What a way to spend the week

School - don't you just love it!

I got to school at 7.20 yesterday morning, left at 7.05 in the evening and was in bed by 8.00 feeling completely knackered and more than a little unhappy. Is there any other job that can be so frustrating and yet so rewarding?

It started with the usual pre morning meeting arrangements of compiling lists of who was excluded, who was in inclusion on report and so on as well as providing details on the previous days incidents for Heads of Year and moved into the morning meeting. Immediately I had to deal with an exlcusion resulting from a confrontation during registration. Having called the father he was able to come into school virtually straight away.

I should have been teaching but I ended up missing the entire lesson (poor cover supervisor looked after them and gave up after a few minutes of trying to read a short story). After an hour and ten minutes we decided we were not going to agree on the exclusion, they felt the school was over reacting, I was going to support the member of staff. Everything got brought into the meeting; a phone call last year when the receptionist had been rude, the lack of school recognition for his swimming records and so on. Despite that it was an amicable meeting. The parents (both came in showing great support) were very reasonable in the way they talked which is not that common unfortunately. Often the meeting can become heated.

As a result I was late for break detention. I picked up a young lad who wanted to die and was in tears. He told me he couldn't trust anyone and had had enough. I calmed him down and took him to his tutor.

My next lesson went ok but I was distracted by the earlier events having had to exclude another student for telling a teacher he wasn't 'going to that fucking thing.' The teacher referred to in the statement was not at all happy. My ability to concentrate on the nuances of poetry was limited.

A hectic lunch with students in inclusion and on report accompanied by a trip to the canteen which I took having all the while to ask kids to remove their jackets was followed by a lesson with another Year 11 class. We looked at 'Tichborne's Elegy' and 'Song of the Old Woman' which went fine in preparation for the mock exams next week. Three students were sent to my class at that time due to poor behavour elsewhere, including one who had been sent from a previous lesson. In fact I'd had to leave my class to get him.

I signed reports after school and returned coats I'd taken earlier before making my way to the duty teacher detentions. I spent the hour writing paperwork and preparing for the management meeting that followed.

That lasted two hours giving me the chance to complete follow up phone calls. By the end of the day I'd been involved in excluding 6 different students! The one thing that raised my spirits by that time - I hate putting kids out as they miss out on their education and for some of them it's what they want - was being told that the classrooms are a lot calmer. I don't know how true that is as it's early days with this behaviour and respect push but it is a lot of hard work.

I was awake at 5 this morning and in school for 7.15 to begin it all again. By 9.00, two more lads had gone. I'd had to investigate one incident further from yesterday and given the teacher's comments (the lad had said 'fuck that' when asked to leave one lesson and go into hers due to poor attitude and work) and then dealt withan identical set of circumstances moments later. The difference today was that the lessons didn't suffer and I had a wonderful time teaching 'On the Train' by Gillian Clarke. It lifts your spirits when people begin to explore things with greater confidence. It really does seem to be coming together now as it tends to at this time for Year 11 with exams on the horizon.

My after school post exclusion meeting went fine after initial disquiet expressed by the parents for the length of exclusion and the accusation of repeated swearing ('You're fucking cheeky' the first time followed by a return to the lesson to accuse the teacher of lying and saying 'this school
is fucking shit' and 'I won't be coming back to this fucking place') we eventually saw eye to eye entirely. The appointment I waited for until two hours after school didn't turn up but it had been a better day. The two hours in inclusion with 13 students were fine although that is far too many and way beyond what it was intended for.

Hopefully I can get all the essays I have carried around all week marked this weekend. I want them done tonight so it could be a late night.