Week off.

I’m on bloody half term. Ace. I should be working really, so I can carry on the next half seamlessly. Also we’ve got the LEA in soon to look at spreadsheets. Again. I also have a niggling voice at the back of my head telling me that OFSTED are about to strike, we last had them drop in for tea and biscuits two years ago so we’re due another.

The last week of the half term was busy. Spent most of it worrying about a day’s work I’d put together for three year groups about the life and times of Lord Nelson. I won’t bore you with the details but it involved tasting authentic naval food of the 18thC (salt beef, peas, porridge and lime juice). The kids hated the food, which was the point, and one even went so far as to spew it all over the floor. Still, I’m not surprised. I reckon it was the single fucking pea the chubby little brat ate. Probably not used to eating green stuff. I also spent an evening grieving over a deceased rodent.

Kevin is, as you’d expect, going from strength to strength. He’s on a strict ‘no swearing’ regime and is now spending the remainder of his lunch breaks with me from the point of his detected swear onwards. I’m hoping he’ll learn to push back his swears further and further until, finally, he can go a whole lunch break without profanity. He got busted last week sticking his crazy little head through a gap in the fence which separates his playground and the nursery/reception kids and calling them all ’shit-babies’. I like the term, and shall use it myself. I’m surprised I haven’t had too many parental complaints yet. But they’ll come, oh yes.

Toilet!

Chipz is getting harder to write. I’m just not finding it easy to find the time at the end of the day anymore. Partly because I’ve joined a gym…healthy body, healthy mind and all that. I was getting fat and out of shape. Actually no, I am fat and out of shape. Working in a classroom isn’t the most athletic thing you can do with your day, and now that I’ve got a new interactive board I’m spending more and more lesson time sitting on my ever expanding arse. It’s low down y’see, the board, not my arse. This is so that the kids can come and write on it. So instead of old fashioned, stand-up chalk n’ talk it’s now sit-down touch-screen. Also, and Napoleon will smirk at this (or bluster in outrage) I’m actually working a bit harder this year…just don’t fancy writing this at the end of a long day. I’ll keep going, for all my loyal reader. Not that you give a fuck. You bastard.

The rat’s still alive by the way. Just.

Parents evening(s) went well. I’ve got a good bunch of parents this year. Not like the knuckle-trailing, baby-popping, fighting, screeching lot I had last year. As a result the evenings were very easy. Tell them where their kids are academically (with the help of numerous spreadsheets) and where I hope they’ll end up by July. The sort of target setting bollocks the likes of Ed Balls gets a stiffy for. Easy.

Kevin’s settled in. I know this because he’s now swearing at children quite a lot. I’ve never heard him though. I don’t think he’d ever do it in front of me…he regards me with a sort of feral wariness, or clings to me, depending on his mood. He pulled a blinder last week though. He spent one lunchtime smearing food on another boy, slapping him and (by all accounts) calling him a “fucker”. I only found out because his dreadful mother came storming in the next morning to have a go at the Head. Like it was her fault. To the mother’s surprise I not only bollocked Kev but had a go at her son for not telling an adult but saving it up for Mother that evening (some kids do this…always the ones with the kick-off mums, they learn to enjoy the firework display) and then gave her some because she told me he ‘knows he has to tell a teacher’ and I’d found out this was a constant problem last year. She told me it wouldn’t happen again. Good, although I don’t believe her. Can’t stand children who use their shit-stirring mothers to carry out some shit-stirring of their own.

Kevin’s main contributions to lessons is to yell out “toilet!”, “drink!” or “is it lunchtime?” (regardless of time of day or whether or not he’s already eaten lunch). I had a teacher in to model a cutting edge maths lesson for the children this week. It was brilliant and she had the children (of all abilities) doing some great thinking and the pace was excellent. Right at the point where all the kids where on the verge of making a huge leap in their learning the cry of “toilet!” went up (I hadn’t had time to warn her). Fantastic! She only stalled for a microsecond, professional that she is, as I told him to be quiet (he’d just been, he just wanted to escape), and then she asked a question about pets as she was making a pictogram of the pets that the children in the class have. The children were putting their hands up, she’d point at them and they’d respond with something like “I’ve got a dog and a budgie”, and the data was going onto the board at a great pace. Good old Kev then buggered the whole thing up. He had his hand up, was waving it about, was making those desperate noises and faces that children of that age do when they desperately want to speak to the teacher. She couldn’t ignore him anymore and pointed at him. He couldn’t contain his information any longer and yelled at the top of his voice, “I’ve got stripy socks on!” The whole thing crashed to a halt as he stood up and pulled up his trousers to show the class. I laughed like a fucking drain.

Kev

Kevin’s pretty much as I imagined. He’s tiny, white, ear studded, gets covered in matter throughout the day and has rather severe learning difficulties. No swearing yet, which is nice. He’s not a bad little fellow, but I think he’ll get into scrapes because he just isn’t functioning on the same level as the other children of his age. If he wants something he reaches out his hands and makes grasping gestures. He has an extremely short attention span; anything colourful or shiny will distract him. He loves Power Rangers and can talk about them, but he’ll constantly change the subject. Not because he wants to get out of work really, it’s just that nothing holds his attention for longer than half a minute. Apart from drawing.

The drawings alone reveal just how delayed he is. I got him to draw himself when we first met. He drew himself as a sort of circle with two dots for eyes and a wobbly mouth. I asked him if he wanted to draw some ears and he drew them on top of the head like a rabbit. He then added four sausage like limbs coming out of the head. You’d expect that kind of thing from a child in nursery. He then started to draw circular scribbles all over it. I asked what they were and he looked bemused. The fact was, within 20 seconds of starting he’d moved on and had forgotten what he was supposed to be drawing. I asked him to write his name and age at the top and he wrote a ‘k’ followed by some shapes for the rest of his name, and put his age as ‘0′.

He can tell you the sound of three letters in the alphabet correctly. ‘K’ being one of them. He said the letter ‘V’ was ‘eleven’. He can’t count to 10 in the right order and you have to remind him of half of the numbers.

During free play he was happy to sit playing with wooden bricks but got agitated because he thought another boy had taken one (he hadn’t, I was watching) and made a succession of high pitched noises until I told him to stop. He holds his pencil like a dagger; the felt tips on his table are all fucked now.

To be honest, I’ve got my work cut out. The simple fact of the matter is that without one-to-one support he’s not going to access anything. We need to get a Statement for him ASAP or he’ll just take up all the time of my Teaching Assistant (thus depriving other children of her support) and myself. This, of course, is not fair on the other children. Unfortunately it takes time to process and get the grant together to employ someone. I don’t know how long he’ll be able to stay in a mainstream school…he’ll struggle whatever we give him.

The children were, as I expected, brilliant when he arrived. Two lower ability girls immediately claimed him and he was quite happy to be dragged around by his hands for the first day. I dissuaded them from doing this on day two as he needs to make other friends. Also, he likes it now but I’m pretty sure when he has enough, as he eventually will, he’ll show this by giving a shove or slap. Not his fault, he doesn’t really have the verbal skills to explain that he doesn’t want the attention anymore.

Trey was off sick when Kevin arrived, which was a good thing. I was braced for Trey’s return, I’m quite worried that he’ll see an opportunity to make mischief and get Kevin to carry the can. However, Trey seemed a little alarmed by him. Good, I hope he stays well away! Most of the other children were very excited when Kev turned up, but most of them (I think) sussed that he wasn’t on their level and lost interest in him very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still being helpful to him, getting him paper, pens etc…they just don’t see him as a potential friend. I can see their point, although that may sound a little brutal.

I just hope we can sort him out with some one-to-one help quickly, I don’t think he had it at his last school (waiting for them to send us everything they have on him), which beggars belief. If he has gone several years in the school system you’ve got to ask what they did with him! I hope this doesn’t sound too negative, he’s alright and he and I have been getting on just fine. But on a practical level he’s going to find it hard to cope. Actually no, we’re going to find it hard! I’ll just have to give him all the attention I can, but I’m not going to take anything away from the majority of the class, that’s not fair. Perhaps the swearing will start once he feels comfortable in his new school. He might even teach me some new words!

Harvest festival next week. Oh the joys! Glad it’s here. We’ve only been learning the harvest songs for a week but they’re doing my head in. I also have the job of making the harvest display in the hall, stacking the tins and pot noodles etc. I was going to get someone else to do it as my pet rodent is dying of the cancer and yesterday it looked like Monday after work was going to be a date with Dr Death at the vets, but she’s perked up today and is scurrying around like nobody’s business. However Piqued tells me this (in humans) is something called Death Restlessness so if she wakes up in the morning looking like, well, a dying rat, it’s off to pop her cork tomorrow. I’m actually not very happy about it. Little blighter sits on my shoulder while I watch telly and everything. Anyway, in short, I may or may not be making a harvest table tomorrow after school. Either option is not fun but for the first time ever I’d rather stack baked beans.

False start.

The Child didn’t start today, coming this week though apparently so I’m standing by. More info has filtered through. He swears a lot and ‘lashes out’ at other children. Brilliant. My main worry is that Trey (the naughty one in my class…the one who’s manageably naughty) will latch on to him like a kid with a new toy and will wind him up and then step back to watch the carnage. Should be fun.

We’re deep into rehearsing for the Harvest Festival next week, so we’ve done a few song practices, lots of actions for leaves falling down etc. I know, falling leaves have nothing to do with harvest but that’s primary education for you. Digging potatoes does though, and you can guess the dynamic actions for that one. I’ve changed the actions the children had learnt for picking tomatoes that they did with another teacher. She’d failed to spot that it looked exactly like a hundred children making a lunge for a pare of tits and giving them a good mashing. And no, that doesn’t mean I’ve just got a dirty mind, it really DID look filthy. Even a nun would have blushed.

I’ll let you know when The Child starts and how we get on together.

Newbug

Had quite a busy week. Went to an evening training session about a method of teaching youngsters how to write, which involves gross motor movements and fine motor movements…sort of dancing with crayons basically. God knows if it works but I’ll give anything a try. Was observed teaching maths by some freelance consultant in the pay of the dark forces of the L.E.A, actually turned out rather nicely. She wasn’t interested in giving me minute feedback on my teaching and how the children behaved (which makes a change) but rather gave me (gasp) practical tips, some of which I’ve already put into use. One of which is splitting up the ability groups. The way I was trained (and the way most schools operate), is to have your top table, middle tables and bottom table. I’ve always had my doubts about this. Surely the kids on the bottom table never progress much because they’re all sitting together ‘helping’ one another. Thanks to the consultant lady I’ve now got them in groups of four; one top, two middles and a bottom. Seems to work really well.

The class is ticking along nicely, got a good idea about where they all are on the scale of ability and potential, and have got stuck into the most important thing in education; making lots of really dead important spreadsheets for people to uhm and ah over. However, these damn children are proving poor material for this blog. Still no outbreaks of stupidity or weirdness. But there’s hope on the horizon! This week I’ll be getting a new kid in the class. I’m thrilled, no really, I’m dead chuffed…apparently he has ‘brain damage’. We don’t know much because his family are being re-housed from another borough and oh boy, do they sound like the fucking Waltons! Domestic violence, multiple births, extremely young parents, one of whom likes domestic violence, did I mention brain damage? Wicked. We don’t know everything yet. However this is what I do know, from what the Head gleaned from the new child’s last Head Teacher:

• He has brain damage. Did I mention that?
• He’s physically stunted.
• He’s ‘no naughtier than most other children’.
• His father is violent and also has learning difficulties.
• His mother gets beaten by dad. But keeps going back because they love each other really.

Just a couple of questions:

• What level of brain damage are we talking here? And how did it happen?
• Right, so he’s no naughtier than other children at his old school. Well it’s relative isn’t it? If ‘naughty’ at the last place was whispering ‘bum’ in someone’s ear during carpet time then that’s fine, but what if the normal level of ‘naughtiness’ was throwing chairs at people? He’s coming from quite a rough borough to be honest.
• Am I going to have to have a fight with his dad every parents evening? That’s fine if I do, I just need to know if I should order a really heavy meter ruler to have on hand to give me the edge.

Anyway, looks like there’s a new character coming, and at least I’ll have plenty to tell you about next week.

Hope you all had a nice weekend.