. The email transcribed the majority of what this pupil delivered in the form of verbal diarrhhoea and reminded me that I have been dealing more with this sort of thing for 3 years now.
Transcription follows:
Transcription follows:
*Kyleeigh: Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Does he look familiar?
Shows me a picture of some runt with a shaved head and spots
Kyleeigh: Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss Miss. I ant got my book. Miss Miss. Miss. I don't GET it! Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. I don't know what to DOooooooowuh! Miss. Miss Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. I fink I frew my Macbeff away. And my book. And *Tayler
*LIzzy: No you wasn, Kyleeigh, you just din't listen, so shut up!
Kyleeigh: No, thass coz I always gets sent out.
Lizzy: No, iss because you don't SHUT UP! GOH!
Pause
Kyleeigh: Miss. Miss Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Do you like my hair? Miss. Miss Miss Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. MISS! MISS! MISS! GOH! Miss. Miss. Miss. My HAIR! Miss. Miss Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss.
Lizzy: Use her name, stupid. She likes you to use her name.
Kyleeigh: Miss? Miss. Miss. Miss. MISS!...Ms Teacher....?
TwP: Yes, Kyleeigh?
Kyleeigh: My hair.
TwP: Have you started your work, Kyleeigh?
Kyleeigh: I tole you! I wosn yer when we done Macbeff.
TwP: Lizzy, would you let Kyleeigh make some notes from your work, please, so that she can catch up.
Lizzy: You are, Kyleeigh.
Thrusts her book at Kyleeigh
Kyleeigh: Goh! No-one ever listens to me. I WASN YER!!!!!!!!
*not their real names
I'm really hoping things are going to change for me.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Day 44 - Any Dream Will Do
Every now and then, we are lucky to get someone in to school to talk to our Young Adults. By and large, it's someone Welsh, someone with a disability, someone Welsh with a disability or an author who hasn't yet achieved mass recognition. Today, we played host to an excellent writer who was entertaining, inspirational, funny and engaging.
He spoke of all the random things that were popping into his head and did so uncensored and unfettered by convention and was all the more entertaining for it. He spoke of his three main ambitions when he was a boy and threw the same question out to our group.
"What are your dreams? Come on. You have to have a dream!"
A tentative hand went up, came down again, but luckily, our speaker had spotted it. He pointed at our very own Tyrone* of Excluded From French Nutters fame.
"Yes, you!" says our not-yet-enormously-famous-but-should-be writer, encouragingly. "What's your dream?"
"Fighting crocodiles!" says Tyrone.
"Excellent answer!" says our writer. "Imaginative! That's what I like to hear! Something a little different. Why do you want to fight crocodiles?"
"Kill 'em and sell their skins and make lots of money and get famous!" says Tyrone.
Ah well.
We tried.
*Still not his real name
He spoke of all the random things that were popping into his head and did so uncensored and unfettered by convention and was all the more entertaining for it. He spoke of his three main ambitions when he was a boy and threw the same question out to our group.
"What are your dreams? Come on. You have to have a dream!"
A tentative hand went up, came down again, but luckily, our speaker had spotted it. He pointed at our very own Tyrone* of Excluded From French Nutters fame.
"Yes, you!" says our not-yet-enormously-famous-but-should-be writer, encouragingly. "What's your dream?"
"Fighting crocodiles!" says Tyrone.
"Excellent answer!" says our writer. "Imaginative! That's what I like to hear! Something a little different. Why do you want to fight crocodiles?"
"Kill 'em and sell their skins and make lots of money and get famous!" says Tyrone.
Ah well.
We tried.
*Still not his real name
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Day 43 - Kurt Trundlebury's Pencil Case Part Deux: It's in the Bag!
When Kurt Trundlebury had to borrow a pen in today's lesson, I asked him where his pencil case was. He told me that he'd lost it and then glanced sideways at me to see what my reaction would be. I didn't say anything at all, and two minutes later, he muttered, "It's in my bag, miss." Then he quietly got his pencil case out of his bag, and began to work. Quietly.
Two minutes after that, he started sucking the ink out of his pen, telling me he was going to poison himself and die. I calmly informed him that the ink in pens was no longer poisonous and all that would happen would be that he would make a big fat mess.
He still hasn't got a ruler in his pencil case, so I folded his A4 paper to create lines for him to follow, because he was worried about his writing slanting across the page. Then, I showed him how to use these folds to guide him as he wrote on the sheet. By the end of the lesson, all that was on this sheet was the title I had written, and the first line of the work he was redrafting. He then told me that he hadn't been able to finish his work because I hadn't helped him, and then he looked at me under his lashes to see how I was taking that snippet of news.
Kurt Trundlebury thinks I'm a soft touch. He thinks I like him. He thinks that I'm on his side. He thinks that I will let him be as objectionable as he likes to be and I won't challenge his poor behaviour, or manners or attitude. This is not the case. I just won't challenge him in the way he expects to be challenged.
I am overly patient with this boy, but not because I like him, or feel sorry for him, or because I think he can change with a little understanding (although this might be the case...) - no, my motives are a little more self-centred that that.
And they are very simple motives. If I can keep the little bugger busy, with suggestions and reasons and explanations, the other members of the class will be able to get on with doing what they want to do and life will be a lot easier for all persons contained within that melting pot of hormones, anger, frustration and stunted emotional literacy.
And really, at this point in proceedings, with everything else that's going on, like coming to the end of my time here, planning the Big Move, wondering what on earth my teaching life will even be like come January, I am beginning to value that quiet life more than ever and I will do everything within my meagre and dwindling power to achieve it - and if that means having the patience of seven saints with a little scroat like Kurt Trundlebury, then so be it.
Two minutes after that, he started sucking the ink out of his pen, telling me he was going to poison himself and die. I calmly informed him that the ink in pens was no longer poisonous and all that would happen would be that he would make a big fat mess.
He still hasn't got a ruler in his pencil case, so I folded his A4 paper to create lines for him to follow, because he was worried about his writing slanting across the page. Then, I showed him how to use these folds to guide him as he wrote on the sheet. By the end of the lesson, all that was on this sheet was the title I had written, and the first line of the work he was redrafting. He then told me that he hadn't been able to finish his work because I hadn't helped him, and then he looked at me under his lashes to see how I was taking that snippet of news.
Kurt Trundlebury thinks I'm a soft touch. He thinks I like him. He thinks that I'm on his side. He thinks that I will let him be as objectionable as he likes to be and I won't challenge his poor behaviour, or manners or attitude. This is not the case. I just won't challenge him in the way he expects to be challenged.
I am overly patient with this boy, but not because I like him, or feel sorry for him, or because I think he can change with a little understanding (although this might be the case...) - no, my motives are a little more self-centred that that.
And they are very simple motives. If I can keep the little bugger busy, with suggestions and reasons and explanations, the other members of the class will be able to get on with doing what they want to do and life will be a lot easier for all persons contained within that melting pot of hormones, anger, frustration and stunted emotional literacy.
And really, at this point in proceedings, with everything else that's going on, like coming to the end of my time here, planning the Big Move, wondering what on earth my teaching life will even be like come January, I am beginning to value that quiet life more than ever and I will do everything within my meagre and dwindling power to achieve it - and if that means having the patience of seven saints with a little scroat like Kurt Trundlebury, then so be it.
Monday, 14 November 2011
Day 40 - Final Instalment
PL: I’m going to have to speak to Mrs Hook. We aren’t going to get anywhere. We’ve managed to fill in two boxes in this lesson.
Remember when we were here and we didn’t take our coats off, and now it’s them and you’re not saying anything to them.
Shall we do the work then?
We could …shut up….we could look around for …say like, Miss, say like if there was a wedding, and we could wait until they all go and then give all their rubbish back to them in bags.
PL: Yes, you could do a litter pick, if you wanted. Tidy up the community.
Yeah. Graham could help us with that. I asked Mr Rory as well. We just got to tell him.
Gardening?
This school got a good garden you know. It’s up there.
(shows where the garden is)
If we don’t keep the trees we’ll all die.
It’s loads of grass down there.
PL: Abby.
Abby.
Abby.
That’s not my name.
PL: Your name is Abby.
No it’s not, it’s Debbie.
(Abby giggles)
PL: From now on girls, you won’t sit together.
We’re going to get a row off Miss Hook. We’ve already had a warning. We nearly got kicked out, me and Dai.
Why d’you call him Dai?
Cos that’s his name on PS3.
Miss, we haven’t hardly got no reasons for sorting out that though.
What about Aller? That’s rough. We could go and tidy that up.
It’s rough as hell round here that we could maybe…
(All talking at once)
They’re all pikeys up there.
Up Aller.
PL: How else can we improve the environment then?
Eelctricity.
More bins.
Caergwli’s a mega mess.
PL: I can’t hear you all talking at once.
Miss.
Miss, there’s rubbish.
Miss, you know all the scrappies, they go up Caergwli pinching bins.
You know what I seen? Me and my bamp saw scrap men taking a brain out of a bin. And copper and all that.
Miss, I know, go down Pwll…
(Indecipherable nonsense)
Where are we taking bikes to, Miss?
How aint you on report, Beth, You gets sent out of every lesson.
(Two girls leave the room early because one is on crutches)
Bye smell.
Miss they won’t get in trouble now if Miss Hook comes up.
Orright, Ty, shut up now.
PL: What else…any other ideas?
I got a good idea. We make loads of little flyers and pass em out in Caergwli. Up the town they got no bins.
Miss, we could make…
You could prosecute…
Miss, they’re talking about littering but they chucks it straight on the floor.
Can you sign my report? Miss. My report.
And mine.
And mine.
Can we go?
Miss, miss, even Miss Hook knows I got a shouting out problem.
Miss, sign my report.
PL: See you next week.
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