The Best and Worst of this Half Term
I was sitting with one of my students during a lesson for which I am an intervention teacher for. He was trying desperately to change the subject to avoid writing his plan for an assessment. Canada is always the first topic changer for every student. I can only talk about snow for so long however.
This student ran through all possible topics and was now at, "Miss, what do you do with all your time? Like, what do you do when you're not at school?"
I responded quite quickly and told him, "I plan brilliant and inspiring lessons for inquisitive students like yourself."
The look of complete shock on his face was incredible. After taking a moment to let the thought sink in he managed to say, "Man it must be so boring to be a teacher. You must come home and put on your cardigan and when you're done all your marking you pick up a novel for the fun of it." This student has a brilliant sense of humour.
Being so close to half term I thought back through the last six weeks since Christmas and evaluated my life. I did purchase a book on the science of yoga as well as Breakfast at Tiffany's . . .
In truth, I have been working really hard! This term has been packed with assessments, term results, parents' evening, OFSTED inspections, brand new monsters, Learning Catch Up Chaos and absolutely breathtaking teaching moments.
For those curious bunch: OFSTED is the Office for Standards in Education and they evaluate schools in England and promote improvement. In my limited experience its a highly stressful situation. But we survived!!!!
MOST CHALLENGING MOMENT OF HALF TERM:
Attempting to tame the beast that is year 8. After polling a very reliable group of teachers it has been decided that year 8 is the year with the baddest attitude. Trying to reign these monsters in is an ongoing challenge. I had finally had enough when I set an LCU (Learning Catch Up or detention), for half of the class. Things are slowly getting better . . . we achieved a tolerable level of noise the other day with a decent percentage of the class focused for the majority of the lesson on the task that was put before them.
"There are many ways of moving forward, but only one way of standing still"
BEST MOMENT OF THIS HALF TERM
Looking up from my desk covered in books to be marked and a lesson that was taking far too long to plan, and seeing two girls from a class I used to teach before Christmas, giggling and taking turns snapping each other acting out the activity I had planned for a year 7 class later that afternoon. These girls, and many of their friends (some of whom I have taught but a few I have not), come see me in my classroom before school, on breakfast break, on lunch break, and sometimes even after school. They clean my whiteboards, they leave me funny messages, they ask me about my lessons, tell me about their lives, get silly and BEG to join my lessons again. This is what has kept me going through all the craziness this term. A girl I covered an RE lesson for in early December gave me a bracelet she made the Friday before we broke up for half term. I absolutely love my job!
After half term it all begins again with the addition of more lessons and more responsibilities. I've been asked to take over a form for a woman who is going on maternity leave. A form is a group of students varying in age groups that meet for 25 minutes everyday (tutor time) and are led by a teacher. This teacher is like the mum, or so my department head tells me. I make sure they're succeeding in life at TCA . . .no big deal.
So I'm sorry I've been so hard to keep in touch with at times - there has been a lot going on. I can't believe how much sleep I got this half term. However, to address my cheeky year 10's picture of me as a spinsteresque librarian curled up with a book - I went and saw Avicii last night at Earl's Court and had the absolute time of my life!!! And I haven't even cracked Breakfast at Tiffany's.
