That's more like it!
I was hoping when I started this blog to have a wealth of stories about school and so on and after the first week I was precisely nowhere and rapidly coming to the conclusion that things at school were a good deal less interesting than I had thought. Thankfully(!) things have been happening today that make my job so interesting.
In the first place most of my Year 11 class were in their French exam at the start of the day. This left me with those who either do German, very few of them, and those who did not do a language. I therefore had a class of 8 and a wonderful opportunity to do some close revision of the English Literature short stories. Encouragingly they showed good knowledge including the use of symbolism which ought to guarantee a smile on the examiner's face but we got bored with 15 minutes to go and invented a new game. We opened the door and decided that whoever walked by would be the person we would love forever, allocating minute long sections for each person. Naturally some of the class ended up with no one, and if you'd seen them you would think it was an all too accurate prediction of their futures, while we laughed at the cool lad of the class ending up with a lovely Year 7 girl who walked by. Unfortunately I was also chosen to take part and must now woo a lad in Year 10. Fate is a cruel mistress.
The next incident related to a gold chain stolen from a bag in PE. The boy was told that it had been flushed down the toilet and had been very upset and phoned home. His father, big and full of muscles, was extremely angry and I listened to the story. Having ascertained that it had been flushed down the toilet I told him I would look into it (not really - in different circumstances he might have laughed but I didn't fancy upsetting him) and went into the changing rooms to check which toilet. I found out it had been put down the grill in the urinal which on closer inspection, by the building superintendent, hid a long drop into the darkness meaning there was no chance of recovering the chain.
Following that it was off round the local estate to round up any truants but they were all in school or safely hidden in someone's house. Then into the bushes round the school, not so much bushes as the shell of bushes as they have been subject to clearances as vigorous as those of Amazonian farmers. The wide open spaces are not for cattle to roam and feed Western populations with burgers; rather they provide shelter for a shy and retiring species equally addicted to another Western vice which is so readily exported to enthusiastic masses the world over, the smoker. They have spent some considerable time in the undergrowth and find shelter from their only natural prey, the vigilant teacher, in the dense network of paths and clearings. Easily disturbed, they can be spotted by the clouds of smoke rising at regular intervals during the day but mainly at break and lunch. They eat very little, preferring to spend dinner money on their hobby and indulge in social intercourse, coughing up phlegm and 'twosing up'.
Having admired the hard work they must have put in I returned to the building to check the inclusion room. Today there are 11 of them in, 3 girls and 8 boys, but most significantly they are all Year 9 bar one boy from Year 8, the product of a post-SATs hangover possibly. The only one I have to deal with regularly is the Year 8 student.
It might sound like all you deal with as a teacher are naughty kids who don't want to work or learn but that's far from the case and there are lots of success stories too. Yesterday I was visited by a student who left us three years ago. He'd had some difficulties in school, so much so that we could well have placed his home phone number on friends and family, but he joined up almost as soon as he finished school. What a difference it has made to him. We kept him going in school and were able to give him decent enough references etc to enable him to be selected. I'd never been very keen on the armed forces myself finding it easier to maintain a simplistic view of all things military in which they must be brainwashed idiots unthinkingly following their reactionary leaders who maintained the status quo in society and propped up the establishment. That might well be right, I still have my reservations, but they do make a difference to some people in a very positive way.
The young man has just returned from Iraq where he has been stationed for several months and I was able to chat with him about the situation there, far too complex for me to even attempt to comment on here, but he did tell me about the formations they had to patrol in and the training they'd had prior to deployment in Basra. It was very interesting and he was honest enough to speak of moments when the training kicks in and helps you overcome the natural fears you face. I have absolutely no idea how I would react in such situations. Not as well as I'd like to pretend I fear.
We ended up chatting about 'Band of Brothers', a series we'd both enjoyed, and discussed their courage under fire. At school we study 'Saving Private Ryan' as a media text in English. It's very popular as you might imagine. I chose it with the boys in mind, trying to get them more engaged in their English work. With the 60th anniversary of D Day last year and the VE celebrations this, it has helped give us all an insight into the horrors faced by those servicemen and the courage it took for them to fight on. I can't imagine being able to do what they did.
I've wondered of late about our curriculum in English. As well as 'Shaving Ryan's Privates' as we called it last year when we had a Ryan in the class, the coursework involves the violence and conflict in 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Jekyll and Hyde' and an original piece of writing on 'The Assassin'. A common theme emerges! In fact the other piece is 'An Inspector Calls' and even in that a young woman commits suicide. I'll say no more on that subject.
I was hoping when I started this blog to have a wealth of stories about school and so on and after the first week I was precisely nowhere and rapidly coming to the conclusion that things at school were a good deal less interesting than I had thought. Thankfully(!) things have been happening today that make my job so interesting.
In the first place most of my Year 11 class were in their French exam at the start of the day. This left me with those who either do German, very few of them, and those who did not do a language. I therefore had a class of 8 and a wonderful opportunity to do some close revision of the English Literature short stories. Encouragingly they showed good knowledge including the use of symbolism which ought to guarantee a smile on the examiner's face but we got bored with 15 minutes to go and invented a new game. We opened the door and decided that whoever walked by would be the person we would love forever, allocating minute long sections for each person. Naturally some of the class ended up with no one, and if you'd seen them you would think it was an all too accurate prediction of their futures, while we laughed at the cool lad of the class ending up with a lovely Year 7 girl who walked by. Unfortunately I was also chosen to take part and must now woo a lad in Year 10. Fate is a cruel mistress.
The next incident related to a gold chain stolen from a bag in PE. The boy was told that it had been flushed down the toilet and had been very upset and phoned home. His father, big and full of muscles, was extremely angry and I listened to the story. Having ascertained that it had been flushed down the toilet I told him I would look into it (not really - in different circumstances he might have laughed but I didn't fancy upsetting him) and went into the changing rooms to check which toilet. I found out it had been put down the grill in the urinal which on closer inspection, by the building superintendent, hid a long drop into the darkness meaning there was no chance of recovering the chain.
Following that it was off round the local estate to round up any truants but they were all in school or safely hidden in someone's house. Then into the bushes round the school, not so much bushes as the shell of bushes as they have been subject to clearances as vigorous as those of Amazonian farmers. The wide open spaces are not for cattle to roam and feed Western populations with burgers; rather they provide shelter for a shy and retiring species equally addicted to another Western vice which is so readily exported to enthusiastic masses the world over, the smoker. They have spent some considerable time in the undergrowth and find shelter from their only natural prey, the vigilant teacher, in the dense network of paths and clearings. Easily disturbed, they can be spotted by the clouds of smoke rising at regular intervals during the day but mainly at break and lunch. They eat very little, preferring to spend dinner money on their hobby and indulge in social intercourse, coughing up phlegm and 'twosing up'.
Having admired the hard work they must have put in I returned to the building to check the inclusion room. Today there are 11 of them in, 3 girls and 8 boys, but most significantly they are all Year 9 bar one boy from Year 8, the product of a post-SATs hangover possibly. The only one I have to deal with regularly is the Year 8 student.
It might sound like all you deal with as a teacher are naughty kids who don't want to work or learn but that's far from the case and there are lots of success stories too. Yesterday I was visited by a student who left us three years ago. He'd had some difficulties in school, so much so that we could well have placed his home phone number on friends and family, but he joined up almost as soon as he finished school. What a difference it has made to him. We kept him going in school and were able to give him decent enough references etc to enable him to be selected. I'd never been very keen on the armed forces myself finding it easier to maintain a simplistic view of all things military in which they must be brainwashed idiots unthinkingly following their reactionary leaders who maintained the status quo in society and propped up the establishment. That might well be right, I still have my reservations, but they do make a difference to some people in a very positive way.
The young man has just returned from Iraq where he has been stationed for several months and I was able to chat with him about the situation there, far too complex for me to even attempt to comment on here, but he did tell me about the formations they had to patrol in and the training they'd had prior to deployment in Basra. It was very interesting and he was honest enough to speak of moments when the training kicks in and helps you overcome the natural fears you face. I have absolutely no idea how I would react in such situations. Not as well as I'd like to pretend I fear.
We ended up chatting about 'Band of Brothers', a series we'd both enjoyed, and discussed their courage under fire. At school we study 'Saving Private Ryan' as a media text in English. It's very popular as you might imagine. I chose it with the boys in mind, trying to get them more engaged in their English work. With the 60th anniversary of D Day last year and the VE celebrations this, it has helped give us all an insight into the horrors faced by those servicemen and the courage it took for them to fight on. I can't imagine being able to do what they did.
I've wondered of late about our curriculum in English. As well as 'Shaving Ryan's Privates' as we called it last year when we had a Ryan in the class, the coursework involves the violence and conflict in 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Jekyll and Hyde' and an original piece of writing on 'The Assassin'. A common theme emerges! In fact the other piece is 'An Inspector Calls' and even in that a young woman commits suicide. I'll say no more on that subject.
By the way one piece of coursework this year referred to 'Saving Pirate Ryan' which conjures up fantastic images of a bearded buccaneer stranded on a desert island surrounded by pieces of eight with only a pet parrot for company. Tom Hanks could make it work! He'd be Oscar nominated I'm sure and Speilberg could persuade schools to show it as testimony to the suffering of scurvy seadogs who were victims of the globalisation of real estate in acquiring new land.
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