Rimbauer in the shit.

Rimbauer was in the shit. Again. He’d been in trouble before but this time he really had got himself into a tight corner. He’d made a rookie mistake, a mistake some fucking greenhorn straight out of teacher training college wouldn’t make. He tried to keep calm. His palms were actually sweating. He’d not had sweaty palms since the time that fucking kid had seen him drawing a cock on the photograph of the Head of Governors that hung in the hall. Little bastard, he was going to cost a fortune in Ben 10 merchandise to keep quiet until Rimbauer had finally decided to threaten to kill his dog. That worked a treat.

The inspector peered at Rimbauer over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses. The bitch had it in for him, and he had no idea why. Well, on reflection he did, he kept pissing her off. The inspector shuffled her papers and cleared her throat. The feedback on his lesson observation was coming to a close, this is where he got the bad news.

“Mr Rimbauer…”

“Yes?” Rimbauer tried to look helpful. He was determined to get out of this, he was going to have to be gracious, kiss her ass and above all; be fucking sorry.

“Mr Rimbauer, I now have to tell you my biggest concern.” She looked at her notes. Why did she keep doing that? She knew damn well what the problem was with Rimbauer so stop this fucking charade and just say it. Bitch.

Rimbauer sat up a bit.

“Concern?”

“Yes, concern.” She fixed him with a steely glare.

“Oh, but I thought you said my lesson was fine…” Rimbauer tried to give a warm smile. He was getting a headache.

“Yes, yes the lesson was absolutely fine Mr Rimbauer, but it’s not the lesson or your teaching that concerns me.”

Oh shit, she had another problem with the learning environment. A learning environment was what civilians called ‘the inside of the classroom’.

“It’s your learning environment Mr Rimbauer. Again.”

“But I listened very carefully last time Mrs Gunter and I implemented all your suggestions…” For the first time in years, Rimbauer actually felt on the back foot. A month ago the school had been inspected and although his teaching was fine he had been slated for the poor state of his classroom. The walls were bare except for a framed portrait of the Queen, a smaller framed picture of the Queen Mother pulling a pint and a shabby number line going from one to ten. The eight was missing. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that the learning environment was utterly un-stimulating and needed to be put right straight away. The Head had been hauled over the coals for letting Rimbauer get away with such a sub-standard classroom for so long. Rimbauer felt quite bad about that.

He was dragged back to the present by the crisp voice of Mrs Gunter.

“Indeed I made some suggestions Mr Rimbauer, but I fail to see a single one implemented!” Fuck, she was really angry.

Rimbauer felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck…get a grip man; you’ve been in worse shit than this….

“For example, I told you to get a sound chart on the wall showing the correct phonemes for the letters of the alphabet.”

“I did” replied Rimbauer, beginning to feel a little unjustly chastised. He had made himself, he’d been very proud of it. It had all the letters of the alphabet on it and the words were extremely useful for the ongoing education of his class. He’d even laminated the fucking thing.

“Mr Rimbauer, the chart is most inappropriate! During your lesson I took the liberty of copying your chart down…”

“So you didn’t bother paying any attention to what I was actually teaching then?” Rimbauer was losing the battle with his patience.

She went on as if he’d not spoken.

“…A is for Arab, B is for bomber, C is for Claymore mine…N is for nine millimetre round…W is for waterboarding…Mr Rimbauer the whole chart is extremely inappropriate! And the pictures you have for them are most distressing! Your picture for the letter E almost made me physically sick!”

Rimbauer was baffled.

“But those children might need to know what extreme trauma looks like one day.”

“When?!” shrieked Mrs Gunter.

“I dunno…when they first off a target by pushing them off the top of a multi story car park?” Rimbauer felt he was losing the battle.

“I notice you have a board of high frequency words up for the children Mr Rimbauer…”

“Oh yes, is it what you were thinking of?” Rimbauer tried to look ingratiating again, maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel. He tried not to gulp as she glared at him again.

“No Mr Rimbauer, it is not. I fail to see how any of those words are relevant to the education of a Year Two child.” She looked at him with undisguised loathing.

“High frequency words for Year Two, Mr Rimbauer, are words such as why, what, when, if, so, but, who, not kill, maim, disable, disarm, femoral artery, rag-head or cuntface!”

Rimbauer’s heart sank. He’d known he was inviting trouble…why oh why had he not just towed the line and done what the inspectors had told him to do in the first place. Fuck it, he knew damn well why. These pricks couldn’t give a flying fuck that his teaching was sound, his plans were good and that by their own admission the children were clearly learning. No! They just gave a fuck whether the goddam kids knew their literacy and maths targets and every fucking inch of the walls were covered in level descriptors, buzzwords, corporate type jargon to mould the young minds into helpless ‘blue-sky thinking’ halfwits who’d toe the line and take it from The Man and pay their fucking taxes! It made Rimbauer sick to his guts.

“It gives me no pleasure Mr Rimbauer,” every time some bastard said that you could guarantee they were about to get a huge amount of fucking pleasure thought Rimbauer, “but I will have to fill in this extremely negative report and hand it to the L.E.A.” Mrs Gunter clicked the top of her biro, tried not to smile and put the nib to the empty form.

Rimbauer cleared his throat.

“I really wouldn’t do that Mrs Gunter. Please.”

She smiled a crooked smile. Triumph on her face. Now he was going to beg.

“And why not Mr Rimbauer?”

Rimbauer shifted in his chair slightly and cleared his throat again.

“Because…because…er…”

“Too late Mr Rimbauer.” Mrs Gunter smiled triumphantly and started to write.

A few minutes later the door to the office opened and Rimbauer stepped out, looking drawn and weary. He closed it behind him, leaving the ‘meeting in progress’ sign in place. Ellen, the school secretary walked towards him. For once she looked worried and she placed a hand on his arm. Everyone in the school knew he was in trouble and no one wanted to see an inspector get one over on a teacher.

“Shit, how did it go?” She chewed her bottom lip and searched his face for some sign that he was alright, that it wasn’t as bad as she feared it would be.

Rimbauer sighed.

“Not good, Ellen. Not good at all.”

Ellen squeezed his hand.

“Oh Christ, what’s that bitch done to you?”

“Er…” Rimbauer looked back over his shoulder at the office door. “Ellen, you need to get in there I’m afraid.”

Ellen went pale. “Shit…she wants to see me? I’m just the fucking secretary! What the fuck can she want with me?”

Rimbauer gave a small smile.

“A bucket, some bleach and some scrubbing brushes for a start…blew her fucking head all over the wall and bowels gave out right onto the carpet. Sorry.” Rimbauer gave a small shrug, smiled his schoolboy smile and pocketed his Browning 9mm.

Ellen smiled up at him, “Oh Rimbauer, you never change do you?”

As she walked to the cleaner’s cupboard to get the bucket and the bleach she looked over her shoulder at Rimbauer, who was already ripping into a child from Year One for coming in for a drink of water without telling the midday supervisors. Fuck, he was such a sex god…

Girls and WAGs.

Have a read:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7819817.stm

I’ve got no soap box to climb upon regarding this. It’s just that I don’t know any young ladies or girls who are suffering from this. I’m not saying that girls aren’t feeling under pressure, or putting themselves under pressure…it’s just that I don’t know any. It would be horrible to think that any girls at my primary school were feeling this way, they’re far too young. However I do know a couple of twelve and thirteen year old girls (forget the comments you sordid horrors, they’re friends of my girlfriend’s daughter, I taught a few of them) and they’re not feeling the pressure at all. Not a jot as far as I can tell. It’s not as if they’re even harbouring ambitions of being a WAG, I don’t think they’re harbouring any ambitions at all. None. They have the expectations of…well, the sort of young lady who gets knocked up young and lives off the Social. Sad really. But hey, their mums were like that and probably their mums before them so what do you expect?

Reading the article I suspect there will probably be a counter offensive by the WAG community. Stand by for ghastly women shrieking about being positive role models in their capacity as sperm-receptacles for overpaid football players. Sorry, I don’t care what any twat says bout ‘post feminism’ or any other shite; a WAG is not a good role model. Not saying they’re completely awful either (Rose West would be worse), but let’s not talk bollocks about a group of women whose main ‘achievement’ has been to watch a premiership footballer blow his beans all over her tits. It’s not quite what the women’s movement had in mind when they fought for equality. Never mind though, someone has to be on the receiving end of a footballer’s spunk, better it’s someone whose main ambition was to be that person than one of the women who gets casually raped by them from time to time.

Expert opens mouth and all shit comes out.

Read this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7811315.stm

 

As you may expect, I have issues with this. Ms (that’s right ‘Ms’, says it all…and she was speaking the Guardian, I rest my fucking case M’lud) so-called Gilbert reckons that children behave badly in lessons because the teacher is boring. Really? Her solution seems to be that all lessons are highly entertaining, ‘good’, and at the same time educational. Has she stepped into one of those dreadful teaching ads where some science teacher holds a bunch of hormonal teenagers under their spell by watching smoke go round in a fucking box?

Point one: Teachers have been making lessons ‘interesting’ since time began. Yes, some teachers are boring cunts but on the whole I think we go balls-out to make our lessons interesting.

Point two: how ‘interesting’ does she want us to be? I could try and inject some verve into my lessons by turning up dressed as Coco the bastard Clown and juggling during my delivery if she wants.

Point three: at some point during a lesson the main learning intention has to go into the children’s heads, and they must learn something. While hot-seating, role play and all that stuff play a huge part in my lessons there comes a time where every single child will have to practise something mundane, like using a full stop or spelling something correctly. This can be a bit ‘boring’. One of the little girls finds almost everything boring in my lessons but that’s because she’s quite thick and only likes ‘the telly’.

Point four: there’s loads of reasons children misbehave in school, too many to name in one post (and I doubtless don’t know them all)…

• They’re children and from time to time become little bastards. Children do that. It’s in their nature.
• They have no behavioural boundaries at home and therefore haven’t developed the skills needed to control their behaviour anywhere else.
• If they misbehave at home they get beaten shitless or have spicy root vegetables shoved up their arse. School is the only place they can be silly without fear of grievous bodily harm.
• Some are, to be frank, mental.
• Current behaviour management techniques are, quite often, shit. Many teachers feel the appropriate response to bad behaviour is to have a circle-time where the class discusses ‘making the right choice’. I don’t care what the experts say, it doesn’t fucking work. Circle time has a place but there comes a time in a child’s life where it has to be told that it’s acting the twat and be treated accordingly. I have a funny feeling Ms Gilbert’s of the ‘let’s talk about our feelings’ club.

Yes, if a teacher delivers a dull lesson behaviour will deteriorate. You don’t need to work for OFSTED to work that little gem out. I’m sure we can all remember a boring teacher when we were at school who everybody ignored and fucked about during their lessons. I’m also guessing that if you had a very, very boring teacher who experienced no behavioural problems it was because they were an utter bastard.

So Ms Gilbert, here’s Mr.Chipz guide to good behaviour in class:

Make your lessons as interesting as possible and if you can; fun. Don’t fret if you can’t always do this, sometimes learning something can be a little bit boring. Make it absolutely clear to your class that behaving well during your lessons will bring rich rewards such as their teacher being nice to them, but if they make ‘the wrong choice’ and behave badly they will quickly learn that it’s much, much better to be on the right side of teacher. Because this teacher can be a horrible, raging tyrant. (My kids love me by the way and behave brilliantly…my method works.)

* personal: Mr Chipz has decided to get married.

Sorry

OK, so I may have neglected this for a wee while. About two months in fact. Sorry. Truth is, I’m really struggling with Chipz. I’ve written the Christmas stuff before, and the things I’d really like to tell you about I just can’t. For legal reasons. No, I haven’t been charged with any of the crimes that awful shit Napoleon accuses me of…it’s young Kev.

Thank the sweet baby Jesus Himself that Kev joined the class. You know what? The kid’s a gem. He’s the loveliest little chap you could ever meet, and now that he’s (on the whole) stopped swearing (calling someone ‘a fucker’ is his fave) and settled in he’s actually really pepped up my class. I could write a fucking essay on the kid and the ins and outs of his crazy life but I just can’t, unless I change everything and then it would just be a load of made-up bollocks and not the story I’d like to share with you.

Domestic violence, mental illness, the police coming to visit us at school…it’s all go, go, go you know. Anyway, he’s very happy at school and I’m trying very hard not to get too attached because fuck knows how long he’ll be with us as he could go for any number of reasons. I’ll be very sad if he does though. As a teacher I’m supposed to let him occupy the same amount of my brain space as the other twenty-odd children in my class, it’s difficult though.

Sorry this is short, I’m trying to think of a way to get this heap of shit kick-started again. Lost my motivation a bit…it’s been a serious half term in the academic world of Mr Chipz.

Oh, on a lighter note; I was playing a phonics game with my children yesterday. The idea was that the interactive whiteboard shows a word which is either real or made up. The children, using their phonic skills sort them into the right place. The words feature a grapheme (in this case ‘qu’). Hence they were seeing words such as ‘queen’, ‘quick’, ‘equif’, ‘quack’, ‘quock’ etc. As you can see, some are real and some aren’t. The words are generated at random by the computer program. Anyway, it seems that some hilarious (well it made me chortle inside) person had been at it because it kept hitting us with the word ‘quim’. It’s great hearing a class of six year olds earnestly discussing whether ‘quim’ is a real word. Thankfully the correct answer was ‘no’ or I would have been fucked trying to explain it.

“Quim? Oh, it’s an old fashioned word for a cunt, children.”

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.

Cannons.

Another Sunday, another planning session. And it’s nice outside. Bugger. Continuing from my ‘germ’ theme of last week; I know have a red eye which itches. Having said that it’s not made the move to full blown gooey horror so maybe I just poked myself in the eye while sleeping. It wouldn’t surprise me. I sleep violently. And seeing as I had aggressive dreams last night (calling a nun a ‘cunt’ for starters, and then she changed into one of those ‘boxing nuns’ you get in gadget shops and started going for me) the chances are it’s a self inflicted wound. I’ll know tomorrow though, if one of the children’s missing due to conjunctivitis the mystery will be solved.

Have you seen that new teaching advertisement? It’s very irritating. A very young teacher, with a twatty haircut, sits at his desk with some twatty article on the desk showing he likes the football (Tottenham I think…only seen it once). In walks some adolescent wearing a red scarf (Arsenal perhaps?). Child silently points at self and shows the teacher three fingers. Points at teacher and shows one finger while giving condescending look. Teacher says something along the lines of “yeah, sit down”, rolls eyes and tuts as if to say “those pesky kids”. The voiceover tells you about a decent salary and that ‘the banter’s good’. Right:

1. The teacher’s in his early 20s. He’s probably an NQT, so it’s about £21,000 if he’s in London, quite a bit less if he’s not.
2. His fucking haircut will surely ensure the kids take the piss on a daily basis.
3. Take that fucking scarf off, Spot-boy! It’s not school fucking uniform!
4. And while you’re at it, turn round, get the fuck out of my fucking classroom and come in again with a bit more respect!

This is why I’m not a secondary teacher of course. I would blow all my blood vessels in a fit of apoplectic rage in the first lesson and die there and then. Probably to a rousing chorus of ‘ding dong the bastard’s dead’ from the pupils. Well, it annoys me.

My new class is utterly failing to be anything like my last lot. Not one of them has shit themselves yet, neither have they wet themselves, thrown up in class, had a fight, stolen anything, fallen over and horrifically wounded themselves while doing a simple task like having a drink of water, got into trouble for lying or swollen up in front of my very eyes due to a food allergy. It’s bliss I tell you. Could get very boring though.

A teacher from one of the older classes showed me some drawings they’d done of the HMS Victory. One was particularly good. The child had tried to draw the deck crammed with cannon. I want to keep a copy of it, it looks like a rowing boat bristling with erect, black cocks with shining red bellends. They even have shiny black balls at the base. All they’re missing is the classic ‘spunk drips’ shooting out the end. Alas. How we all laughed in the staffroom. You just can’t beat an unintentional smut-fest, either a drawing containing phalluses, or the best spelling mistake ever; ‘can’t’. It’s almost a shame when you show them how to spell it properly. Takes so much from the original. For example; “I went to my mum and sed can I have a biscit and she sed no you cunt”. Always good for a chortle.