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!

Self assessment.

I have two and a half working days left. At 14.00hrs on Wednesday I will release my class for the last time. It’s Sunday and I’ve not had a drink yet so I suppose it’s as good a time as any to look back at my first year in KS1 and do a little self assessment on what I think I did well, and what I need to improve next year. Teaching six and seven year olds was a massive step to take (I think, anyway) so let’s see how I did;

What went well?

• Motivating boys. It’s a cliché and I hear it a lot, but I genuinely do think that some boys in my class were long overdue a bit of male role-modelling and I’m really pleased with how it went.
• Getting my head around the whole infant school ‘thing’. The first time I had to stand in front of 100 tiny children and demo actions for songs which contained gratuitous quantities and fairies and that sort of shit was horrible. But now, genuinely, I don’t even flinch. I am quite able to do all that fluffy bollocks and it’s no longer embarrassing.
• The children all made progress. Mohammed is finally out of the P Levels and is a low level 1 in writing and maths. OK, so that’s absolute bollocks to anyone reading this who’s not a teacher but I feel very proud of that. Three children in my class achieved Level 3 in maths too, which is great. Again, apologies to non teachers and non parents, it will probably mean nothing to you. You lucky shit.
• Learnt a lot about how to deal with parents, both sane and insane. You don’t see parents so much up at the other end of the school, and I’ve learnt some good people skills. I have also learnt the lesson that I won’t be so approachable and friendly next year, there’s no point. There’s a hard-core group of parents who are terminally unemployable and have nothing better to do than stir up shit, my lesson for next year is to identify that minority early and immediately distance myself and concentrate on the ones who aren’t time wasters.
• Levelling work. Got better (quicker) at it. Thank god. It’s a bastard.
• Still loving the job. Not bad, I imagine a fair few of those who finished their PGCE with me four years ago are no longer teaching, if stats are accurate.
• Have found I’m as comfortable in Key Stage One as I am in Key Stage Two. I think that’s quite good, not everybody is.
• Have managed a Teaching Assistant and a Learning Support Assistant (she who supports Mohammed) affectively. Never had other adults in my classroom before this year.

What didn’t go well?

• Didn’t get my head around Phonics well enough. Will need to be consistent with delivering 20 minutes a day next year. Have to shoehorn it in somehow.
• To be honest I don’t think I gave the ‘middle ability’ kids a fair slice of my attention. It’s easily done. You are encouraged to push the very able up even further and drag up those left behind, it’s too easy to take your eye off the ball with those who are just capably getting on with it at an average level. Not good enough, they did improve but could they have done better? Possibly.
• Must remember at all times just how little they are. Year 2 are the oldest year in my part of the school, so if you don’t see any of the older kids for a while you start to think they’re ‘quite grown up’. They’re not. They start in September aged six. That’s tiny! They still piss themselves from time to time and cry at the drop of a hat. Must remember to use ‘playschool’ manner more often.
• Organisation. Must keep the classroom much tidier, the little buggers create mess just by walking in the room. Lessons go better when you don’t have to wade through a pile of coats, jumpers, book bags, crayons and hidden piles of sick every time you want to go to the whiteboard.

So, on the whole, some ups and some downs, but more importantly lessons have been learnt and will be applied next year. I am looking forward to it, looking at results for the end of term the ones coming up are a brighter bunch on the whole and I’ve seen their parents. Far less rough than my current bunch. Thank fuck for that. One or two arseholes but I’ve sussed them out and will be waiting for them.

Competition is good.

 

Had sports day last week. My first ever in the Infant School. To be fair, the parents weren’t as ghastly as I expected, and the behaviour at that end of the school was generally better than the previous three sports days I’d seen in the Junior School. The thing that made me happy was that it was competitive, not seen a competitive sports day since I myself was getting routinely thrashed at every single track and field event possible. I don’t want to sound like one of those psychotic old fucks who writes blustering letters to The Telegraph (which means I’m about to), but getting beaten at everything sporty didn’t do me the least bit of harm. I just accepted very early that running, jumping and throwing weren’t going to be my bread-winners in later life, safe in the knowledge that I was much better at drawing than the athletes. No big deal.

Here’s my gripe: I seriously believe that non-competitiveness at primary school fucks children up. I know ‘fucks up’ sounds a bit extreme but seriously, it does. Fact: no matter how long your parents, teachers and various social engineers put it off, everyone will eventually lose at something. Whether it’s in a sporting context, in an art competition, or when you don’t get that job you’ve been striving for because the other candidate was better, or you don’t get the girl/boy because the other person who was vying for their attention was fitter than you, or you fuck up at work and get your P.45…one day, losing’s gonna get you. There is nothing and no-one in the world who can keep that at bay forever. Sadly, for quite some time now, primary schools have been duping children into the belief that no matter what happens, whether they try their best or sit on their arses, someone will pat them on the back and tell them they did really well. The reason for this is simple; no one wants to send them home sad, and no one wants to see a small child crushed by disappointment, or even worse, have a tantrum which is just embarrassing. What a sad state of affairs. What this teaches is;

• You don’t have to try
• If you do try your best, you will receive no special recognition, so don’t bother.
• If you sulk you will get your own way.
• Your talent will not be celebrated.
• You are not a valued individual.
• Those who don’t make an effort will receive a reward anyway.

Not a good set of lessons, I’m sure you’ll agree. Competitive sports days on the other hand teach the following;

• Losing sucks but your friends supported you anyway because they like you.
• If you are good at something people will notice you and reward you.
• If you’re not very good at sports you appreciate your other talents and value them more.
• Some of the academic kids realise that some of the less bright kids can kick their arse in a different arena…brings them back to earth a little.
• Losing isn’t the end of the world, your mum or dad or both thought you were a hero.

Good lessons, surely?

Due to this lack of competitiveness we now have an awful lot of children and young people who can’t control their temper in a simple kick-about, practically have a break down if something doesn’t go their way, and who fall apart at the first hurdle and can’t rally themselves in time to succeed, when success was possible. Sounds dramatic and a bit Telegraph but I swear it’s true, I know loads of kids like this. Far too many. The implications are serious if you really think about it: girl dumps boy, boy can’t get his head round the unfamiliar concept that he’s ‘not good enough’ and slaps girl. Young school leaver doesn’t get first couple of jobs they go for, this is such a new experience they fall apart and give up. Boss tells young person to make more of an effort, young person totally unable to take low-level criticism, tells boss to fuck off and gets sacked. Young person with genuine talent never realises how good they really are because no-one wanted to alienate the other children who weren’t talented, this young person therefore never thinks of taking a course at university that will hone their skill. Fucking sad when you think about it.

So we had tears from time to time at sports day but all the kids were over it by lunch time and the parents went away happy. So what that Tunde kept losing every single race, by the afternoon the kids that thrashed him were asking him to be their partner in the maths quiz because they think he’s a fucking genius in that area. See? All good stuff.

Go on, another quiz.

You have a particularly bright girl in your class of Bangladeshi heritage. Do you;

• a) Meet with her parents regularly to feedback on her progress and suggest extra curricular activities which will appeal to her thirst for knowledge?
• b) Have to persuade her parents to ease up on her a little because although she is a high flyer, they may be pushing her towards a career in medicine a little too soon as she’s only six
• c) Feel like giving up as you know for sure she’ll be taken out of school at the earliest opportunity and married off to a useless twat.

 

You have a boy in your class of Bangladeshi origin. He is a day-dreamer and is almost impossible to motivate. His attitude to work is slack, and he will only take direct instructions from his teacher, not any of the female helpers who work in his classroom. Do you;

• a) Meet his parents regularly to find a way to get him excited about learning
• b) Relax in the knowledge that as he matures he will start to apply himself. After all, he is only six
• c) Feel like giving up because you know for sure that even though his mother nods her fucking head like a demented car ornament while you express your concerns the moment the little fucker is out the door she plies him with sweets and presents and takes him home to be waited on hand and fucking foot by his far more intelligent and worthy sisters.

 

One of the parents at your school is having a disagreement with another gentleman over the ownership of his wife. Does he;

• a) Keep this to himself, it’s his own bloody mess and he’ll find a way to resolve it and keep it from his children.
• b) Inform the school of the situation, alerting them to the possibility that his son may be upset from time to time and to call him if they have any concerns.
• c) Take a knife to school for protection, just in case the fucker turns up there to, then show it to a member of staff with nudge, a wink, and a blistering description of what he’ll do if he gets his fucking hands on him. Then act all surprised and hurt when the member of staff calls the police who remove him from the school in the back of a police car.

 

A Ghanaian girl of five is going through a difficult patch at home and school. Does her mum;

a) Inform the school that she’s being a little bugger at home and to inform her of her behaviour at school so that they may coordinate their efforts in gently bringing her back to the fold

b) Punish her by taking away the T.V and not letting her go to her friend’s party

c) Shove a lump of raw ginger up her arsehole.

 

One of your children is well known by the social services. His mother of white British heritage, who claims to love all four of her children very much has been warned that unless she starts to care for them a bit better they will be taken into care. To quickly solve this problem and retain custody of her children she;

• a) Complies fully, sorts herself out, feeds the children regularly, gives up the drink and does a decent job of parenting.
• b) Tries her best, calling on family members to help her out until it all blows over
• c) Get knocked up again, foist the kids on any fucker who’ll take them for a night or two while you go on a bender and then clear off out of your council flat at midnight and go on the run.

 

You work in a non-faith school. The law stands that all children must be exposed to religious education, if anything just to foster a little understanding in our ever more diverse community. You start by calling the local mosques asking for someone to come in and do an assembly. After much to-ing and fro-ing they respond with the following;

• a) They’d be delighted to come in and do an assembly introducing the basics of their faith to the children.
• b) They’re a bit busy right now but perhaps they’ll manage something in the future.
• c) Decline on the basis that if they come in the parents who belong to the other Islamic denomination will start a fucking riot and besides, your own Muslim children belong to that lot anyway so they have no fucking urge to speak to them anyway. The little bastards.

 

Undeterred you call up a selection of local churches for a Christian speaker. In response they;

• a) Send the vicar. Again.
• b) Send a very nice bearded man who speaks nicely about being nice and the Fair Trade project but doesn’t actually mention his Christian beliefs for fear of seeming a bit too ‘full-on’, thus leaving the children utterly oblivious to the fact that they’ve just met a Christian.
• c) Send a variety of manic, guitar playing, story-telling born-agains, week after fucking week to tell the fucking stories of Jesus. Over and over again until your fucking eyes start to bleed in assembly.

 

In a last ditch attempt to bring another religion into school besides insanely happy Christians you call the local Synagogue. They respond that they’ll be happy to come;

• a) At the earliest opportunity.
• b) As soon as you can provide them with a laptop and screen for a really exciting PowerPoint presentation on modern Judaism.
• c) As soon as you can agree to pay them to come in. Pay them. No, I’m fucking serious. Can you fucking believe it? I mean for fuck’s sake, have they not heard of P.R and the need to destroy some cultural stereotypes?! For fuck’s sake…

 

Look, don’t bother adding up your As, Bs and Cs…if you’ve read this blog for long enough you know which fucked up little world I live in. Seriously, I want my obscenely long holiday now, or I’m going to punch someone in the face.

Bad mood.

Two weeks to go. Two whole weeks. The fair went well. Actually, no it didn’t. It rained the morning just before it started so the turnout was low. And the wind picked up and blew all my face paint everywhere. It doesn’t help that the people who run our ‘Friends’ committee have a habit of pissing off all the parents and staff who volunteer to help, so next year I will not be on the bloody thing. Four years is enough, they can find some poor other teacher to sit in on these meetings and listen to a bunch of rough-arsed women slag other parents off. Bah humbug!

You may be in the same part of the world as me, if you are you will have noticed that it’s been pissing it down of late. As a result the kids haven’t been outside much and have gone, as we experts say; mental. I had to sent one of the boys off to another class today to do his work. Not for any heinous crime on its own but either his classmates were going to smack him or I was. So he was moved for his own safety. Mohammed is off school at the moment; the whole family have disappeared, so not sure if he’ll be back before the end of term. As a result there’s a vacancy for a resident annoying little git. So this other lad seems to have taken it upon himself to step into the position. Gah!

Sports day in a week. Never done a key stage 1 (Infant school to you) sports day before. I have a funny feeling it’s going to be a very fluffy everyone’s-a-winner occasions. Not to spare the children’s feelings of course, but to placate their hatchet faced, chromosome challenged, underbiting parents. Harrumph!

On Friday it’s a progress meeting in which ‘they’ will go through my SATs results and compare how the children have done, how far they’ve come, whether my predictions were accurate and all things dull. Still, it’s always nice to have a change of scene. Though it’s going to be horribly boring. Fuck!

I had a lesson observation yesterday. Haven’t had any feedback yet but I know it wasn’t great. Got a bit carried away and screwed up the timing, got a bit distracted and went off on a tangent, misspelt a word on the board and accidently trod on Timmy. Getting the feedback at four this afternoon. Monkey spunk!

Not having a good week to be honest. Must take chill pill.

I.E.Ps…oh the joys.

I.E.P stands for Individual Education Plan. They’re written up for children who are finding some aspects (or all aspects in many cases) of education a bit trying. They get updated every few months and all mine were due to be done today. A supply teacher was drafted in and I spent most of the day with the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) updating them. I have a lot in my class. As in a hell of a lot.

We started with my good chum Mohammed, he has a Statement (in layman’s terms his problems are so, er, unique that the school is given a certain amount of money by the L.E.A to help sort it out. This money is spent on a very nice lady who, bless ‘er, spends every morning with him helping him with the tasks I set, or occasionally taking him out of class to do his own thang. I have to say, the boy’s done well this year. He’s achieved the target I set in December of counting up to 20 (in order, which was part of the problem), recognising all the letters in his name, getting three smiley faces per day (he’s off that now, gets the same rewards as the other kids. Well, is able to get them anyway) and more besides. He’s not managed to recognise all the sounds the letters of the alphabet make though; W, X, Y and Z are a mystery to him at the best of times, and rather strangely ‘L’.

Timmy’s done well. So well we got him in and asked him what he’d like some of his new goals to be. One of his major hurdles is balance. Standing upright and not falling over can, at times, be a bit of a mission. So after we’d decided his academic targets (he’s achieved all the targets we set last time) he was asked what he’d like to do next. Rather touchingly his big ambition in P.E is to “do back flips”. Explained that they’re actually rather tricky…believe it or not Timmy, but even Mr.Chipz has never (intentionally) managed it. Did once trying to get down from a wall while pissed but that was an accident and I didn’t quite manage to land on my feet, but it was ok; my face broke the fall. We came to the mutual agreement that perhaps it would be best to master the forward roll first, and if he managed that we could look at the backwards roll. You should have seen his face. It was the sort of face Biggles would make if you told him he had to take on the entire Luftwaffe in a bi-plane, at night, armed only with a revolver. In other words; wild eyed determination. Bless his mismatched socks. I’m gonna fucking do this. By July 23^rd (end of term), Timmy is going to be doing forward rolls. Even if it kills me. Though more likely him, but hey, he chose the target.

We then went through all the others, generally there’s been all round successes, but not to the extent that any are coming off I.E.Ps and that’s probably a good thing for now.

Tomorrow we ‘meet’ our new classes. The kids don’t know who their teachers are next year and as usual there’s wild speculation. They don’t know yet that none of the teachers are moving so this year’s Year One are coming to me for half an hour in the morning. I’ll get them in a circle and they can tell me what they like. It won’t be as good as last year. Last year the children just thought of me as one of the teachers who taught the older ones and didn’t know what I was like. As they came into the classroom about four were crying hysterically and clinging desperately to anyone they could grab hold of. My next class know me fairly well so there should be no drama. Damn, they know I’m actually a soft bastard at heart. Rumbled.

Timmy the high achiever.

Three weeks to go. Three weeks! Then I’m off work for six whole weeks, I guess I should start thinking of something to do, apart from spending all the money I have.

Timmy’s having a last minute burst of brilliance, he’s Star of the Week and everything. He’s been working independently, not crying, trying difficult things without going into meltdown…it’s ace. His only problem is that when he’s confident (which is what we’ve been trying for all blooming year) he can go a bit too far and get a little cocky. I mean, it’s great that he’s exhibiting high self-esteem, and genuinely knows that a positive mental attitude can help you achieve, but he needs to start watching to whom he announces his genius. His bubble is in real danger of being burst by a genuinely high-performing child who tires of him and decides to put him back in his place. At the moment they’re being very nice and telling him how clever he is when he gets things right (it’s a novelty for them to see him doing so well and they’re genuinely pleased for him), but I can see it wearing a bit thin with some of the brighter boys. Oh well, it’ll be one of life’s little lessons if that happens; celebrate your success by all means, just remember that no-one likes a smartarse.