Sunday 15th December

Look, I'm the first to admit that my entries for November were a bit pathetic. So pathetic, in fact, that there was only one of them. It's unprecedented! Even the month I spent on the road in the States yielded more entries than that, and I didn't have a machine at my disposal for most of it! Shocking. And Yul made it known to me just the other day at the Cherry Tree that he for one was up at 2am and found himself with very little to read. Bear with me, insomniacs. One more week of school, and then I'm back at uni for eight weeks and I get two days off a week. This teaching lark....blimey! I've never worked so hard in my life.

That said, I am on top of it. It's not as bad as some people had described to me. I do have to do some work every day, but I'm not up past midnight every night or anything. I haven't had time to write in this because I spend most of my free time asleep in front of the telly or at one of a multitude of aerobics classes to which I have recently pledged myself in a desperate (yet vain) attempt to turn the tide of the weight loss, which has been weight gain or, better but still not good, just weight maintain since um, well, August (Year 2, Day 45 and I am rapidly losing the will to slim).

I must be doing something right, however, because my guru of a tutor, Michael, came in to observe me last week and he was full of praise. Granted, it was the best prepared lesson of all time, and I puzzled for hours over what to include, but he said lots of nice things anyway. I managed to include two games: Jeopardy and a quiz involving the use of individual whiteboards. I've seen these used in special needs departments at other schools, and then the literacy co-ordinator at my school gave us some ideas for their use at a literacy working group session I reluctantly attended a couple of weeks ago. "Those look like great fun," I thought, "I'd quite like a play with those. How can I work them into my class?" And so I used them to quiz the kids on what they'd learned - to see whether my carefully constructed fire diagram explaining the differences between long, medium and short term causes had been understood. It had. They loved it. One of the girls in the front row got so excited about the whole thing she actually started squeaking. It was marvellous! And the best part was, they all participated.

Of course, this was year 8, they're not VERY mixed ability and I knew such a quiz would get them going, because a couple of weeks ago I played a variant of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" with them - it was called "Who Wants To Be James The First?" I meant to take chocolate in to bribe them and forgot, but in the end it didn't matter. They were practically wetting themselves trying to get picked to be James I, the whole class got involved, and - best of all - they sat in silence and copied everything off the board for a full fifteen minutes afterwards. That was an uber-lesson. I was on a right high afterwards.

But the lesson with the mini whiteboards was better. Afterwards, Michael congratulated me on my innovative practice, to which I replied...
Me: Oh, um....(scuff)
Michael: That's something I'm going to take away with me - mini whiteboards - what a fantastic idea, Sally, well done
Me: Yeah well, it wasn't my idea...I went to this literacy working group sessiona and the literacy lady gave us some ideas...
Michael: Yes, OK, but to have taken something from a literacy working group session and applied it to your history teaching, that's just, well, that's just brilliant!!! (you could just tell there were three exclamation marks there)
Me: (thinks) Did I do that? I just thought it would be fun and I wanted to have a go...
Me: (says) Oh, well (simper) it was nothing...really....
And then it happened again....
Michael: I loved that bit where you gathered all the girls who were away last lesson and went through the task with them to make sure they really understood, that was such good practice, well done!
Me: Oh, but that wasn't me either...Fred does that, Fred Martin? He does that in our ICT sessions at uni
Michael: Yes, that's true...but...but..(turns to my mentor) to have taken something from a generic ICT session and applied it to your own teaching, that's just REALLY high level!
My Mentor: (nods vigourously)
Me: (thinks) But...but...but...you TOLD us at the last lecture that Fred's methods were good and we should copy him!
Me: (says) Oh, well...thanks...

I do love getting praised, of course. It seems I might have a problem accepting compliments, though. Anyway, he was so pleased he couldn't think of any high level targets to set me and had to nit pick, so I am supposed to be increasing the levels of differentiation in my lesson plans, observing how other teachers use questioning to elicit high level thinking among pupils and - good one this - practising my "You're really pissing me off now" teacher stare. I have been doing the last one in the mirror quite a bit, but I am trying to get one where I don't look too pissed off - so no using the trademarked Hand scowl - and one where I don't have to wrinkle my forehead. Since wearing my fringe swept to one side I am acutely aware of how much my forehead wrinkles when I contor my face into certain expressions, or raise my eyebrows, and I am starting to vainly worry about it. The big two five is fast approaching - maybe I'll ask for Botox for my birthday present.

(Only kidding....rat poison? How stupid are some people!)

So, anyway, that day went really well and I came home pirouetting around and singing about how wonderful I was and how clever and what a good teacher I was going to be &c. &c. ad nauseum. Then the next day I totally crashed and burned. I had to pull one year 9 group back at break time because I couldn't get them to be quiet; I forced another year 9 class to sit with their hands on their heads in the ICT room while I instructed them on what they needed to do because I couldn't get them to stop typing while I told them; and my year 10 class fell apart so badly that my mentor had to take over half way through and finish it off for me. It was just all bad. One tiny piece of good news though - the head of special needs made a point of telling the head of history how impressed he was with my interest in special needs and the way I really made an effort to find out about my special needs pupils and cater for them. This is because I spent an hour chatting with him about it and because I always do special teaching notes for the one pupil I have who qualifies for the support of an LSA. But nevermind - hopefully they will include a mention of that in my final report and it can go into my college reference and help me to get into the field.

Last week was slightly better, but that's probably because I put a lot more effort into my preparation. I am surprised - which just proves how stupid I can be - that the success of my lessons is directly related to how much effort I put into them. Odd, that. Also, this week I had two days off for Kerrie's wedding and only taught 5 lessons out of 13, so I got off quite lightly. I have had stacks of marking to do though - all three year 9 classes have submitted their Isambard Kingdom Brunel projects, then I have to sets of Romans tour guide projects and the Civil War assessment from the year 8s. I am on top of it, though. I marked one set of Isambard Kingdom Brunel projects on the train to London, which I thought was very apt since it is the line that he himself built. They were fantastic projects, I was so impressed with all of them. It's strange, then, that the other two sets should be so rubbish - one set seemed to be going for the plagiarists of the millenium award and had pretty much cut and pasted everything from the internet; the other set managed to hand in 6 projects between 29 of them. They were my cross to bear, that one horrible class - last lesson with them was on Friday, it's so nice to know I never have to tell them to shut up again! But six, out of 29....how pathetic is that. I was presented with an array of parental notes, addressed to "Miss Han", "Miss Hans" or "Miss Hands" (none of them actually got my name right). ALL except one of them begged my indulgence on account of the fact that their computers had broken. ALL of them! I didn't get any "The printer ran out of ink"s or anything, althoughone mother wrote to say her daughter had been stuck but hadn't asked for help in time. I don't get it. They had more help than the plagiarists and I gave them nearly a week's extension. How can three sets be so different? They're all mixed ability, but the most mixed class is the one that performed the task best, and they're consistently good. It's very strange.

Kerrie's wedding was a lot of fun. Jen and I bought her Twister for a laugh. I went up to London on the Monday and we went to Sibling Hand's pub, which is no longer Frank Charlie's but Aunty Annie's instead. We proceeded to work our way through two bottles of red wine in two hours, which would have been ok had it not been for the fact I had had a chicken sandwich about midday and a banana before leaving the flat and that was it. I ended up so drunk I was sick - again. Anybody would think I was about sixteen, the way I hold my drink. I got home, threw up and passed out on the bed. The situation at Jen and Richard's (them being split up and all) means that I share the bed with her when I stay now and apparently I kept mistaking her for Mr Z and attempting to huddle to her for warmth (R's flat has no heating and it's like a big fridge) so she kept booting me. At one point she actually woke me up because I was lying diagonally across the bed and she had no duvet at all. Mr Z says he can relate...huh!

I passed out so quickly I didn't have time to drink anything and woke up at 9am when Stu texted me to find myself shaking from dehydration. The wedding began at 1pm so I rehydrated myself as best I could, we got dressed and set off. I kept thinking I was going to throw up, especially after the McDonald's that was supposed to help, and the first glass of wine at the wedding went down like a lead balloon, but it picked up a bit after I managed to pinch an extra glass of toasting champagne from the empty seat nearby. We were late (naturally) as a result of going to the wrong train station to catch the train to deepest, darkest, south east London, but not that late....and as Kez said when we showed up an hour late for her hen night, "I wouldn't expect anything else from you two!" We ended up seated with half of Kerrie's Irish relatives and a couple of Ler's friends so we ended up chatting to them for the entire afternoon. Interesting people, and very nice, especially when I made some very candid comments about the look of certain people in the room. Kez looked pretty radiant and her hair looked lovely; Ler was bouncing around like Tigger on speed for most the afternoon and also looked very happy. Awwww, bless. Jen and I pissed off about 8pm because I had to met Zoe in Croydon. We went to the pub, and then a late bar until 1am - by that point I had been drinking for 12 hours on top of what seemed suspiciously like a hangover and I ended up getting into something like an argument with a bouncer...
Bouncer: Start making your way out now please!
Us: (chat on, put on coats, scarves &c.)
Bouncer: (Comes back) I've told you FOUR TIMES, will you start making your way outside please!
Me: (one arm in coat) What the hell do you think we're doing here? We're putting our coats on! We going as fast as we can!
Bouncer: Everybody's told you to get out, it's 2 seconds past 1am (that bit might be artistic license), will you just leave!
Me: We're leaving! We've spent a LOT of money in your bar tonight, you could be a bit politer!
Zoe: Ssshh! He's just not worth it
Bouncer: It's not MY bar...
Me: Well THAT'S blatantly obvious, you're nothing!
Bouncer: OK, remember her face guys, look at her, remember her face, she's barred
Zoe and Me: She's/I'm from BRISTOL!
Me: Like I care!
Bouncer: Yeah well...why don't you just go back there!
Me: I'm going!
Bouncer: Don't you want your phone?
Me: (Pretty sure I have it but think it might be Zoe's, so walk back over)
Bouncer: Haaaaaa...(sneer)
Me: What a wanker (but quietly...he was very big)

I was still simmering about it when we got home. Why do bouncers have to be so mean? Anyway, Zoe cooked some food, she's got a lovely flat now, and I attempted to sleep on her futon under three coats and a towel (no spare bedding, you see). After a very disturbed and cold night, I woke up, feeling sick AGAIN, and had to drag myself back into central London to go on the London Eye with Mother Hand and Sibling. One cup of carrot and coriander from Souper Douper and a vast cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows from Costa (the winter alternative to iced mochas for me, I think) later I was feeling much more human, even if I didn't appear to be so, and quite enjoyed the big wheel and the trip to London Aquarium (still my number one tourist attraction in the capital), plus to company of my family, of course. Sib and I adopted Mother Hand a penguin from Birdworld for her birthday, she was mighty pleased and didn't guess at all.

So, that was a nice diversion for the middle of my penultimate teaching week. Happily, I didn't have any lessons to teach the next day so I finished off most of my marking and observed a bottom set maths lesson. This reminds me of another "Small World" story. The maths teacher, Mrs Holloway, told me the other day that she knew some people with my surname and asked me where I was from. She looked disappointed when I told her Portsmouth, so I asked her who they were anyway. "Phil and Pam?" she replied. "Phil and Pam HAND?!" I said, stupidly (well duh...if they had my surname what else would it be?!) "Yes! Are they related?" she said. "They're my aunt and uncle!" I expostulated, shocked. It turns out, she went to university with them. And - this one's very tenuous so concentrate hard - her eldest son is engaged to a girl whose father is from Swindon originally and went to school with "one of Phil's brothers" - he couldn't remember which. Since Phil's other brother is his twin, it seems logical to assume that he was actually at school with Father Hand. It's dizzying, really.

Another "Small World" story, but not quite such a pleasant one - I was in the computer room with my year seven class the other day when a girl came over to me. I had earlier in the lesson gently reprimanded her for chucking another girl's bag down a three-storey stairwell, breaking the lunchbox contained therein and consequently a yogurt which exploded all over the bag. She said...
Girl: Miss, where did you go to university?
Me: London....University College, London
Girl: Oh (loks confused)
Me: Why?
Girl: Well...do you know someone called Linda Fursland?
Me: Oh yes, she's the head of my course...I'm at Bath Spa for my teaching degree...she's like, head of the whole thing...
Girl: Oh right! (smiles broadly)
Me: (thinks) Oh f**k (I censored it in my head because I don't yet know if any of my pupils are psychic)...oh don't ask, don't ask, don't ask...you know the answer...don't ask...
Me: (ignores brain) How do you know her then?
Girl: She's my mum!
Me: Ah ha ha ha! Really! Well I'll be!
Girl: She said she knew you!
Me: (thinks) How could I possibly have missed that when I have called this girl's name in the register every week since I started here?!

Well, not that it matters really. In fact, it's probably a good thing - Linda's the one who writes our references so me teaching her daughter might go down well, especially in light of my fantastic ICT exercises. The head of history is particularly impressed with this and pinches my ideas - she is using my power point task on the Roman legacy for her year 7s next week. The task started off with them making plasticine models which of course they loved, and ends in them using a website to write a power point slide on a particular topic. It took me nearly three hours last Sunday finding all those websites, but it was totally worth it - the slides now adorn the classroom and they look fantastic. And I am pleasantly surprised to find they included facts I did not know. Marvellous! They ARE learning something!

I don't know whether it's just me being a trainee teacher or whether I have always been like this, but I am certainly noticing spelling mistakes a lot more lately. When we were at London Aquarium on Wednesday, Mother Hand and I spotted two on their information signs, and that was without even trying! One of them was an "it's" instead of an "its" - that annoys me almost as much as "could of" instead of "could have" (my all time number one pet grammatical irritation). I am starting to wonder whether we are, as a human race, regressing - in the fifteenth century, for example, spelling didn't matter and people just wrote what sounded right. During the lecture we had on marking, I made a point of correcting all the spellings in the test pieces....but I find that with the work I am marking from the kids, I just do not have the time. It's not just spelling, it's grammar, sentence structure...you name it. It drives me nuts but there just aren't enough hours in the day...and I'm not there to examine their English. I suppose we'll just have to help that the literacy hours at primary school will do their job and new year 7s will have better command over the English language.

Then, I happened into my hotmail inbox for the first time in a week to find 54 messages in my junk mail folder (I never use my hotmail, it's just a complete joke - nobody could ever cope with that much junkmail, surely?!). Anyway, I went to delete it and noticed the following message -
"Messages more than 7 days old will be automatically deleted from the Junk Mail folder. Review the messages in this folder from time to time to INSURE only mail you don't want in your Inbox is delivered here."
And I mean, this is hotmail, for crying out loud. It's a subsidiary of the company owned by the richest man in the world. It's the most popular online email service ever. Who the hell do they have writing this stuff? Is this just an evil plot by Microsoft to stop everybody being able to spell and use the Englihs language correctly? In five years time, is Microsoft going to launch some sort of "English language" program and charge thousands for it, and are we all going to have to buy it because our own written English is so horrendously bad?

It's scary, folks, but I believe I may just have stumbled over another sinister plot. Purchase your grammar primers NOW, while there's still time.

I was in Boots today looking for some discontinued perfume and a pumice stone. You can tell it's nearly Christmas - there were lots of men looking worried in the electrical beauty department, shaking boxes. "If I get her this, will I get a blow job or the couch?" you can see them thinking. I happened to be browsing the trendy yet impractical looking Toni and Guy hair accessories (I don't care what Cosmo says - hair bungees with little hooks on look more painful than wisdom tooth surgery) when I witnessed an amusing scene. A woman was bending down looking at some sort of beaded scrunchie that you just knew was going to break on its second outing, while her husband and teenage son skulked uncomfortably behind her. She held the item up, turned to her husband and said, "I was thinking of getting this for Holly for her stocking but I don't know....what do you think? Is it trendy?"

I happened at this point to catch the man's eye, and had to make a swift exit into the Botanics skincare section before I had public hysterics. What planet was she from?! He looked totally perplexed. They make jokes about things like that on adverts or in magazines, but I have never witnessed the scene first hand before. Oh, happy day. That one'll keep me sniggering for a long time. I might even file it in my "funny personal anecdotes" section. These went down a house on fire when I met Kerrie's friends at her wedding, and also on her hen night. They certainly get a conversation going. My side of it, at least.

I would like to take the opportunity here to say a big MERRY CHRISTMAS! to everybody at the Inland Revenue. They work so hard and they're so hated by pretty much everybody, but I think they're just fantastic, wonderful people. This has nothing to do with the cheque for £300 they sent me in the middle of November - an extra payment from tax year 2001-2 because my old tax office had under-paid me when they sent me a cheque in September. It has even less to do with the £326 rebate I got in my wages this week (since I have paid about £10 tax from my pub job, I am assuming that the rebate is either a mistake or a repayment of the tax I paid whilst working full time for the first half of the year, and instead of having to gather my financial statements, send them off with a letter in April and wait seven months for the money, they have actually taken the initiative, calculated my rebate unbidden and given it to me early). No no, nothing to do with those things. Merry Christmas, Inland Revenue, and a very, very Happy New Year. You're paying for my turkey, you lovely, lovely people!

I think I've done it. I think I've exhausted my diario thoughts from the past month now. I'm sure I'll remember something else later, but oh well. I have to plan some lessons on typical battles in the English Civil War now. I have emailed the schools officer at the Sealed Knot, a re-enactment group, to ask if he can send a fake Roundhead or Cavalier over to the school on Thursday afternoon, but if they are all busy then I will have to teach them something. Luckily I have a handy exercise on Bristol in the Civil War. It's quite fascinating, really. I am getting to learn a lot, and I keep bringing local history bits in which gets me tonnes of brownie points. La la la, I'm such a good teacher, la la la, I'm so clever, &c. &c.

(Now wait. I'm going to crash and burn in my year 8 lesson tomorrow...mark my words.)