You couldn't make it up!

Picture a lunchtime in a room of young people with their teacher. For a variety of reasons but mainly due to exclusion, they are in for the day and away from their friends. The teacher used to teach the brother of one of them and has a chat asking how he is doing. The reply is that he's ok but wasn't very happy with the police coming round to ask about a stolen car the other day. Suddenly a very small 12 year old shouts out, 'F***ing C***s!'

The rest of the kids are shocked. Their exclusions were for far less shocking swearing than that and in a rush the boy realises what they are talking about. What is going to happen to him? He swears again and promptly bursts into tears.

He goes outside and begins to bang his head hard against a glass door until ushered away. He slumps to the floor and cries harder as the lunchtime comes to an end and students clamber up the stairs.

Now the boy is well known for his attention seeking antics and he proceeded to tell me the mention of the police reminded him of them coming to his house to question him about an elderly couple who had been attacked and frightened by a lad and had suffered heart attacks as a result. He had sworn because of the terrible memories evoked by the mention of that word.

From then he locked himself in the toilet, collapsed in the middle of reception, hid under a table, ran into community and sat with a group of adults, none of whom had heart attacks fortunately, cried and cried and eventually tried to log onto a bank of computers with the words, 'my mum hates me and I want to die.' This did not give him access.

All the while I was trying to deal with a lad who had called his teacher a turd, another boy who had claimed to be sick and been sent out, a girl on work placement who had come back into school for something do, a lad in a strop because the teacher was picking on him, a parent who had phoned to find out about her daughter's exclusion, get a PE mock exam for another student and a KS3 Science exam for another one who had missed the test that morning. In the meantime a librarian had come down to ask me about another teacher she felt was behaving strangely with some students. She had told him so too and I had to go and check what he was up to. (He's on supply and arm wrestles the naughty kids to get them to behave! He is over 60 and little!)

Having promised to go to a drama lesson to help the teacher get the students moving with their coursework I was unable to get that at all. Having promised to get away for a new front tyre I left after 6 again and will have to wait for the tyre.

But it's all good fun.