This week’s Bill of Mortality

Children poked in the eye by another child who was putting it’s coat on: 1

Children kicked in the head by child not looking where he was going while sitting on the carpet: 2

Children absent through common cold: 4

Children absent through aversion to spelling test: 1

Children absent because mother gave birth: 1

Children claiming stomach cramps during maths: 1 (frequently)

Children kicked in the foot by larger child by accident: 1

Children injured by having face bashed against toilet wall by child with learning difficulties while washing hands: 1

Teeth dropping out mid-lesson: 3

Splinters: 3

Bleeding caused by picking scabs: 5

Kicked in the groin during illicit game of ‘Kung-fu’: 1

Kicked in the head as retaliation during game of ‘Kung-fu’: 1

Children what shit hisself: 1

Return of the Fucknuckle

 I mentioned some time ago a semi-literate (semi-evolved too, come to think of it) woman who sat opposite me at a parent’s evening and claimed that her offspring “don’t know much words”. She’s back. I’m now teaching the younger of her whelps. She’s a consummate complainer, an expert in self-contradiction and without doubt one of the biggest pains in the arse for the staff in recent years. We’ve had more abusive mothers, more violent ones, ones that have half starved and beaten their children, but for sheer idiotic persistence this one is top drawer. She’s been in so many times to complain about events, real and imagined this term we’ve lost count. She’s been in to ask the Head on numerous occasions to ask how best to bring up her children at home (as if the Head is some sort of parental guidance service), yet has come in to scream at her the following day because it was raining out and the why hadn’t the school been unlocked to let in her asthmatic son? (Note: she was 20 minutes early and had come in the car even though you could lob a brick through her front window from the playground. Which is tempting). It appears we don’t care about her children’s wellbeing or something. I noticed that on the morning in question most parents…no, all parents, had the imagination to turn up with their children when the school was open for business, and those who were a minute early had the presence of mind to wrap their children in warm coats, put wellies on their feet and stand under the large shelter which was built for the purpose of sheltering children who are early to school when it’s raining. She then came in to complain that her older child was being bullied (he’s not, never has been. He’s a sneaky shit who says spiteful things to children and then goes running to mummy when they give him a mouthful back). Anyway, her youngest child had been off sick early last week and returned to school with a clean bill of health but a lingering cough. Midweek I became a little concerned about the child’s health and sent her down to the office to have her temperature checked, it turned out it was fine. By the end of the school day the child started to look a bit rough so I told it’s dad when he came to pick it up. He thanked me for keeping an eye on the kid, which is what I’m there for. Well, apart from the education aspect of my job. The next day the mother came in (dreadful, dreadful bitch) and told me that her child still had a bit of a cough but was getting a lot better. Fine by me, I said I was pleased she felt better than the previous day. The mum told me to call straight away if her child started to get ill again. She’d come and take it home if it did. On Friday she took the brat out for a doctor’s appointment, just to make sure all was well. Very sensible I thought. Half an hour later a seriously pissed off looking school secretary asked if she could have a quick word. The crazy bitch (the mum, not the secretary) had come storming into the reception area waving a doctor’s note (there was another mum waiting to see the Head, so she played up to the audience), saying that she had a signed form saying that she’d taken her child to be examined and the doctor said she was O.K. so the secretary could tell Mr.Chipz that he doesn’t need to keep hassling her about her child, alright?!

Fucking. Stupid. Ugly. Witch.

Does she want the school to open to let her kiddies in out of the rain so they don’t get sick, or does she want us to ignore her children when they do get sick? I have a plan. The next time her fucking offspring complains of feeling ill (bad tummy, I hope) I will ignore it utterly, then send it home at the end of the day with all sick down it’s front and trousers full of liquid shit rolled up and stuffed into it’s lunchbox. Fucking whore.

Names

 Children’s names. Like it or not, and as un-right-on as it feels, you can make some pretty safe assumptions by looking at the names of children on a class list. If I recall some teachers on the TES website were discussing something like this a year or two ago and some uptight parents of ‘little angels’ found it and had apoplexy. But when you think about it, stereotypes are often stereotypes because they’re mostly true. You’ll read this of course and immediately think of a few examples which contradict me, but don’t bother mentioning it because of course this is merely a generalisation and is not a strict rule.

For example (and this is purely my own experience):

Children called James, Ben, Henry, Amy, Claire, Yasmin, or Sophie will probably make you feel positive about your new class. They quite probably have supportive parents and have a good chance of being well behaved.

Children called Kyle will probably be an angry little thug.

Children called Jasmyne, Jasmeen or Jazmine will probably be a bit bitchy.

Children called Angel or Princess will be anything but.

Girls with the name of singer who is famous for being beautiful and graceful will be anything but that. Think Shakira.

Children with a hyphenated first name, such as Tiah-Lauren, Crystal-Skye etc will have really really frightening parents. Who can’t read.

Children with an apostrophe in their name either have a psychotic behavioural problem or are very nice but very dim. Or mental. Or both.

Boys called Jordan have been named after the basketball player. In my experience they are often rather nice, yet ironically short.

Girls called Jordan have that ‘groomed’ look about them and it’s all rather creepy.

Children called Crispin, Fiona, Sebastian, Finlay, Annabel or Wills (not William, but Wills) will probably fill their new teacher with dread. They will probably have very pushy parents who will treat you as if you were at a private school with massive fees. They have probably bought a house in the area just so they can send their offspring to a good state school (thus keeping their Guardian reading, state school supporting credentials intact while not having to send their children to a dreadful school full of beastly council estate scum). I’ve not really had this experience as my school serves my local council estate and such parents wouldn’t live here to save their lives. But I know teachers from schools like this and they do dread names such as these.

Like I say, this is just my experience and of course your nephews and nieces who are called Kyle, Angel, T’Shaun or Jazmine are exceptions and are shining examples of loveliness.

Just as an afterthought, I was speaking recently to a colleague who had previously been a supply teacher for a year. He once taught a class for a day which boasted two little girls called ‘Unique’. How wonderful. We’ve also all heard of girls called ‘Chardonnay’ (I’ve met one), but I’ve also just met a colleague in the borough who is the proud teacher of one ‘Tequila’…fucking class!

Phonics

 I haven’t written for ages, and my stats show it. My god, the blog reading ‘community’ are fucking fickle!

I’ve been rather busy and haven’t really felt like getting on the computer when I’ve come home. Still, no excuse. I would give out a detention if one of my pupils did the same, if of course keeping a blog up to date where a part of the Year 2 curriculum, which it isn’t. And thank the Lord for that as well, it would be awful reading the insane drivel of 30 five and six year olds. It would be mostly lies too, the duplicitous little swine.

I attended a day long course on phonics last week. Riveting stuff as it turns out. I was at a slight disadvantage as I’ve never even seen a phonics session let alone tried to teach one but it’s very important that I learn so off I went, to sit in a hall with about 30 or so other year 1 and 2 teachers trying to look like normal human beings in their ‘casual’ clothes. A collection of off duty teachers is only marginally cooler looking than a mob of off duty coppers. In other words; fucking tragic. To put it in the simplest terms, phonics involves helping small children write and spell by teaching them the rules of the English language, and its rather quirky ways. To help this happen there are two ways of saying the alphabet; the first one is the way you or I say it normally; “ay, bee, see, dee”, that sort of thing, and the other is by literally just saying the letter as if you had picked it out of a word; “a, b, c, d” (never “ah, buh, cuh, duh” by the way, it’s confusing for them, which means that saying the alphabet this way is fucking difficult at first). To avoid saying “duh” you just say the purest part of the ‘d’ sound…which sounds like a ‘pop’ to be honest. I hope you’re keeping up. Anyone older than 30something will probably remember this method from their very early school days, but at some point in the early eighties it was binned. (Some of you may remember it after that time, if you were at a school where the teachers didn’t follow the plan, which is a good thing as you can probably write better than most your age). The reason it was binned was essentially because teaching got a bit progressive and anything ‘old’ was deemed shit because it was, well, old. Think New Labour’s take on the late 90s. Anyway, it then turned out that my generation and all the ones after it can’t write very well (see this blog for a good example) so they’ve just decided that we should go back to this old fashioned system. Good thing too. It will take years to put right though. So, I’ve done the training and now I’ve got to get my head round the whole thing, take notes, photocopy children’s work and go back for some more training in the new year. Fucked if I know what’s going on though, my brain had melted an hour before lunch so I’m not sure how much I managed to retain in my head. Huzzah for handouts!

Talking of training; I’ve noticed over the last few years that the worst fucking people in the world for talking over speakers in training sessions, lectures and meetings etc are teachers. I can’t abide it. There was a table of the very worst kind at the back of the hall, the worst kind of course being slightly older and more senior teachers. They probably feel they have the right to talk incessantly. And because everyone in the room are deemed to be adults the trainers don’t react to it. Drives me insane. The thing is, you know these hatchet-faced dragons would go ape if their pupils even dared whisper in one of their lessons, which shows them for the hypocritical witches they are. Is was all I could do to stop myself hurling heavy objects across the hall at them. They all had glasses on and I don’t think they could see my withering looks (and in my job I’ve really developed some great withering looks), I was quite far away you see. When I reach the dizzying heights of being allowed to train teachers I will not have it. I’ve heard there’s a head of something-or-other in the borough who tells these types to stop talking or leave, can’t wait to see him in action. Apparently he’s loathed, I think I’d like him.

Wah!

 Jesus Christ…they cry if you try and get them to join in with the others, they cry if they feel left out, they cry if someone tells on them and then cry even more if you tell them that actually they’re not in trouble at all and the little wretch who grassed them up is in the shit instead, they cry if they think someone’s going to tell on them and they cry if they think someone said something about them which in fact they didn’t. They really turn on the waterworks if they try to storm away from you in an act of defiance and trip over and land on their arse and feel like a complete tit. They cry when you offer to relieve them of their playtime because they couldn’t be bothered to work in the lesson and they cry even more if you actually do it. You should hear the noise they make when they fall over into a big pile of fox’s shit in the playground and get it all down their fronts.

Fuck me; six year olds don’t half cry! And that was just today.

Tired. So tired.

 Fuckin’ ‘ell I’m knackered. (marvel at the extravagant apostrophe usage) Not because I’m a hard done by, working my knuckles to the bone, poor bloody martyr teacher type, but because I couldn’t get to sleep last night. And when I finally did I spent my short time asleep fighting three (three!) indestructible homosexual murderers who kept on chasing me even after I stabbed them up and in one case tore his rotten heart out through his back. I kid you not, my dreams of late are not right. Anyway, I’m well tired innit so I ain’t gonna write much.

As a result today passed in a weird haze and went surprisingly quickly. The Head popped her head round the door a few times and later complimented me on the ‘calm learning environment’ I had clearly established and seemed very impressed at the smoothness of my transition down to the infant school. I didn’t let on that it was merely because I was semi-unconscious and six year old children, being the empathic little brutes they are, simply slipped into a docile coma on the carpet. Still, never turn down credit when it comes your way.

The staffroom is alive with speculation in the ‘Missing Maddie’ case. We pretty much divide into two groups; the Teachers who are neutral and openly confess to being utterly banjaxed by the whole thing and the Teaching Assistants who are adamant that the McGanns (however you spell it, and I refuse to Google at this hour) are innocent and anyway you can’t trust the Dago police. One of them started exclaiming loudly, and with authority that the pork n’ cheese filth were crawling all over that car without protective suits and gloves on and planted the blood anyway. All this with a copy of The Sun on her lap. This is why we don’t let them teach. The teachers’ view is that we’re very glad we’re not remotely involved in the thing and good luck to them that are.

It’s Friday tomorrow, hurrah! We have an institution called Golden Time, whereby the children spend the last 45 minutes of a Friday playing with toys. The idea is that for bad behaviour during the week they get time docked, but can earn it back by being good. As far as I can tell every child from the age of five upwards has worked out that you can be a little cunt all week and then back-peddle hard on Thursday afternoon and get your time back by lunch on Friday. Unless they’re in my class. In which case they lose the whole bloody lot when I’ve had enough and never get it back. Any teacher who uses Golden Time will tell you (quite rightly) that this is very very bad and defeats the whole object. Good. It’s a stupid fucking idea anyway, I often don’t have time to teach the planned syllabus in a week so losing another 45 minutes doesn’t help. Bah fucking humbug.

By the way, someone found my site yesterday by searching for ‘primary school fucking’. Dirty cunt. Some mothers do ‘ave em, eh? Tsk!

Sorry it’s late, my dog ate it.

 I haven’t written for ages, I haven’t seen the stats but I suspect my readers have left in droves. Well, droves of about two or three, there weren’t that many to begin with. Anyway, I’ve been busy, getting home latish and not being able (or arsed) to sit down and write.

None of the children died on the trip on Friday. None were so much as winged by a speeding car, I’m losing my touch. It was a fun day out though, but I have nothing interesting to tell you about it.

I’m getting to know my class pretty well now. I’m very excited; I have a genuine, bone-fide Islamic Extremist in my class! I’m thrilled, I’ve been reading so much about radicalised children in the press (O.K, usually the right of centre press) and I’m beside myself with pride to now have one of my very own. Alright, so he’s the nutter I’ve mentioned previously but I don’t think his lack of brain makes him any less valid. If anything it makes him the Genuine Article. I know he’s an apprentice Durka-Durka because we had a very enlightening chat on Friday and I’ve had some updates since. To cut a long story short he ‘hates’ the English (he’s not sure how to reconcile himself to the fact that I’m one of them) and it seems he ‘has’ to hate them (us) because his mother told him to. I won’t say where his family are from but his Islamic Nutjob cred is so fucking good that not only has been taught to despise the Infidel Dog but that Muslims from countries other than his own are also inferior to himself. Wow! Mother, by the way, is a lurching monster with a gimlet eye who claims to understand not a single word of English. My arse. This woman knows every benefit going, and knows how to get what she wants…she has enough English alright. By now you are probably thinking that Richard Littlejohn and I have a lot in common, or perhaps that Nick Griffin is a relative. Not so. Like most people I find the rantings of the reactionary right so irritating and paranoid that it’s almost easy to start dithering like some Guardian columnist who insists that all asylum seekers are wonderful and noble, but let’s face facts; the negative stereotype really does exist. And now I’m teaching their child. I don’t blame the kid though, it’s really not his fault. It must be so confusing for him; he goes to school where people are nice to him and help him, and when he gets home he’s told that these people are inferior and bad. And like I said, he really does have enough difficulties in the learning department as it is. A pox on the bitch.

I got my maths targets today. By the end of the year most, if not all of my children should at least be able to count up in 2s, 5s and 10s. Sounds OK but some of them can’t count up in 1s above 20 at the moment. Shit. I had a big 100 square at the front of the class and had the children working in pairs to show me the answers to my questions on their own small whiteboards. That means that they actually had a mate to work with. One of the less complex questions was “What is one more than 36?, or to say it another way, what is 36 add one?” Thankfully 10 out of 14 pairs showed me 37, two pairs showed me 73 (which is a problem which can be fixed, and I know what they meant), one pair sat there looking horrified and showed nothing while my fucking golden boy team managed to conjure up 61 which is fucking imaginative to say the least. I would have put it down to a mishap on their part but my young Einsteins managed to make a complete arse of every single similar question…they are now in my ‘focus’ group. I will educate them. Oh yes. I will.

Tears and lumps of shit.

 The staffroom today was a-buzz with the groundbreaking news that additives in food make children ‘badly behaved’. It was in the Times so it must be true. Well I thought that was jaw-dropping enough in itself and then fuck me! I was then told that the Pope’s a Catholic and bears shit in the woods. I can hardly stand with the shock of it.

But leaving the cut-and-thrust of scientific breakthroughs aside, my day went pretty well. Again. I had to do my first Key Stage 1 assembly for 15 minutes in the morning. Having forgotten I had to do it like the true professional I am, I waffled on about a ‘new start for a new term’ and then let them tell lies about what they did in the holidays. All this was made quite difficult as a traumatised and wailing Polish child in Year 1 was clinging to me throughout. I’m not very good at multi-tasking. At least, I think he was Polish, maybe he just had delayed speech so sounded all fucked up. After that I did a little English lesson to see what my troops know. Three quarters of them know in theory what a full stop is and what it might be for, about a quarter knew what a question mark was (only two knew what it was for) and a slack-handful knew that you should really start a sentence with a capital letter but weren’t sure of where the start of a sentence is. I’d better lube up for that inevitable bumming from Her Majesty’s Inspectors in July. They won’t be gentle with me.

I told them that I’m taking them on a little trip out of school tomorrow, we’re just going to the park. No educational value whatsoever but I’m trying to make them think that a year with me will be a magical year of fun and learning and the occasional doss. I’ve managed to rope in the required amount of adults (ratio of 1:5 for children of that age) and have located the asthma pumps five of the children need and the EpiPen for the kid who turns blue and dies if he comes into contact with one of the substances that makes him go blue and die. I’ve had the training which is pretty simple; you notice him wheezing and rolling his eyes about as his face swells up and then you jab this syringe thing into his leg. The theory is that he then stops dying. Knowing my track record for injuries to children he’ll do it at some point this year having not done it for ages. Fuck my luck. Anyway, the children all had training last year on how to cross roads, so with adequate adult cover, their training and the proximity of our destination I’m only expecting a 10% casualty rate when we cross the main road (perhaps another loss to asthma or anaphylaxis). Fuck it, still leaves me with 26 of them. I’ll let you know the butcher’s bill in my next post.

The kids were given pears at break time today. There’s this government scheme whereby children in KS1 (the younger ones in other words) are given a bit of fruit or veg at break time in the morning. Apparently it might stop soon as someone in the government has decided that it’s not working because the theory was that children would then pester their parents to buy them lots of lovely fruit and vegetables to eat at home. Since parents are sticking to their established routines or either buying solely from Iceland it has been deemed to be failure so no more fruit at break. Doesn’t make sense to me, for some of them (only a few mind) it’s the only fresh fruit or veg they get in a day, may as well keep it I’d have thought. But that’s beside the point. Today they got some lovely crunchy pears which I’d leave to ripen for a few days and I discovered the amazing ability six year olds have (well, one at least) for turning unripe fruit into a streaming jet of shit in ten minutes flat. I was impressed. Top tip, if a person that age is clutching their guts with a face contorted with pain, don’t ask them if they need the toilet, tell them that they need the toilet now. You live and learn.

D-Day! (or The Road to Victory)

 What a lovely bunch of kids. They’re very small, it has to be said. I don’t mean ‘small’ in the in-bred, mother-drank-through-the-pregnancy, dad-was-a-smack-head kind of small, it’s just that they’ve only just turned six years old; they’re fucking tiny.

I met them as they came in through the doors and sent them down to the classroom to sit on the carpet with a book, a lot of parents followed them down there. I’ll be putting a stop to that over the next week or so, but at the moment I don’t mind. Actually I think the parents did pretty well. It can’t be that easy handing over such a young child to a new teacher (few of the parents know me as I’ve been teaching the older children), and to be honest you just don’t see many men down at that end of the school. So the parents did well just to see them settled and leave. Well done them. I’ll clock the overbearing, needy ones soon enough though, they’ll have to say goodbye in the playground soon. Overbearing, needy parents are a fucking pain in the arse first thing in the morning. And they turn their kids into neurotic maniacs who think they’re expected to be miserable every morning.

Anyway, the day went swimmingly. We trooped off to assembly (me trying to ignore the mirth of my colleagues as I led my little line of ducklings into the hall), came back to class and discussed what our class rules should be. Before you start spluttering you should know that these days we ‘let the children choose’ their own class rules…however they don’t really. We’re not fucking mental. What we do is frown a lot and make a huge pantomime about trying to think of the class rules and the children start giving suggestions, which means that they’re actually giving the bloody things a minute of their time and understand what they mean because you then ‘agree’ them and discuss them as a class. It sounds a bit fluffy-bollocks but it does work and I think it’s a good idea. Also, some of the suggestions are pretty good. For example:

“No being mean”

“No drawing on the computers”

“No saying nasty words like ‘fatty-pants'”

“Be nice to pencils”

“No shooting people with guns”

“Always share because if you don’t share it’s not polite and not polite is rude”

“No stabbing people with knives. Or swords”

On the whole, I’d say that was a pretty sensible set of class rules. In case you’re wondering, the rule about shooting and stabbing were submitted by the same young man. He also stated that you shouldn’t spit at each other. I nodded wisely but told them all that surely we didn’t need to write a special rule about spitting as it was such a disgusting thing to do I couldn’t imagine that it would ever happen in my class. Too fucking right it won’t, I’ve read his file and his record for flobbing on children and adults alike is as long as my arm. I swear that if he ever does it I will (in a professional and nurturing manner) shove my hand down his neck and turn him inside out. He gulped and looked a bit nervous so I think he knows how I feel about it. He’s going to be a challenge this one, he’s got a significant delay in his mental development so he’s more like a 3 or 4 year old in a 6 year old’s body. Oh, a bonkers 3 or 4 year old, by the way. But he’s quite sweet really, I don’t want to say too much about him as if I give too much information in one go someone, somewhere might know who he is, but he’s a fucking character, I’ll give you that. You will be hearing about him. Lots.

Anyway, I’ll print out the agreed class rules tomorrow and stick them up on the wall. They won’t notice that overnight their suggestions became; ‘Don’t run in the classroom’, ‘put your hand up if you want to talk or need help’, ‘Use kind words to each other’, ‘no shouting out when someone else is talking’. They never do. That’s all the rules they need really. Not stealing, lying, fighting, shitting on the carpet, drawing cocks on the tables and no punching, kicking or biting go without saying. As of course do ‘no shooting’ and ‘no stabbing’. They’ll find that out as they go along.

I’d say I’ve landed on my feet here. As a cohort they’re a good group of generally lovely children. They seem to get on very well (no chairs flying across the room at each other, which has been known by this stage with other cohorts), O.K, some have a few learning difficulties but that’s par for the course in a group of about 30 kids, some of the parents are a little rough round the edges but I’m sure I’ll manage O.K. Did have to read a highly confidential file about one of the children though, can’t say what it’s about but the boss did ask me if I was alright after looking at it. I was fine, water off a duck’s back to me, however I do sometimes wonder why some people in our society can’t be put to sleep like a sick dog. I can’t even imagine how this character in her file is out of prison in the first place, let alone alive. Anyway, that’s all very vague and I apologise.

The day passed without incident, as I say they’re a lovely bunch of children. I don’t think half of them can read, but hey, that’s what I’m paid to teach them to do isn’t it. We’ll get there. We’d better get there, it’s SATs year, if I don’t get them there a man from the government will come round and personally bum me to death. It’s a man’s life in the Teaching Corps.

Tune in tomorrow for more of the same, education fans.

D Day minus One

 Well, that’s it. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Which isn’t very ready. A good, or even adequate teacher would have planned the first couple of weeks and prepared some kind of class timetable but I’ve limited myself to moving the tables in my classroom around just how I like them and making lots of cups of tea in the staffroom. I’ve had two days back at work now and I’m fucked. And we don’t even have kids yet.

The last two days have been made up of meetings of all kinds; diary dates, performance management (setting personal targets for the year – in my case ‘learning to read’, ‘controlling anger’, ‘teaching stuff’…that sort of thing), organising my classroom assistants (more organised than me as it happens), and lots of other meetings of varying degrees of importance. Oh, and I’ve had to find out how things work at this end of the school, in the land of the ‘little ones’.

Anyway, they are coming. Tomorrow the hordes arrive. I’m really looking forward to it actually. God knows what’s going to happen. At best all the children will come laughing and skipping into school and have a lovely first day, all the parents will bid me a cheery ‘good morning’ and I will send the little ‘uns home laughing and happy at the end of the day. At worst they will come screaming and sobbing into class, clinging to their hatchet faced mums in desperation and go home crying and miserable (and bleeding from unfortunate accidents) at the end of the day.

I will write more tomorrow and let you know how it all goes. Honestly, I am looking forward to it loads. I mean, I have to, or I will surely crack…