Classroom and colleagues handling strategies

I got to witness another teacher with my class the other day. It was quite an eye opener. The teacher that I work with is very firm, very direct. Their smile is calculated and controlled and children are made to work for their praise. The class all love this teacher though and there is never any fuss, never any trouble and everyone knows what to do and what is expected of them.

With this other teacher, it couldn’t be more different. First off, this other teacher encouraged the children to just wander over to him if they want to tell him something, even if they had work to be doing. He didn’t call for total silence in Guided Reading, there was no expectation to stand behind chairs or queue up correctly. Even the way he delivered the lesson was done with less confidence; he read his lesson plan from a sheet and referred a lot of queries to me. The class obviously liked him but they also, obviously, didn’t recognise him as the be-all and end-all of authority in the room. There was fuss, there was kids deciding they weren’t going to work, there was kids moving chairs and throwing notes across the room, there were kids talking (yes, talking), whilst he was talking. I couldn’t believe it was the same class.

The experience was an eye opener for me. On a basic level, it meant I had more work to do in terms of planning and delivering lessons because I was the only source of consistency for those few days. I don’t think I was OUTSTANDING in the work I did. I probably had some elements of GOOD and most elements of IMPROVEMENT REQUIRED, but I’ll take that for four weeks in. On a more complex level, it taught me about the different styles of classroom management. Sometimes, I guess, you have to be a bit of a hard ass to get the environment that you want. There’s always room for banter and warmth within a class but the starting point, the foundation, the biscuit base, has to be expectation, routine and the undisputed, all-powerful authority of the teacher. If you try and make the base out of cream and chocolate mousse, and then put the biscuit bit on top, it’s all going to collapse in on itself. Discipline won’t stick, is what I’m saying. Start with the rules and then lather on the sweet stuff.

We were having a little planning session the other day; a couple of trainees, a couple of class teachers, some cover supervisors and me. They were all throwing their ideas into the ring; how about this, no, this! That! Omigod, yes! Great idea! Sure! Even the other trainees were whipping out amazing, out of the box, kooky, cool teacher ideas, and getting standing ovations from everyone else. I had no such ideas. I don’t know why. Maybe if I was pressed, or if it was an exam, or if someone gave me a blank sheet of paper and a pen, I could have rattled off a nice list of decent plans. I just wasn’t very good at gathering my thoughts and then interjecting them into the fast flowing discussion, which was already interspersed with lewd puns and quips about people’s extra curricula activities. I am so socially awkward. I couldn’t get a word in. If it had been a Whatsassp conversation or classic MSN, I think I’d have been the STAR because no one is faster with their fingers than I am. This blog proves that. I’m writing this as you’re reading it. I’m the fastest typist in the east. Typing just unlocks my ideas. But talking? Articulating them with my mouth? I am as good as mute.

Thus, there I am, sitting there passively, contributing only “yes” or “ok!” or, sometimes, “great!”, and I think, you know, I have to define myself here. I have to establish myself as a key member of this team. The other trainees have done so, ten times over. I don’t want to be the weakest link. I don’t want to be the dud trainee. I don’t want to fall flat on the pop after such a successful snap and crackle. I have to say something, anything, of value. It doesn’t matter what they think of it, just get a flipping comment out there! So I pointed something out that had caught my attentions (namely the percentage of time we cover one subject). Man, you have never seen such a series of shoot downs in your life. It was like I was a wooden aeroplane, flying low, my propeller puttering apprehensively in the cold, morning air, and they just turned on the machine guns and tore my wings to shreds. The passion of their opposition to my comments startled me. I did a nosedive, plummeting rudderlessly towards the ground, smoke and fire streaming out behind me, scarlet flares shooting from the cockpit, parachute ready to deploy, and still they continued with their merciless barrage. It was as though I’d said “can’t we just leave out maths?” A series of emotions took place in me. The first, of course, was shock that my tentative comment had inspired such irritation from the rest of the team. This, however, was quickly followed by stone cold, steaming rage; because I had a bloody point, or so I believe. I was so angry, I couldn’t even articulate said point. Instead, my ears started to go red as I stared back at my main contender, plane valiantly trying to pull clean from the nose drive, swinging wildly left and right in an attempt to evade further rounds of machine gun fire. I didn’t say anything. I just went red and stuck my jaw out, thinking that if I opened my mouth, even for a second, it wouldn’t spin forth a concise, succinct and intelligent response to the discussion, but instead a series of cutting insults and threats. I, readers, was speechless. Then, some kind, decent, wonderful, fantastic! Glorious! Saviour! Decided to point out to me, in their nicest, most polite, most not-condescending-or-patronising-at-all tone, that, no, actually, in fact, it’s not what you think, no, it’s not like that, it’s like this. This began my third emotion of the scene: unadulterated frustration. Have you ever been in such a stressful or adrenaline-filled situation that when you replay the events to yourself later, you can’t remember minute details and the order that things happen? (there’s a book that details this exact phenomena but I’ve gone and forgotten it. If I remember, I’ll drop back). When I think back to that exchange, I honestly can’t remember what my retort was. I think, finally, I did manage to say something and, mercifully, it was on point and not a BARBARIC JAB, but I have no idea what it was.

All I can remember clearly, after the smoke had cleared from the ruins of my little wooden plane, buried head first in a freshly ploughed field, the discharge from the machine guns still drifting in the air, is that the table was suddenly very quiet and all the other trainees were studying their pens in a determined way, and the main teachers were gathering their papers with airs of sharp disappointment that they reserve for unruly students. Man, I think I made a few enemies today. Or, maybe, it’s all in my head and I just exaggerated the entire exchange and no one else thought twice about it or my conduct. I am socially awkward (see above). I hope that’s the case because, if it’s not, I really don’t know what I said wrong. I do believe I had a valid point- hence my untainted frustration. The helpful patroniser only pointed out what I already knew, and didn’t address the matter I had raised at all. No one had understood my point; my articulation was awful! I failed! Oh, Whatsapp! Where for art thou?! I have two choices. Find a way to articulate myself on another occasion and rub their faces in the validity of my point, or just move on and prove my worth in the standard of my teaching. I’ll get back to you on that too.

Highlights from the week: doing comparatives. Big, bigger, biggest. Tall, taller, tallest. Little, littler… Midget? No. Doing plurals: One monkey, two…. Trees? Two gentlemen, one…. Glass? No. Or how about the low ability child who wrote an amazing descriptive paragraph, filled with similes and metaphors, utilising his five senses, touching on personification, describing trees as dark as moonlit nights, snaking paths winding into the crystal clear sky, and finishing it with “and suddenly there was roast chicken”.

Cross country club went well. I lost a child from the week before but gained two more. I tried a variety of running based games with the kids and I think they enjoyed it. And I’ll tell you what; a cross country team we might be lacking, but if there was a primary school Ultimate Frisbee league, we’d be top.

Teacher Training Week Two (or three)

Hello. The workload has picked up. We’re into week 2 (or week 3 if you count the first two days as a week, which some people are), and the workload had defo picked up. I’ve got so much work set aside for the weekends that I actually, upon realising that I’m out all next weekend, wonder how I’ll get it all done. Jeez, hey. Two weeks in, or two weeks and two days, and I’m already losing my weekends. It does feel reassuring to be given so much responsibility in terms of planning at this early stage. It means they’ll be no surprises later on. Start as you mean to go. To that end, I’ve made sure I ask my mentor for marking at lunchtimes, so instead of sitting in the staffroom listening to people eating grapes with their mouths open, I sit in the classroom and mark twenty books in an hour. That’s my current rate; one book every three minutes. Is that good or not? Who knows. These kids are writing three sentences, so it’s probably not a great rate. The stuff they right is amazing though. We were looking at the Anglo Saxons the other day and I had to correct a sentence which stated that the King of England text the Duke of Normandy. Check your understanding, young man. What other gems have I come across? Somebody wrote that “there was a bird above me in the tree. I was aroused”. I think they meant “my curiosity was aroused”. Another girl copied, to the letter, a small text box that had been left on show on a website detailing the Bayeux Tapestry. The text box described an obscure panel on the tapestry, whose occupants were acting out a sexual scandal that was infamous at the time. The girl copied it all out, perfectly, without a clue what she was writing, so now her book contains this detailed, medieval sex scandal report.

I took charge of my first XC club as well. Five kids showed up. One did not want to run, one couldn’t run, one did back flips all along the field and the other two were gems. I’ve led many a cross country session in my time but never have I had 60% of the kids not interested in actually running. I seriously wonder whether any of them will turn up next week. The two that were good might not have felt it a very worthwhile XC session; unable to actually do laps or running drills, I had to just conduct playground games like Stuck in the Mud and Bulldog. I sat them all down at the end and asked what they’d like to do next week, what activities they wanted, what should I do so that they could really enjoy and get the most out of these sessions. The back-flipper asked if we could eat sweets. I said I’d look into it.

Our training provider is loading mandatory paperwork on top of mandatory paperwork. There are so many forms and trackers to fill out and upload on a weekly basis. I’M NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT THOSE FIVE PORTFOLIOS. I’m talking about the online portal, where the providers need to see regular updates about our progress. The portfolios are for the end of the year. So many forms and trackers, so many. I can’t keep my head on top of them all and this agitates me greatly, being such an OCD, organised person. I’m hoping to just do what I think I should do and, in the event that I’m forgetting anything, hope that our school based trainer will let me know. We have very good in-school training staff at our placement, and they are constantly talking to the provider about what’s necessary and what’s not. Apparently, it’s all necessary. You need to have eight different documents proving that you can do one thing. The training provider that I’m with has a very good record with producing Outstanding teachers. I can’t work out if this is because they make you copy out the same thing on fourteen different forms and fill in fifteen different trackers and boggle your mind with a hundred different types of evidence sheets, or in spite of it.

Aside from not really thinking I’m organised AT ALL with all this paperwork (which agitates me GREATLY, see above), the only other thing that went wrong this week is that I taught a spelling lesson on prefixes and suffixes and didn’t use a single correct prefix or suffix on my root words. Lol. My teaching mentor quietly pointed it out and I was mortified to the depth of my very soul for about six seconds, before burying the memory deep, deep down in my psyche. I imagine it’ll erupt in years to come and I’ll have a breakdown about it. 

Oh man, I signed off on this, published it and everything and then remembered an absolute gem that one student said to me. We were setting up a Normans verus Anglo Saxons P.E. game and he came up to me and said "Do I have to be a Norman or a Saxon?" "Yes, you do." "Can't I be a Jew instead?" I looked at him, trying to work out if he was winding me up, "A Jew?" "Yes, teacher." "No, you can't be a Jew".

First week of teaching

       Everything is all fine and in order, thanks for asking; I am keeping my folders organised and am beginning to amass evidence, in the form of reflection sheets, meeting notes, annotated booklets of information, lesson observations and lesson plans. This coming week we are starting our afterschool clubs; all teachers have to host an after school club- I think there’s about four after school every day. I chose to coach long distance running and I’m not sure how popular it will be. Obviously, typing it there, it doesn’t sound that popular, but I come from a school where the Cross Country Team was the only team worth joining, where you were cool if you were in the Cross Country Team, where your status transcended all year groups if you were in the Cross Country Team, where kids fought in the mud and the cold and the rain to qualify for the team, where we had to have qualification rounds to cut down on the amount of students in the team. The club at that school had 40 members. Forty, I write it in letters to emphasise that. Ten from each of the junior classes. It was a badge of honour. At this school, I’m thinking not so much but we’ll see. Other teachers are doing a range of very interesting clubs and I’m not sure doing laps of the field will hold much appeal. 

       The other teachers at the school are cool though; fun to be around. I’m starting to get that family environment atmosphere. I feel if you put a camera in our staff room you’d have enough footage for a successful, Bafta winning, TV show. Has anyone thought of that idea yet? I call it. Some of the things teachers say; it just boggles the mind that they can actually be lucid and comprehending human beings. And other people’s reactions are priceless too; so raw, such bare human awkwardness. For example, when one teacher keeps referring every conversation back to how brilliant they are and how they’ve singlehandedly turned every child in the school around: “After schools clubs? Well, you should just thank me that Eric now puts his trainers in his bag. Lunchtime routine? Before I had that class, they were all over the place. You have a really tidy class? That’s me. That’s all me. I drilled that into them last year”. Everyone else, the seemingly humble and attached members of society, just stare at their home-prepared sandwiches or quietly eat a single crisp, waiting for the conversation to die. Yo, shut up about yourself. Or perhaps when a trainee asks a senior member of staff how often it’s appropriate to interrupt the main teacher during the flow of the lesson because they don’t think they’re doing it enough. And said senior member of staff examines his coffee and tries to diplomatically say “never”, whilst everyone else studies the soles of their shoes. Or perhaps the teacher who has to tactfully tell a TA that the display in the ICT room isn’t quite done yet because at the moment it’s just comprised of the silhouette of a dismembered head, floating on a piece of string and would it be possible to have some time spent on it, and the TA’s face is a mask of barely concealed offence. It makes me laugh so much. It is like watching an episode of The Office.

I nearly forgot to talk about the actual teaching. How silly of me. The actual teaching seemed a doddle at the start, compared to all the paperwork and folders that is; stand up in front of some kids, speak a bit, done. Actually though, it’s not that easy, because when you’re teaching, you have to ensure you tick off each criteria box and fulfil all requirements. For example, I did a lesson, it was great, made sure the kids got involved, asked questions, picked on kids for answers, had a fun game for everyone, kids loved it, yeahhhh. However, whilst I did tick the ‘Outstanding’ and ‘Good’ standards for some aspects, I also got a tick in the ‘Improvement Required’ box because I hadn’t encouraged the kids enough during a sixteen second clip off You Tube, focussing on a singing mouse. So I got an Outstanding nod for getting the kids involved, but also an Improvement Required nod for not encouraging them enough. So now I’m just confused as to what I'm doing.

Problems I have come across so far in teaching:

1) What do I do with my hands? If I’m waiting at a bus stop, I fold my arms, but that’s not a good stance to take whilst teaching. Do I gesture randomly like I’m struggling to carry an invisible bowl full of water? Do I hold them behind my back and look like a prick? Or maybe, just have them hanging limply by my side, like useless ribbons tied to my shoulders?

2) In the quick fire magic maths segment, trying to answer the questions as quickly as the children. “Is the answer 56, teacher?” “Two seconds… hold on. Yes. Yes, no, wait, no. Close. But not 56. Actually, who else got 56? No one? Ok, good. No. It’s no 56.” This doesn’t actually apply only to maths, but whenever a child asks a question or gets stuck in a rut and the answer doesn’t immediately leap out at me and I’m left, searching my brain for a response.

3) Becoming too self aware whilst I’m at the front. What does my face look like? What does my voice sound like? How am I standing? What am I saying? What are the words coming out of my mouth? Is it helping the children learn or am I just aimlessly waffling? Am I being direct and precise enough with my instruction? Gggaaaaahh.

4) Why are the others trainees delivering more lessons than me? I only do these three segments, why do they have an extra couple? Is it because I’m no good? Is it because they’re too good? Is it because I’m too good? Is it because they’re not good enough?

Student contact- first two days

Term started on a Thursday, so instead of going straight into lessons, the school thought it best if we used those first two days as an exercise to get to know the kids, get them to know us, work out their abilities and generally set out a stall for the rest of the year. I think that’s a really good idea, from the point of the teacher and the students. From the viewpoint of a trainee teacher, it was sort of boring because all I really did was sit around and observe. I obviously got involved a bit, talking to the kids and helping them with work, but because the work was so basic and independent, they didn’t really need help, so I just drifted around, feeling really cold. The school is cold. No one else seems to think so. My hands were purple because there was no blood flow going to my extremities, it was all being diverted to my vital organs to ensure I didn’t freeze to death. Everyone else was opening doors and windows to let fresh air in and I felt like I was drifting on a wardrobe door out in the North Atlantic. I’m going to have to start wearing vests and body warmers to ensure I don’t lie down in a corner and die. 

I also did a bit more work on a couple of displays and there’s one or two that I’m proud of now. I mean, the colour combinations do complement each other and the borders are straight. One display I did was all about popular culture, so I got to cut out pictures of people I like and show off my general knowledge about cultural icons. What, Google John Lennon's birthday? Don’t need to, miss, got all that information right here. I also led the class in a couple of activities and it went really well. This year will not be the first time that I’ve stood up in front of a class of young people and acted as a figure of authority but it will be the first time I’ve done it and had every action and every word so heavily scrutinized. That makes me really nervous. I accidentally swore under my breath when I ripped some backing paper off a display in someone else’s classroom the other day. None of the kids heard me, or if they did, swearing is so commonplace in their homes lives, they didn’t pick up on it, but imagine if I did that whilst being observed by the head, or Ofsted, or the training provider. Shit. I also hate the idea of meeting a member of staff or inspector in a regular setting, like the staff room or corridor, showing off my amazing skills of articulation, strength of personality and character, and then having to stand up in front of that same person and teach a class whilst they critically examine my teaching skills. What if they think I’m great, then see my teach and think I’m a loser? Or worse, what if they feel sorry for me because I’m so bad?

In my first two days, I have encountered two examples of behaviour that startled me and, in hindsight, I don’t think I handled well- three, actually, but one was outside of school. There was another instance of behaviour that I think I handled it quite well. I’ll start off with that one: I was on playground duty, wandering around, when two year 5 girls came up to me: “Lola called us idiots and said we can’t play in that corner of the playground but we need to practice our dance routine there”. Woah shit, my first issue to resolve. Lola was tall and thin, with really nice hair, clean clothes and a haughty expression. She reminded me of Regina out of Mean Girls, so I was instantly really scared. The girls who had complained flanked me self importantly as I walked over to confront her and that made me really nervous as well. The main thought in my mind, the point I wanted expressed, was that no one should be calling anyone else idiots. The second thought was that these girls had appealed to me in the hope that I, in my position of authority, would ensure justice prevailed, and I didn’t want to let them down. And the third, a bit further down the line, was that all year 5 girls were bitches and I didn’t want to get embroiled in a cat fight. I approached the corner and Lola turned and looked at me, then disregarded me with a shrug of her shoulder. I said “girls, there’s enough room for everyone to play in this corner. We don’t need to go around calling anyone idiots.” I then managed to make eye contact with Lola and said, “did you make class rules today, Lola?” “Yes, teacher.” “And was one of those rules to be friendly to each other and polite to everyone?” “Yes, teacher”. Lola then turned to the two girls who had fetched me and said, “Sorry, Fiona and Kay. We can all play here.” I said “well done, Lola” and then I gracefully and magnanimously left. Inside I was like “woah! Shit! I just totally handled that!” but I didn’t let it show. I was invited back a few minutes later to see the dance routine, in which Lola participated. Handled.

The first bit of bad behaviour was whilst we were playing all school P.E. on the playground. A kid from another class wasn’t staying at his station; he’d taken his ball and was playing amongst the kids who were practicing skipping. I didn’t know who this kid was and was wondering whether I should tactically ignore his flagrant disregard for the different stations. Before I could decide, a very helpful pupil shouted out to me “he’s trying to skip and he’s not meant to be here!” So I felt I had to act: I couldn’t let the other students see me allow this boy to wander away from where he should be; it’d set a precedent, and then all the kids would be going to whatever station they felt like. I approached the boy and asked him to go back to the ball throwing station. He just ran off in the opposite direction. Bang, like that. I had absolutely zero authority. He stopped a few feet away and I approached him and asked him his name, so I could relate to him or whatever, and he just ran off again. It was in the general direction of the ball station and I didn’t want to chase him, so I just let him go but still, I didn’t really know how to handle that one and I don’t think I came across as a figure of authority; I think that boy now thinks he can get away with stuff with me.

The second instance of behaviour that I couldn’t deal with was during class P.E. We were playing a game and a boy was upset that he was out on the first go; he sat on the benches and just sobbed and sobbed. Even when other kids got out and sat around him, he still sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I felt sorry for this kid because, at the start of the activity, everyone had had to get into pairs and he’d wanted to be in a three with his best mates, but I’d been firm and told him to pair up with another kid (he was annoyed about this and flung his arms about, scowling and kicking the floor but I tactically ignored this secondary behaviour, and focused on ensuring he did as I requested, which he did). So there he was, not paired up with his mates and then out on the first go. I’d have been upset. I didn’t know how to handle it though. I couldn’t just let him stay in. And if I’d chosen someone else to be out on the first go, when it was blatantly him that was out, that would have been unfair. So there he was, just crying to himself, sitting in a really weird position between the wall and the play equipment, until the real teacher came over and shouted at him for not sitting properly. I felt baddddddd. How are you meant to react in that situation?

The third instance of bad behaviour was when I was walking home and I passed Regina from Mean Girls. This was the real Regina though, not Lola, who was clearly just a wannabe. This girl was in year six and I’d first encountered her during that all school P.E. lesson. She was being a bitch then, in that really spiteful eleven year old girl way: not letting the dirty kids play with the equipment, hording it, talking loudly, attention seeking, etc. I asked her what her name was and she was like “Bob, Bob, Bob, my name’s Bob”, then ran off. You can’t do anything about that. You can’t reprimand her for it, she clearly just didn’t acknowledge my authority. So, there I was, walking home like a loser, and this girl is standing at her garden fence with a couple of teenagers who could have been her brother and sister. The brother muttered something under his breath as I drew near and little Regina shouted “you idiot! That’s a teacher at school!” I felt I had to acknowledger her here, to try and establish my authority, so I just turned to her as I strode passed and, without stopping, said “Hey, how you doing”, then continued on my way. Regina started giggling and then the female teenager shouted “Oh, not cool!” and all three of them roared like hyenas and I was left feeling like an utter freak. What should I have done there? Just ignored them altogether? Then I’d have looked weak, you know. If Bruce Wayne was walking down the street and people were muttering about him, you wouldn’t expect him to just walk on with his head held high and ignore it. You’d expect him to stand up and define himself. Oh no, shit, you would, you’d totally expect Bruce Wayne to stride passed, as though such mortals were beneath him. By acknowledging such corporeal behaviour, he immediately places himself level with it. Shit. I let Bruce down. Man. At least this blog is a good way for me to work through these things, like a psychotherapy session.


I undergo a debate with myself everyone morning about whether to walk or drive in. On the one hand, school is only 1.7 miles away and it seems like a total waste of petrol. On the other, don’t be such a miser, that’s 30 minutes walking, which is an hour a day I could otherwise be doing something productive and effective for my students, and I have to go right through the estate where my students might spit on me and their parents might mug me. I was once at a school though where a teacher drove 700m to get into school and I ripped her to shreds for that. There must be a line between what is acceptable to walk and what isn’t but I can’t get it into my head that 1.7 miles is too far. I’ll see how it goes. If Regina keeps laughing at me, I might have to drive… but then, that means she’s won.
I’m also unsure how late to stay on Fridays. At the other school, teachers used to stay passed five on Fridays all the time, but at this school, everyone felt sorry for me for thinking I had to stay any later than 3:30 at the end of the week. Poor newbie teacher, it’s the weekend, go enjoy yourself, we’re all going home now, yeah, lol, stay if you want, but we’re off, it’s Friday, Friday, we leave early. Ok, I get it. But I don’t want to end up working weekends or cramming Monday morning, when I can just stay an extra hour on a Friday. It worked well at that other school; but then, at the other school, a guy’s wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t cut down on all the hours he was doing. I also guess it’s better to walk home through the estate before the sun sets and my cheap, battered, school prescribed laptop gets me into trouble with Regina’s brother. 

Inset days within MY school

First things first: I don’t know what INSET stands for. It was basically two days of in staff training/ bonding and preparing the classrooms. There were more staff in the school than I had previously thought- like fifty, including all the cooks and cleaners and admin guys. I love the cooks and cleaners and admin guys; they make the family environment of a school all the more tangible. They make it the microcosm that it is. If it was all teachers and kids, I think it’d feel more like a military institution than a family homestead.

We did a lot of training with the teachers at the secondary school down the road as well, which, whilst interesting to see the guys who’ll be teaching the teenagers of the town, was a bit boring because the training was more generic and broad. It was like Powerpoints on safeguarding children and fire safety- a hilarious video that one, as far as fighting fires go. They’d updated it for the 21^st Century but it was still full of bad acting and random fires burning in isolated bins in the middle of empty rooms.

I found all these Powerpoints and seminars a distraction from getting the classrooms ready. The training with the secondary school teachers were so boring in fact, I actually fell asleep with my head in my hands. It was a practiced technique from university; I positioned my head so I was looking down at the handout, hands cupping my eyes and forehead like I was deep in concentration, yet fast asleep. I suppose I should feel disappointed that none of these hardened teachers recognised my slack behaviour. Or maybe they did, they just couldn’t be bothered to call me up on it. There was a series of free buffets for all this training though, so, swings and roundabouts. Actually, swings, swings, swings, swings. Do you know how horrible it is to sit in a staff room where the only sound is six other mouths using six sets of teeth to chew their way through dry bread, Hobnobs and extra crunchy apples? Jeez! The sound of other people eating appears MAGNIFIED in school staff. It’s like I’m sitting inside their ear canals. It’s like they’re grinding shards of glass into the bones of my jaws. I don’t relish all the lunch hours I’m going to spend in that staff room at ALL.   

The main exercise in those few days was, as I said, getting the classrooms up, and this meant displays. We tore down those awful ones we’d made in the Generation Game the week before and set up actual half way decent ones. Then we set up the other boards in our room, as well as the ones in the library, the corridors and the hallways. God, so many displays. I thought teaching was all about paperwork, I had no idea it was actually about drawing, cutting, sticking and stapling. Am I meant to be good at this stuff? I’m not. And because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, no line ever looked straight, no edge ever looked well trimmed, no staple or blue tac ever appeared subtle enough. After working at such activities from 7:30 to 5:30 though, you just have to draw the line somewhere and hope that no one will notice if a border is a few degrees off dead straight, or the colour combinations of a double mount don’t completely complement each other. Last word, I found the ten hour work days easily manageable, even with eating and exercising and sleeping. Nothing of report there.

School led training

Before term starts, I have three trainee days at the school where I will be based and then two INSET days with the rest of the teaching staff there. This post will cover those three training days which are just for the new starters: i.e. trainees on the Schools Direct course.  These include myself, a couple of other primary school trainees, as well as the trainees at the secondary school just down the road. We were all lumped together on the training days, secondary and primary alike, to do things like school orientation activities, starter games for the kids, data discussions and study seminars.

I didn’t mind these training days. They were more in depth and hands on than the training provider days but I guess that was because the group was smaller and it was all people we were going to be fused with throughout the rest of the year. There was a lot of paperwork again though. Jeez, Louise, the paperwork. I thought the training provider paperwork was a lot to take in but my placement school gave me twice as much again on just the first day: school specific lesson plans, term plans, year plans, curriculum overviews, curriculum overviews condensed into key points, long term objectives by year group and rolling learning objectives for the entire year. Clearly, personal organisation is the key. I knew someone who stopped their teaching training year halfway through because they couldn’t keep up with the paperwork. They were excellent at standing up and delivering a lesson to thirty 8 year olds, but they couldn’t get their heads around all the planning and structuring. And we haven’t even touched on the marking yet- you have to mark each English, Maths and Topic book, with appropriate and child targeted comment, before the next lesson, which could be the following day. That’s at least fifty books worth of marking a night. Sometimes, I think (like police work in Hot Fuzz), paperwork is obscuring the actual art and act of teaching. But then, maybe, you need all those objectives and summaries in order to teach effectively. I suppose anyone can stand up and talk to a bunch of kids but all the paperwork and planning ensures that you’re actually up there teaching them something and then they’re actually going away having learnt something. Two quotes from the days that stand in my mind are these, coming from twenty plus year teachers. The first was “I love my job but if I was a graduate now, I’d never train to be a teacher. Never in a million years”. I asked why and the response was linked to the amount of work required of new teachers. Apparently, in the nineties, it was a doddle. The second quote was “teaching is either the best job in the world or the worst job. And if it’s the best, it is really the best. And if it is the worst, it is really the worst”. That was a worrying sound bite because there’s people out there whose jobs are to clean port-a-loos and other such shit shovelling careers. Either the speaker of the sound bite doesn’t have a grasp of the extent of worst jobs in the world or teaching can get really, really bad.

They didn’t hold back on destroying any allusions about teaching, which is probably a good thing. I’m going into this with no elevated expectations about skipping through fields with hordes of rosy cheeked kids meekly following me and doing as I say. We’ve been told to kiss our social lives goodbye, we’ve been told we’ll be working weekends, we’ve been told we’ll be putting in twelve hour days, we’ve been told we’ll be inspected and observed and monitored like someone in intensive care, to the point where the presence of another adult in our lessons will be commonplace and we might as well tailor our teaching to their needs, rather than the kids. I always thought I was quite an attentive listener and a conscious member of any congregation and the only reason I messed about in school was because I didn’t care and I was trying to show off for the cool kids. But I found it really hard to sit and pay attention during the times our senior staff members were telling us all this stuff and I found my mind drifting off and wondering what Obi Wan Kenobi looked like whilst he was having sex, rather than concentrating on how we have to implement our master curriculum summaries of key points for our year group in the first half term.

I got my wish in the afternoon, when we were put into pairs and set a challenge. We had three hours to create two displays in two different classrooms, using only the resources we could find within those classrooms. No computers, no photocopiers, no printers. And the displays had to be interactive, with a learning intention and, obviously, child proof- so now flimsy bits of paper and wayward hangings. The displays we created were also going to be left up and used/ seen/ played with by the kids when they start next week, so we couldn’t even do a half arsed job if we didn’t lay our hands on suitable resources or ideas.  Quite the challenge and, after staring at the times table mat all morning wondering about Star Wars related pornography, a welcome one.

My partner and I set upon the challenge with gusto. We drew posters by hand, stapled up drapes, cut out shapes, coloured in cardboard doors and arranged tables and chairs. I thought it was a very worthwhile exercise because, if, as a teacher, you’re constantly putting up displays throughout the year, you need to be able to make decent ones, with limited resources in a limited amount of time. It was a nice baptism by fire. We left at the end of the day, happy with our work, content that we had done our best with what we had been offered.

Next morning, we had to go around and critique all the other displays by all the other pairs and, what do you know, but they’d all taken their work home with them and embellished and built on their resources and ideas from there, coming in the next day with all these marvellous, amazing, interactive and professional displays. What cheaters! My partner and I were told in no uncertain way that they were simply being good teachers and that if you snooze, you lose. I was outraged. There were we, adhering to the rules of the challenge, abiding by the constraints to test our prowess, and we’d turned out as the losers. I hate it when people give you rules and things and then you find out later that you didn’t have to follow them, that you could have been “creative”, used your “initiative”, “thought outside the box”. No, actually, you gave me rules and I followed them. If you want me to think on my feet and go against the grain, you should have said that. Or is the whole idea of going against the grain that you shouldn’t have to be told? Do you need to be able to break boundaries and blaze a trail to be a good teacher? I don’t think I’m very good at doing that. In fact, I wrote it down on my Weakness Chart, alongside being too pedantic and analytical. I just like making precise plans and sticking to them, being given rules and working within them. I hate that advert on T.V. with Usain Bolt and Balotelli, going on about impatience and disobedience will be praised. Why? That advert makes it seem like you have a weak character if you are compliant and polite and you’re not naughty or defiant. Sometimes, it takes strength of character to just do the right thing, to be able to just follow an instruction. God, I am such a loserrr.

As it was, even though their displays were all nicely printed, with accurate photos and neatly designed diagrams, all our displays were routinely torn apart by the senior members of staff- not literally torn apart but in terms of being critiqued. They just pointed out everything that was wrong with each display and there was something wrong with every display, no matter how much time and how fantastic they looked. I’ve condensed their key points for displays below:

-          Refrain from using typed text where possible- kids need to be able to see handwriting all around their classroom so that their own handwriting improves.

-          Don’t use capitals when handwriting stuff because kids don’t need to be taught how to write in capitals.

-          Make sure all handwriting is joined and uniform, so kids know what correct handwriting looks like.

-          Displays need to be interactive but you have to have in your mind how interactive: i.e. how many kids will it occupy for how long?

-          Displays need to be enticing and inviting, COLOURFUL.   

-          But avoid putting things up just because they look nice and are pretty.

-          Every item on a display needs to have a learning outcome, a reason to be there.

-          Displays need to be moved around and altered a lot so bear that in mind when you’re nailing up bricks.

-          Make use of laminated paper, which can be written on with one week/ lesson’s learning intention and then wiped clean ready for the next week/ lesson.

There’s lots and lots of writing in this post so I’m ending it now, bye.