Bugs

The illness season has started. Kids going pale and being sent home early, and I’ve got a blasted cold. Even my Vicks First Defence didn’t save me this time, and I swear the stuff works…sometimes. Not today though. Bloody children, they’re full of the germs. One of them came up to me yesterday, tapped me on the arm and said something very very quiet. So quiet I had to eventually get right up to their face to hear them. When I got so close I could feel their breath on my face I heard “Mr.Chipz, I’ve got a sore throat.” Thanks kid.

Still, colds are par for the course and kind of go with the job. Colds just happen in my line of work, I’m very lucky that I’ve not had nits yet. Still, having short hair helps, as does not getting too close to children who have a reputation for being lousy. The really good round-robin school illnesses are the vomiting/shitting ones. Kids are wonderfully frank about having diarrhoea, as are their parents. Sometimes it’s quite scary. There was a time last year where a bug took hold and tore through the school with a speed which would make the Bubonic Plague green with envy. It started in nursery.

“Kyle had an accident, we’ve called mum to take him home.”

“Did you see it? It was bright green.”

“Hm, that’s strange.”

Next thing you know there’s an older child from the other end of the school looking like a four-day corpse lying in the sick room and soon children are trickling through the reception area at a rate of four an hour, managing to empty their guts down their fronts just before their parents arrive to get them away. Soon the phenomenon of the green shit has spread and a kid in Year 4 squirts it up the back of the toilet before leaning forward to honk their remaining fluids onto the toilet floor.

Child illness is a delicately balanced thing. The first couple that go from your class is sometimes a good thing, especially if they’re quite hard work and you look forward to a day with the remaining, low maintenance children. But soon, as the school begins to empty and the smell of disinfectant alternates with the smell of shit you get a bit scared. I mean, these bugs look horrible and the chances are that at least one adult’s going to get it. I’ve been lucky so far…I’ve not had a proper ‘tummy bug’ as a teacher. But it’s a matter of chance, I’ll get one eventually. Still, it’s nice when the sickness passes and you realise that this time you got away with it. And even nicer when you hear a colleague miserably describing their three days spent puking like Bruce Parry at a tribal knees-up.

First whine of the season.

Here’s my timetabling problem:

The children start lessons at 09.00 hrs and end at 15.30 hours. However 1hr 45 mins of that are taken up by breaks for them, including lunch. That gives me 4 hrs and 45 minutes of contact time with the children per day, or 23 hrs 45 mins a week. This is what I must deliver in that time. And I mean must.

English:             5hrs

Maths:                          5hrs

Science:                        2hrs

Phonics:                        2 hrs 30 mins (taught separately from English)

Guided Reading:           2 hrs 30 mins (taught separately from English)

P.E.:                             2 hrs

ICT (computers)           1 hr

Art:                              1hr

Geog/History:               2 hrs

P.S.H.C.E (bollocks)    1hr

French:             45 mins

RE:                               1hr

Music                           1hr

Assemblies:                  2 hrs 30 mins (the Monday and Friday assemblies are rather long)

That’s 29 and a quarter hours. Do the ‘math’ yeah? I’ve got to shed 5 and a half hours.

So you start chopping it up a bit.

Can’t touch English, Maths, Guided Reading or Phonics. The henchmen who come into school and interrogate us regularly would remove my balls. So they stay. The lessons I mean, and my balls.

The government is dead serious about the two hours of PE, so that stays. Actually, they’re dead serious about two actual hours of PE. I doubt any of them have tried getting a class of six year olds changed in and out of PE kit in anything less than 10 mins either side of a lesson so fuck it, changing time has to be part of the actual lesson, I can’t shit minutes.

I could lose an hour of science I suppose. The head of science won’t like it…unless I could somehow combine science with maths occasionally? Can do if the science module is about nature I suppose and the maths unit is about shape. ‘How many legs does this woodlouse have?” You get the sort of idea.

I could ditch an hour of geography or history, whichever one we’re doing. (we alternate each half term). Also, if I’m dead cunning I could even occasionally do it in an English lesson…for example if we’re writing poetry, I could ask them to write a poem about the Great Fire of London or something. Well it works sometimes.

P.S.H.C.E (physical, social, er…, citizenship education). Fuck it, I’ll ditch it any time I can. It’s good stuff for a lot of our children as they have pretty fucked up lives and do seriously need to talk about stuff but sorry guys, we sometimes can’t afford to be all touchy feely, your teacher doesn’t want his balls cut off for skipping out more important lessons. Fuck your feelings!

R.E. Sorry God, but when push comes to shove you lose. Same goes for you Allah.

Music: Can knock 15 mins off that I reckon.

French: can’t touch it, we get a visiting teacher in.

Art: Not touching that either. I’m the art coordinator. It wouldn’t look good.

Assemblies: There’s a Monday morning assembly usually involving a guest speaker, can’t lose that one. I do a Key Stage assembly on Tuesday for about 20 mins. Have to, it’s the law. Supposed to do a short class assembly on Wednesday for about 15-20 mins. Fuck that. Thursday’s is when a class do an assembly to the whole school plus their parents, can’t ditch that then. Friday is our Achievements Assembly (giving of certificates etc), that takes about 45 minutes. Oh yes, and then for the last 45 minutes of Friday the children must get ‘Golden Time’, which I think should be scrapped. The idea is that this ‘Golden Time’ is dangled like a carrot for a week. If a child screws up they lose some minutes here and there. At the end of the week the said child must sit and watch the other kids having fun with toys and stuff, before serving their time and joining in.

But here’s where it’s useless: you can’t dock more than 20 minutes of Golden Time. Any more than that is ‘unfair’. (What?!). Also, during the week the child can get their minutes back by being good. So basically all the kids know that you can be a twat until Thursday lunchtime and then redeem most, if not all of your Golden time before Friday assembly.

Anyway, I really am beyond working this out now…I’ve recouped some time but there’s no way I can deliver all of that in 23 hours and 45 minutes.

Well there is, but it means cutting out some lessons altogether, or ditching all the assemblies, which I’m prepared to do. Sad though, Primary School should be about assemblies and having a good time before you grow up a bit. It’s important! Oh yes, I also think reading stories to the class is very important too, you’ll notice there’s no fucking way I can fit that in, but I do. Kids love it.

That was a gold standard teacher’s whine that, hope you appreciate it!

Conservatives.

Kids are so boring sometimes. They hate change. I sometimes wonder why we keep trying to come up with new initiatives to make school exciting and vibrant in a way that will make them all enthusiastic and hell-bent on learning. There’s no point, children hate anything new and to be honest I think they’d be much happier if they’d always been taught in rows of desks by an alcoholic tyrant with a mortarboard and a penchant for violence like their great great grandfathers were. The kids in KS2 (anyone older than nine really) can’t handle my new beard. It’s not even that long. They’re obsessed by it. I don’t think they hate it as such, they just hate the fact that I’ve slightly changed my appearance. Mr.Chipz had a certain look and that involved having a smooth face. I remember when I got a very short haircut four years ago, it looked good apparently but half my class had mental breakdowns. I suppose I remember the feeling. In 1984 my mother went out with a massive budget of around £100 and got her hair lightly permed, bought a rather trendy khaki outfit and (horror!) got her ears pierced. Looking at the photos now she looked a damn sight better than the woman in her  late thirties dressing in her late forties which she had been until that moment. But at the time it made my brain melt, couldn’t take the change at all. Kids are just crap really. To really fuck them up I might really let it grow, and then shave off the chin giving me an alarming (yet heroic) Harry Flashman look. And wear tweeds.

The kids I teach couldn’t give a flying fuck of course. They’re six years old and aren’t aware of any change at all. You could move the whole classroom around, or even upside down like in The Twits and within a minute they’ll have adjusted and forgotten what the old layout was like. Bless em.

Short post

Had a working weekend, managed to get loads of planning done and everything. Apart from the obvious benefit of now feeling prepared for the week I also managed to download all the software for my interactive board onto my home pc so then spent hours making very good (if I say so myself) whiteboard presentations for my lessons. Being keen for a weekend managed to snap me out of my holiday torpor and I now feel like I’m properly back at work. Which is a good thing as you can’t hide from the facts forever.

The class continue to surprise me with their high ability compared to my last crew, so I don’t have to explain things a million times over. Africa is still grabbing me to get my attention and today she almost punched my arm doing so. I maintain that my reaction was normal but it made her snivel for a bit…nasty Mr.Chipz.

One of the little girls, who’s very quiet indeed came and whispered to me after lunch that she had brought something interesting in from outside to show me. I was impressed at the size of the dead bumblebee she produced, and up until now I had thought she might be a bit ‘wet’. How wrong I was, I wouldn’t have fucking touched that thing for anything, and I don’t even have a problem with insects. Kudos to her.

Short Chipz as nothing has happened of any real note, my one worry is that this class aren’t going to produce a great deal of ‘what the fuck?!’ moments. Still…give kids time and they’ll do just about anything that’s unexpected and weird. I’ll keep you posted.

Risk.

We survived the farm. I’d filled in the Risk Assessment so I was covered in the event of child maiming/death, but still, nice to get them back in one piece. Perhaps you’ve filled in Risk Assessments in your job, they vary slightly but I’m sure they’re pretty much the same. You go through a load of sections which demand to know how many helpers you have coming with you, how many of them are staff, have they been convicted of statutory rape, have you checked the First Aid kit, have you got all the asthma pumps, which route will you take, have the venue been notified you’re turning up, has the money been taken, have the dinner ladies been told, have you tucked yourself in and all sorts of other vital checks. Then you get to the risk bit. You’re presented with empty boxes in which you outline any potential hazards on the way, and then another set in which you write just how badly things could go if that eventuality takes place. For example:

Risk: Taking class of 30 onto station platform.

Worst case scenario: Child falls under wheels of thundering freight train.

Action: Run away.

Risk: Crossing road

Worst case scenario: Child runs into road, smashed to pieces over the front of a petrol tanker causing startled driver to plough into a hospital incinerating children’s ward.

Action: Die in fireball.

You get the picture. Basically, after filling a form in your trip, any trip, now looks like a death trap waiting to happen. Still, fuck it, a day out’s a day out.

In this trip’s case the risks were as follows:

Risk: Crossing busy road.

Worst case scenario: Child breaks free of walking partner’s hand, runs into road and is slammed by a speeding police car. Child bursts over classmates causing some distress.

Action: Blame Police.

Risk: Children exposed to large animals.

Worst case scenario: Pig removes child’s arm at elbow when child shoves hand in its face.

Action: Apply pressure to stump. Admonish child for not ‘using its listening ears when I fucking well told you not to stick your hands in the pig’s face’. Consider new career.

As it happened all went just fine. The chirpy, non-English speaking North African child I have didn’t really know the drill so was made to walk with me on the way back. The little bugger (nice child, but a bit excitable) kept making a bid for freedom, did come quite close to losing him under the wheels of a van. Contemplated smacking his arse (understood in any language by children all over) but decided I want to keep my job. The little girl I have with a heart condition went a bit vacant but she didn’t keel over so no sweat there. All in all, a good afternoon. Oh and yes, they were terrified of all the non-scary animals like calves and peacocks, one even ran away from a rabbit. Were they afraid of the very angry looking Lamas though? Were they fuck. I was wondering if they were the kind that spat (which would have been funny) but they didn’t do so. However they did get a bit snappy which my urban ankle-biters took as a good sign and tried to stroke their teeth. They never cease to amaze me.

Hey…I’m writing, I’m writing!

Look Mr Perry you swine, it’s the start of term, nothing’s happened yet! Anyway, here’s another post to heap on top of this season’s already over laden and groaning blog.

So far, the biggest pain in arse is Africa, not the continent but that little girl what I done told you about last time. She alone cannot sit still, put her hand up, stop going to the toilet or tapping me on the leg when she wants to divert me from a lesson to blather away about all things unconnected. She now sits on a chair at the back away from me or anyone else. She will learn to obey, oh yes.

Tomorrow I’m taking them on an outing. There’s animals involved so I anticipate lots of city kids shrieking in terror at harmless fluffy things in the petting section, crying at the sight of a sheep and then, perversely, trying to stick their hands in the mouth of the massive black pig that lives there which could chew their arms off at the shoulder. It will also rain, causing much hilarity as they get plastered in mud and animal shit.

I’m trying to be well organised this year and as a result am snowed under in all the things us teachers moan about, like marking, planning, and basically fulfilling a pretty reasonable job description.

I have grown a form of beard which has disturbed a lot of children…they don’t like change. Natural conservatives; kids.

I will try to post more, or this blog will die. Perhaps I should just make stuff up like most other nerds in the ‘blogesphere’ or whatever it’s called. I’ll be honest though, my brain has turned to pus and custard over the obscenely long holiday and I can barely think anymore. What I need is an EVENT. Actually, this might be unlikely as I have no nutters this year or children who are likely to shit thereselves. I miss my old class.

A couple of years ago I challenged a friend of mine, let’s call him ‘Jeremy’ (ho ho!) to write a story for my Year 4s. He did a damn good job actually and they liked it. It was about a kid what dreams a funny dream and needs to shit. They thought the needing a shit bit was the best. In fact, it was ‘sick’. Which means good these days. As if it wasn’t bad enough that them homosexuals have STOLEN the word ‘gay’ to describe their beastly acts! (Some justice methinks that today’s children now use the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘shit’, or ‘rubbish’, take that Stonewall!) To me ‘gay’ means happy. I insist on telling the children I’m gay as often as I can. No flies on me, I’m happy and I have sex with a lady so ha! I digress; I shall now challenge ‘Jeremy’ to write a story for my class in which a child does not merely dream of needing a shit, but actually HAS A SHIT. You reading this ‘Jeremy’? I have thrown down the gauntlet.

Start!

Kids started back today. I seem to have landed on my feet again and have a lovely class. Different to the last though, oh yes. This morning I was delighted at how well they came in and sat down with no fuss, then got worried that I might end up having a boring year. However, I put it into perspective and came to the conclusion that they only look a bit boring in contrast to the pack of nut-jobs I had last year.

Not sure who the main characters are yet. Here’s some to look out for though:

• Agneiszka; Polish girl with almost no English. Shit.
• Africa; very snotty girl of Afro-Caribbean heritage who so help me God will die if she keeps patting my knee to get attention or doesn’t learn to sit still for five minutes.
• Trey; very lively Afro-Caribbean boy. I’m told (and it seems to be true) he’s the naughtiest in the class. Having said that he’s nowhere near as bad as Mohammed on a bad day so must keep my rage in perspective when he causes the red mist to descent. Which he will, sadly. Still, he seems rather nice really and not spiteful or anything so we’ll be fine I’m sure.
• Two children who need their blood changed every month or they DIE. Fucksticks.
• Three Bangladeshi girls who are almost impossible to tell apart. Similar names don’t help.
• And finally Brandon. Brandon is quite well known to me on paper. His mother seems to be the only dodgy one in the pack this year. I’ve come across her in the past and she’s a complete fucking idiot. (The other mums seem fine, which will be a nice change…though I might amend that as the year goes on). She is well known for getting very shirty if anyone suggests that all might not be well with Brandon. Brandon, she says, is completely normal. Now, I’m no Educational Psychologist but if Brandon doesn’t come somewhere on the spectrum for Asperger’s Syndrome I’ll eat a fucking school dinner. In the past he would have been referred to as a ‘Strange Boy’. Strange? I should fucking say so…watch this space.

Five children were absent today. One’s in Russia, I know that much. She’s Russian you see. One’s probably just left. Don’t know about the others. I will have to assign names as the term progresses. Anyway, that seems to be the cast of the forthcoming Chipz drama, I’ll update as the usual comic capers and educational high-jinx pile up. Oh, and as usual all the children’s names have been changed (to believable equivalents) to you know, keep some semblance of anonymity up. Chin chin.

Summer’s over. Blast.

The Summer Holiday has drawn to a close. It’s my last day off and it’s back to work tomorrow. I say ‘back to work’, what I really mean is that we (the staff) are off to an art gallery for a training day in colouring in and what-not. Kids start on Thursday, Wednesday will be spent having meetings and sorting out the classroom. I’ve tried to talk my girlfriend’s daughter into coming in on Wednesday and helping me by writing all the children’s names on the covers of new workbooks but I think that’s probably a bit of a tall order for a 12 year old with only a few days of holiday left.

I’ve not written for weeks because this is a blog about teaching, not what teachers do with their vast holidays. However, here’s a quick run-down of the general events of the summer break, continuing from my last list:

• Went to France for a bit.
• Went to a Christening.
• Went to a wedding.
• Went to a big aquarium.
• Visited Winchester and dragged my girlfriend around the Light Infantry Museum for two hours, she took it well.
• Done a podcast with some fools.
• Watched Atonement with that Keira Knightly in it. I know it’s a well made film and all that but by thunder it bored me. I shan’t be reading any of his books.
• Watched Rec. Fantastic. What more can I say.
• Went on a picnic.
• Caught thrush.
• Made a fireplace on the patio and cooked loads of meat on it.
• Ate out a lot.
• Had a birthday.
• Got the stage where I can now play Resident Evil 4 blindfolded.
• Bought some waistcoats. Primark of all places.

That’s in no particular order, but as I’m sure you’ll all agree; an industrious use of five n’ a bit weeks off. Right, it’s my last day out of the harness so I’d best clean my flat up so it doesn’t look like a group of heroin addicts haven’t been living in it for a month, wash my work clothes, wash the various puppets I have and then get utterly arseholed.

My new class should be a different bunch from last year’s, but as I get to know them I’ll change their names and write of their exploits on here. We may not have a Timmy or Mohammed but knowing youngsters as I do there’ll be high-jinx and capers of all kinds. See you soon reader(s).

Holiday

I’m on holiday. One week down, five to go. Well, just under five, which is a rip off. We broke up last Wednesday but I was at work on Thursday and Friday reorganising my classroom. It was a big job as I have the oldest classroom in the school, one of those high ceiling jobs with a million trolleys with drawers for resources, an ancient blackboard jutting out into the room and those huge radiators which turn the room into a sauna in the winter but need to be blocked off. If a child accidentally touches one you’ve got to get him off using a spatula and then send him off for skin grafts. Anyway, I’m getting an interactive whiteboard now so we could trash the various whiteboards and the ancient blackboard and actually make some space. We also binned the bookshelves and came up with a much more child-friendly arrangement for storing their books and other things. We also threw out about two thirds of the maths and English resources we had in the room. Some of them are lovely in their own way, things that readers of this site would recognise from their own infant schooldays over a quarter of a century ago. Some classroom assistants had obviously spent hours and hours making various word cards and games by hand, but fuck it, I’ve got an interactive board now and much newer versions which are all shiny. So in the bin they went. There’s about a tonne of educational history in a skip as I write this. Also chucked out all the books which are falling apart, we’re getting a brand new batch in, so the well-thumbed ‘Biff and Chip’ books went in the skip too. So, at about three o clock on Friday my holiday started. So far I have:

• Got pissed
• Taken my septic rat to the vet
• Gone on a picnic
• Spent a fucking fortune on tat
• Got pissed again
• Gone to a market and bought surprisingly cheap clothes, fallen off the back of a lorry perhaps?
• Done some gardening (tomatoes coming on really well)
• Killed what I had thought was a courgette plant but turned out to be an inedible freak of nature
• Booked a trip to Paris with my girlfriend
• Drawn a bit
• Read some stuff
• Watched Hancock with girlfriend and her son (it’s ok)

Well, got a bit more gardening to do today and girlfriend’s coming round soon. So best beautify myself. While you fuckers work. I’ll write more in a bit and let you know how the end of term went. I’m sure you’re dying to know.

Timmy and Mohammed

Reading back over my blog there are two ‘main characters’. One is Timmy; the dyspraxic, confidence impoverished and personality impaired uberstar of my class. The other is Mohammed, militant Islamist, sometime clown, ninja with the mental age of three and truly, one of a kind. They have driven me up the fucking wall this year. I’ve had dreams where (in Timmy’s case) I’m screaming at them in frustration or (in Mohammed’s case) throwing them in a skip. I could have slapped them both on numerous occasions. I’ve had to postpone a telling off several times because I’ve known that if I spoke before I’d calmed down I’d lose my fucking job. However, they are the highlight of my year, and I’m gutted I’m losing them. Their successes this year were, I can’t help but feel, my successes also. And from now on, anything they do well will have nothing to do with me. God that’s selfish. Can’t help it though, I’ve invested so much of myself into these two characters. Also, I like them. If an adult annoyed me as frequently as they did I’d punch them to death, but they’re just kids. And, given half a chance, fantastic kids. I will miss the way they can reduce me to angry despair. I will miss the toe curling acts of grossness, such as following-through, regurgitating at the dinner table or eating a sausage off of a piss soaked floor. Who the fuck needs Jackass when you’ve got Timmy or Mohammed pouring mucus from various orifices or filling their kecks with fizzy gravy? So let’s check out their progress through Year Two and current status:

Mohammed

Age: 7

Mental age: 3

Ethnicity: Somalian

Current status: M.I.A

This year Mohammed has made an enormous leap of intellect. He no longer bites, spits or kicks. He can now formulate a verbal justification for when he suddenly attacks a child. He can count up to 20 (don’t laugh, this is brand new), he can write the alphabet pretty much in the correct order. Mostly. He can now identify most of the letter sounds, apart from X, Y and Z. Oh, and W. I think L is a bit dodgy too. He can now be trusted with tasks like taking a note to a class at the other end of the school. Honestly, I’m not taking the piss, this is such an achievement that the Ed-Psych was really astonished when I told her. Mohammed has shown this year that although he has a perma-cold and is possibly the most fast acting walking contagion in the world, he has an iron gut and can consume foods (and non-foods) covered in human waste and not feel a thing. He has also taken the evolutionary leap of learning how to lie semi-convincingly. Like it or not, the ability to lie, cheat and steal effectively is a sign of intelligence. Of some sort. He has stopped telling English people that English people are hated by Allah. Whether this is because he no longer believes this is unclear, see ‘lying’ above. Sadly, Mohammed went missing over two weeks ago. His family cannot be found. This is, in my view, not as worrying as it would be if other families went missing. Mohammed’s family don’t really see school, or in fact anything we consider ‘lawful’ as relevant to them. I imagine they’re abroad somewhere. Sadly, they are exactly what the Daily Mail would have you believe of all asylum seekers. They are fraudulent, dishonest, steal, lie and I suspect (with pretty good evidence), engage in polygamy and benefit cheating. It’s not hard to imagine there’s a flat somewhere in Europe which they maintain for the holidays. Sad though, because I feel I’ve been robbed of my happy ending, my opportunity to pat him on the back and send him off into the future. Also, he has no idea who his teacher is next year, has no idea that the lady who works with him has just got another job elsewhere, and will really find the start of the new term difficult. I feel sorry for him because of that. He doesn’t have the ability that you or I have to quickly adapt to an unexpected situation, and he should have been prepared that the lady who’s put up with him for over two years won’t be there for him ever again. He’ll really find that hard. Still, good luck to the next poor cow!

Timmy

Age: 7

Ethnicity: White British

Current status: Signs of life present

The boy done good this year. It’s been a rough ride, he had a miserable time in the first term and it was a genuine battle of wills for both of us. He was used to being dressed after PE, being told he was clever for no reason and cried when he didn’t get his own way. He also fell over if he stood on one leg. Now he can throw and catch with one hand, hop, do a forward roll…seriously, this is amazing shit. He still comes close to crying far too often but the all round uselessness and pathetic behaviour is slowly abating. He’s gained confidence, his parents have actually come in to thank me for it! Unheard of! He can now do up his belt buckle. I had to show him how to do that one. The things you do in my job eh? He can speak up in public without (ok, not all the time) dry-retching with fear. His handwriting has improved fantastically. He’s still awkward, uncoordinated, quite dim and a fucking state, but my god he’s improving! I think he’s not going to be like this forever actually. I used to believe he was fucked for life, but I don’t think so. If he makes the same rate of overall improvement over the next couple of years, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t, then by Year Six he should be ‘pretty normal’. OK, so he may not find the cure for cancer but he won’t be the village idiot either. I’m proud of Timmy, and I will watch his progress with interest.

The sad thing is this; as a teacher you’re told that children like this will remember you. They won’t. Think about it, you might remember some things about one or two of the teachers you had at infant school…personally I can’t remember a single one. By the first half term in October Timmy and Mohammed will have forgotten the highs and lows we went through together, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Because my mind’s been fucking scarred forever!