Thursday 21st November
"It's sad, so sad, it's a sad sad situation, and it's getting more and more absurd," warbles Elton John in his latest collaboration, with bootylicious boy band Blue. Couldn't agree more, Reg. That you should find yourself down to your last tens of millions have have to make such a desperate bid for a Christmas number one, murdering one of your own songs in the process...(sigh)
No, I'm not dead. Just damn busy! Getting on top of things now though. I think I have the right job, to be honest - there is just a little bit more than enough to do, and the days are just flying by - something different to any job I have had in the past. My only problem is working out how much work each year can do in an hour - I seem to be constantly under or over planning my activities. Oh well, early days yet.
The school I am at seems pleasant enough. The all-girls vibe reminds me of my own school days, and not in an especially good way either; the head seems a bit up herself - she has yet to introduce herself to me, even thought my mentor told everybody at staff briefing who I was. But everyone else is nice enough, even the pupils, on the whole. In addition to the two year seven, one year eight and three year nine groups I had originally, my mentors have now added a year ten, half a year eleven and parts of a year twelve to my workload. It's my own stupid fault for making "Become confident in teaching GCSE classes" one of my targets. They do scare me, though, so it's probably for the best. I had year 11 for the first time today, I felt all deflated and without bounce. Then I had to make a girl spit a half chewed roll into the bin which was pretty disgusting; and then another girl refused to move when I placed them in groups to work, but happily she saw my point of view in the end. Two people noticed the glaring error on the worksheet - I had asked a question to which the book provided no answer. But, although my mentor noticed I was nervous, the rest of the class missed it, so that was OK, and I made myself feel better by playing SS Bitch to the year 8s I had next. At one point I called them year 7 by accident, but instead of doing the smart thing and saying, "That's because you're behaving like a year 7!" I made some weak joke and tried to laugh it off. This teaching may pass the time quickly, but it's not doing much for my self-respect.
Some other highlights of the past few weeks....
....I have a year 7 girl in one of my classes with a reading age of a 7 year old. She had an LSA for one of my classes, but none for the second, during which she amused herself by cajoling me to let her draw lions on the board and singing, "Momma Don't Allow No Gee-tar In Here!". In a desperate attempt to silence her, I suggested she sing a song about the Romans instead. She looked at me like I'd just said the lamest thing in the world. And frankly, I didn't blame her....
....I managed the incredible teacher-gum trick - when I saw someone chewing, I didn't even skip a word - I picked up the bin, walked over and stood in front of her, still talking, until she spat it out. Yey me!....
....Mr Z ate all the head master's custard creams yesterday at his school, and then walked off quickly when the head questioned their whereabouts. That's nothing to do with me, but, I thought, an amusing anecdote nevertheless....
....Apparently I have teacher handwriting and marvellous presence in the room, and I project well. As my old mentor would say, if I was on Faking It pretending to be a teacher and he was a judge, he'd have a really hard time guessing if I was real or not....
....Last week there was a Children In Need assembly with many of the pupils performing little dances (and some of the staff, too). Was I the only one who thought that 13 year olds prancing around to the strains of "Like A Virgin" was wildly innappropriate? Maybe I have spent too much time in the States....
....The first day I spent at school, I came home, watched some TV, ate some dinner, and went to bed at 7.15pm, whereupon I slept for 12 hours. It's exhausting, to say the least....
....Everybody from the course went out for a nice Italian dinner, and some fine wine...I had a bit too much wine and spewed up in the toilets. I made a serious attempt to clear it up but it eveidently wasn't enough, because the manager of the restaurant came in and told us all off! So I owned up, to save everybody whispering about it in future. How embarrassing. And my infamous tutor was there, too. Luckily, he seemed more pissed off with the restaurant manager than anything else. Sarah and Gareth went and had a go at him, and everybody was really nice about it, which sort of made it worse. But oh well, it serves me right for imbibing two bottles of wine in the space of two or three hours....
....I taught a whole lesson to Kid A (the suicide bomber) and his classmates about the Holocaust, during which they all modelled scenes from daily life in a concentration camp. I used a big box of chocolates as a prop, and got totally mugged for them - I had three left by the end of the class! I went down like a house on fire, though. One kid saw me in the corridor before the class and asked me if I was going to be teaching history next lesson. I replied in the affirmative, and he punched the air, grinned and said, "YESSS!" happily. What a confidence booster! I was worried it meant he was going to play up, but apparently not....
....Hallowe'en has come and gone, and Xena made a public appearance in the Cherry Tree, armed with vodka jellies and a plastic sword. I went all out this time and wore my hotpants, which meant that my lycra clad arse was displayed behind the bar all night. I've seen the pictures though and it's not as bad as all that. It got a good reception, at least - we sold an unprecedented number of bags of scampi fries - they're on the bottom shelf of the bar....
I can't remember anymore. and this has been sitting around for a week waiting for me to upload it! And it's nearly December now. I'll write more when I have time. Next June, probably.