Whaaaaatsupppp, internet. I haven’t updated in a while
because I’ve been busy teaching and shit. Updates from my teaching career:
there’s a student in school who I literally hate, I’ve lost sleep out through
genuine child-related fear, sheer mirth was had by all at the Christmas
production and I’m optimistic about my next placement. Quite a smorgasbord of
emotions, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’ve read that people enjoy lists, so, here,
below, for your own personal perusal, is a list of emotions that have beguiled
me in the last few weeks. 12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Trainee Teacher
emotions.
I'm watching Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as I type this. My writing, my sentiment, my very purpose is being crafted by the Fellowship that has guided me since 2001.
1. Hate.
There’s a student at school I literally hate. I don’t know
why. They are really popular, not too stupid, not too clever, they enjoy a bit
of banter, they’re outgoing, polite and take on responsibilities and duties
around the school. Great stuff. I just hate them. I’ve got kids who paw at my
arm, who cry and throw tantrums, who refuse to work, who run around the class,
bouncing off the walls, telling me they haven’t had their medication yet, kids
who swear, kids who talk back and I don’t hate any of them. In fact, I quite
like them, I feel attached to them. But this other child…man, I don’t get it.
All the other teachers love them. I do not.
It started off small, just a mild dislike, but now I
actively loathe the little child. I think it’s because they’re too aware of how
good they are, how popular, you know? And they’re lazy. It takes me ages to
cajole them into getting pen to paper, and the whole time, they’re making wise
cracks and being “sassy”. They think they are the bee’s knees. And all the
other teachers are on board. But not me. I think it’s because they are capable
but they refuse to really engage; they prefer to try to be cool. And whenever
you set them a problem, their first impulse is to say “I don’t understand”.
They refuse to engage their brain. But they’ll shout out what they think are
funny comments. They don’t immediately do as instructed either; either because
they’re too lazy to interpret instructions or because they think they’re above
it. I don’t know why I’m writing this down. I think I just need to vent; none
of the other teachers will hear anything bad against the child. But you will.
2. Guilt (is that an emotion?)
I had two nights of lost sleep in the previous week. The
first came because I was sitting in Science, working with a small group and, as
I gesticulated in an effort to convey my passion for the subject, the pencil I
was holding pierced the back of a student’s hand. Their little hand was
wandering into my close personal space, I wasn’t that wild, and I apologised
and checked their hand and the3. Fear
The second night of lost sleep came from a similar scenario.
I was at XC club (that became a total failure, btw. I only had about 3 kids in
the end. One kid said to me she wasn’t coming anymore because she didn’t like
running. Good. Decision), so anyway, I was at XC club and one of my faithful
couldn’t take part because he’d sprained his ankle but he requested to stand
and watch anyway. No worries. Anyway, on our way into the school, one of the
other children didn’t hold the door open for me and the injured boy and it
slammed shut on the kid’s injured ankle. He cried out and I think I had an out
of body experience. I just drifted away. I felt detached from reality. That’s
how terrified I was about the boy doing further injury to himself. He said he
was fine and brushed it off but I got him an ice pack anyway and just trotted
around after him for about half an hour, making sure the bone wasn’t sticking
out of the skin or anything. I lost sleep that night, expecting to go to school
the next day and find the boy’s mother there, complaining that her son had been
allowed outside, that he’d re-fractured the bone, that it wouldn’t ever heal
properly, that he was on double medication for it, who allowed this to happen,
where were my safeguarding skills, black mark on my record, cause for
concerned, failed QTS.
4. Cognizance (I know this definitely isn’t an emotion but it is necessary)
All paranoia; neither of these events came to anything but,
still, it made me think. It made me realise. It made me achieve cognizance. One second could turn around
your whole career. One misjudged incident, one misconstrued event and,
suddenly, you’re glad you did join a Union. Everything could turn to shit.5. Impotence
I had to fill out in another class the other day. I was
talking to one boy, who was refusing to work, trying to gently encourage him to
start writing, trying to create a rapport between us and make him respect the
task. He wasn’t having any of it. He kept just talking at me, without taking
breath, just, words, words, words, in a high pitch, squeaky little voice. It
was like being stuck in a Mickey Mouse clock. Apparently, he had some gripe
with the kid sitting next to him. Honestly, I cannot find the language to
convey how this kid was talking. It was like the lid of the Ark of the Covenant
being lifted and the rays of divine glory shooting out, blasting off people’s
faces, left, right and centre. I was such a face. I was being blasted away, by
the sheer volume of words that this child could fit into a second, as he fixed
me with an intense stare, totally oblivious to the work in front of him. He
didn’t pause for breath, so I just overrode him and said “move to that spare
desk over there, if he’s winding you up”. That shut him up and he rather
quickly gathered his book and his pencil, ready to move. The kid next to him
muttered a taunt under his breath and the boy dropped his book, dropped his pencil,
grabbed the kid’s head and just started punching him. It wasn’t a single punch
but a series of punches. A sentence of punches. I had never witnessed child on
child beatings during my teaching career before and I did not know how to
react, how to act, how to stop it. I was frozen in utter bewilderment. So,
instead of doing anything, I did what everyone else in the class was doing and
just stood and watched. The TA reacted better than me and dragged both boys
out. I turned around and carried on with the lesson, as though nothing had
happened. I highlight this escapade because I envision most scenarios that I
might encounter in my daily life as a teacher and how I should deal with them
but I’ve never considered what I should do if two children in my care start
fighting. I’m reluctant to touch children because of the emotions in 2-4, so
I’d be hesitant about getting involved in order to break a fight up. But I
can’t just stand and watch again, in the vain hope that the aggressor will run
out of steam eventually and the beating with cease. I guess I’ll just have to
man up for next time and if kids start pounding each other be prepared to take
their hands, like the TA did, and escort them from the class. We don’t get
training for that. I think we should. Mandatory training, not just special
physical restraint courses. Mandatory training on what to do if two little kids
start a-tussling. 6. Mirth
We had our Christmas production- and it was hilarious. Not
all of it, but that’s for another entry. This entry is for hilarity only. We
spent so long rehearsing, performing, practicing, acting, cutting out costumes,
doing the sets and backdrops, and, on the actual day, 83% of the kids forgot
their lines, came on at the wrong times, sung the wrong bits. Oh man, it could
have been a scene out of a sitcom. If you’d have told me before that the
production would start to come apart, that screws would start to rattle loose
as the performance went on, mirth would not have been the emotion I’d have
predicted for myself. I’d have said all the other classics; anger, shame,
impotence, cognizance. But no, it was mirth. I sat at the back, hidden amongst
the unimpressed parents, and laughed and laughed my way through it. Hahaha. Ha.
I think perhaps my mirth did stem from a well of shame or humiliation but it is
the mirth that stays with me now. The parents around me slumped their shoulders
and moaned under their breaths at every new string of opening bars for a song,
at every occasion a new character with a new monologue was introduced, every
time a child forgot their woods and stood, staring out into the dark audience,
hoping for divine illumination. I had to hold my nose to stop the laughter from
being audible. I’ve never been in that situation before; physically restraining
myself from laughing. I kept catching the eye of a TA who shares my sense of
humour and thought my gall bladder might burst.
7. Anger
Right, so, fucking Christmas production. Hello! All those
hours of rehearsing,
8. Sloth
We have an assignment due in January. I spent a day writing mine, after a day planning it, before a
9. Pride
Is pride an emotion? Well, it's a sin, so here it is. During the holidays, I went back to my parents'
house and, whilst ambling through my
old desk, I opened up a drawer and discovered clutter. Clutter, with a capital
C. I abhor clutter. I like organisation and structure, I like order and
routine; witness my lovely folders, complete with file dividers, flags and
colour coded cross referencing system. So, the sight of this drawer was no
pleasant to me. I started at once to set it into order. It was all my old
university stuff- notes, hand outs, readers and my old assignments. I spent one
hour and seventeen minutes reading through feedback from my old assignments. It
was like looking through the best of your own profile pictures and masturbating
over them. These assignments had not been written in the same spirit as my
current assignment. They had been written with creativity, wit, articulacy and
sound subject knowledge. And my tutors said pretty much the same thing. I was
amazing, I was brilliant, I was D.H. Lawrence. Could I ever be that good again? Did I still possess that talent? I just sat and basked in my own glory for several minutes. What a load of self worship, self wallowing and time wasting. And it leads straight onto the next emotion.10. Loyalty
So, now, I have to go back and redo my assignment. I’m not
doing it for QTS, I’m not doing it for my students, I’m not doing it for my own
pride and career. I’m doing it for 20 year old me, who spent so many hours
crafting the perfect essay, ensuring every point threaded together, that every
conclusion was carefully teased out and presented, that every piece of evidence
was not only necessary to the narrative but enjoyed and treasured. I’m doing it
for that person, that ghost, who exists now only in memory. I’m going back to
the assignment and I’m going to do that person proud, so that in years time, I
may come back and read the feedback from this assignment and think ‘tha
t was a
good piece of work. That makes me proud. I must have been D.H. Lawrence back
then’.11. Hope
I have my second school placement coming up after Christmas.
It’s where you go to another school to experience a different cross section of
children, from a different year group. I was planning out my lessons the other
day, trying to work on my targets from last term, which include using ICT more
in class. I wasn’t really sure how to do it, so I put my planning to one side
and started drafting out this blog entry, all the time thinking, ‘how to put
ICT in my lessons more. How? How? I can get the kids to research stuff in a
Webquest type thing (more on that later) but that’s boring after one less. How could
they present their work using ICT? How could they showcase it? How could they
utilise their ICT skills and show off their work? How? Is there even a way? Am
I tormenting myself over a riddle with no answer here?’ I’m hoping you got to
the answer quicker than I did. The answer, of course, is, get the kids to
create their own classroom blog. Amazing! Stupendous! No one ever had such an
idea before! Of course, they have. The internet is awash with classroom blogs.
Awash. A. Wash. But still, a good idea, no? Each child can put an entry up, we
can have them recording fact files, putting up images, their own research and
writing challenges. And it’s something that I can physically show to my
visiting tutor and use as evidence for my folders. Who cares if every Teacher,
sub and head has already done it? I haven’t. But I’m going to start at this new
school. And it is going to be good. And it fills me with hope.12. I’ve run out of emotions
I think that covers my emotional calendar since last we
spoke. Instead of just putting in a token one here and then making a follow up
paragraph to explain it below, I decided to just be honest with you guys. The 12
Emotions of Christmas didn’t work. It’s the 11 Emotions of Christmas at best.
And I tell you what, guys, that there, that right there, is reflective
learning. That is an evaluation. That is formative assessment of work. That is
all the skills I have been taught as a teacher. That is a lesson that you can’t
tell. That is one that has to be shown. Man, it’s like we’ve reached
enlightenment.
That could have been the twelfth emotion. Honesty could have been the twelfth emotion. I could have gone back and changed it. But I didn’t. Because I’m being honest with you guys. Because I’ve reached reflective enlightenment. And reflective enlightenment involves, nay, is founded on, the idea of not erasing your mistakes, not covering up errors, but learning from them, building on from them, using them to inform your greatest achievements. As this entry surely details. D.H. Lawrence eat your heart out.
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