PE Moment of Zen

As soon as you start teaching you realise that you should have trained to be a PE teacher all along. Minimal marking, you can wear trainers and you have a whistle to help you keep the kids in check.

Today we played 5-a-side indoor football against the students as an end of term Fun Thing To Do. PE Teacher Andy turns up in ridiculous clothing.

Me: Why are you wearing a vest?
Andy: It's like the Italians.
Me: Huh?
Andy: You know, the Italians. The men always wear a vest. About the house, like.
Me: Why are you wearing it now? You look ridiculous.
Andy: It's a macho thing. Like the Italians. I always wear a vest when I'm at home. A vest, shorts and slippers. Unless it's cold, like. Then I'll wear tracky bottoms.

Work Experience

Today Form were considering their options for Work Experience Week which takes place in June. I was encouraging them to aspire to do a week's work experience somewhere as ambitious as they liked.

Me: Where would you like to do it CD?

CD: Something to do with sports (CD plays football for a professional club Academy).

Me: Coaching? Playing? Managing?

CD: Well...I was thinking that I could do this Soccer Skills club thing that my dad's mate runs...but...

Me: What's wrong with that? It'd be great if you could do something to get some coaching experience.

CD:...well, Sir, d'you reckon I could get a work experience at somewhere like SportsDirect or JD?

Me: Sure, but that's not very sporty. This is your chance to get out of school for a week and do something special for a week.

CD: Nah, Sir, JD is a sports shop, man! Sir that'd be sick!! I love JD!

Not the Royal Geographic Society then

Year 8's are happily labelling a map of Great Britain.

Me: How many countries in the United Kingdom?
LM: 3.
Me: What are they?
LM: Ireland, England.....um.....the Midlands?
Me: Not quite - where's Scotland and Wales? What about Northern Ireland?
LM: Oh yeah! I've heard of there! It's near Glasgow, innit!
A few minutes later.
LM: (laughing) Sir, M's so dumb!!! He reckons, yeah, that London is in WALES?!!?
Me: What do you mean? [surely no-one here is actually that ignorant?!]
LM: He's put London right at the top of the map!

Two school words

peng adj. attractive, beautiful, 'definitely would'. Used by horny, teenage wannabe-lotharios when talking to their mates about a girl. As heard today: "Check out that sixth former, blud, she's peng!!"

brass adj. [with a short 'a'; rhymes with 'crass' or 'gas'] the opposite of peng, meaning ugly, gross or unattractive. For instance "Sir, the Headteacher is brass" or "Unnergh! stop tryin' to be all smoov and dat! you're brass, blud, you'll never get in der!" or "What's your favourite TV show? Brass Betty?"

Boy, do they grow up fast...

MB: Hah, you're a skank!
AO: Fuck off! Why're your eyes red? You been bunnin' draw, blud!
MB: Nah mate. You've been doing crack.
Me: Boys, not in the canteen please. I don't want to listen to this.
MB: Nah seriously, Sir, he gets his Oyster card and chops it up like this...and slices it like this...and moves it into lines like this and then *snort*.
Me: MB! That's enough. I don't want to listen to this when I'm eating my lunch.
AO: He's only joking, Sir.
MB: Yeah don't worry, Sir, AO doesn't really do cocaine. He only smokes.
AO: Usually it's only cigarettes.
Exeunt laughing.

When I was twelve I didn't even know what weed was!!

What a revelation!

"Sir, we don't have a lesson next week 'cos it's Eid."
"But you celebrated Eid just over a month ago."
"Yeah, but there's two."
"What does this one celebrate?"
"It celebrates the revolution of the Koran."

On the way to class - Part II

JP: Sir, did you know that the Twin Towers was a conspiracy?

Me: I did not!

JP: Sir, it's true!

Me: Where's your evidence? You're doing History GCSE, right? You need to have facts to prove your case!

JP: Sir, sir, go on YouTube.

Me: YouTube?

JP: Yeah, Sir. There's a video on YouTube.

Me: Riiiight...

JP: It's American money. You fold it and it's got the Twin Towers blowing up on it!

Me: Come on J. That is not proof.

JP: Yeah, but, Sir! It's so weird!

Judge for yourself here.

JP: Sir, I was talking to Mr H today about the BNP.

Me: What did you say?

JP: He was talking about the leader - the Griffin person?

Me: That's right. What do you think of him?

JP: He's a liar isn't he?

Me: What do you mean?

JP: The Holocaust was when like a million Jewish people were killed, right?

Me: About six.

JP: Yeah, well most of the things the BNP say are lies because they say it didn't happen. That's what Mr H said.

Me: And what do you think?

JP: Yeah I reckon that he's a liar then, innit.

Glad that this is JP's conclusion, following on from our somewhat disturbing conversation about immigration last week.

Pause.

JP: Sir, the Holocaust happened in the Second World War.

Me: Yes.

JP: That began in 1945 didn't it Sir?

Sigh.

Malapropisms

Year 9 French

Me: Do you need a dictionary to complete your homework? You can borrow a school one if you need.

TM: Skeen, Sir, no need, yeah? I've got a massive dictionary at home - my mum bought it. It's a theosaurus as well.

Me: A theosaurus? Like a new type of dinosaur? scoff scoff.

TM: Unnnergh, Sir. Don't you know? A THEEE-OH-SAURUS is like a massive dictionary!

---

Learning Conversation with Form

Me: So you're taking the Textiles GCSE in the end?

AJ: Yeah, Miss is offering it after schools. We're gonna do it on Tuesdays.

Me: Brilliant. Make sure you attend all the sessions.

AJ: Obviously, Sir!

Me: (ever the nagging pedant) And you'll have less time for it than for your other GCSEs so you need to really put in the effort.

AJ: I know!

Me: (harping on) You should always go on time because Miss is putting it on in her own spare time, as I hope you realise!

AJ: Sir! Stop talking to me like I'm innocent!

Me: Innocent?

AJ: You know, like as if I don't know anything!

Me: Ignorant?

On the way to class

JP: Sir, there's too many of them.
Me: Who?
JP: Immigrants.
Me: What do you mean?
JP: Why do they all even want to come to our country anyway?
CM: Cos they get stuff for free.
JP: They get everything for free.
CM: Like free health and a house without even working for it.
Me: What are you implying? That we have too many immigrants? That you don't get free healthcare when others do?
JP: We should send them all back.
Me: Really? And how would that happen? Would you have to send me back too?
JP: Nah weren't you born here?
Me: Yes. But my mother and father weren't...
CM: Yeah so that's fine you've got British citizenship so you can stay.
Me: What about my parents? They've got British citizenship but weren't born here.
No answer.
JP: But they're terrorists. Not your parents, Sir, the immigrants. The Pakis and the Afghans and them.
Me: All of them? Terrorists?
CM: Sir, we might get bombed in 2012! For the Olympics.
Me: There have already been bombings in London, but that doesn't make all immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan terrorists! What about your friends in this school? They're not terrorists.
JP: Nah, Sir, it's only the ones with turbans and long beards. They're the terrorists. They're the ones we have to send back home.
Me: I can't tell if you're 'joking' or being serious. It's racist to accuse everyone of being a terrorist just because they're from a certain background. Off you go to class. We'll have to discuss this at another time.

C'est quelle couleur?

We're learning about the colours:

Red is rouge, blue is bleu and so on.

I give them 'colour sums':

rouge + bleu = ?

jaune + bleu = ?

blanc + rouge = ?

The activity is engaging and they get all the answers right: violet, vert, and rose.

So far, so good.

The next one pops up onto the slide:

noir + blanc = ?

M's hand shoots up: marron!

Odd. He's got them all right so far. Why does black and white make brown? I don't get it...

It took me a while to understand, but he's not wrong.

Boots. Too. Big. Their. For.

An odd phenomenon's a-rising,

And I have found it most surprising.

It coincides with the creation

Of special 'Learning Conversations'.

For every child, a certain time,

A different day, quarter to nine,

They meet and talk, discuss and chat,

About their lessons, this and that.

Their tutor does not sit and judge,

Their tutor's not to bear a grudge,

But is instead required to ask,

"Why do you think you go off task?

Why do you find this class is bad?

What are successes that you've had?

Do tell me, Bobby, how you feel,

I'm paid to listen to your spiel!"

The child talks, says that and this,

Explains detentions that they've missed,

Thinks up excuses for their work:

"This teacher really is a jerk.

I don't get on with them at all,

So if I fail it's not my fault."

The problem comes with tutors who

Just shrug and say "what can you do?"

And leave the kids with the impression,

That having made a weak confession,

They are absolved of doing work,

For teachers they think are "a jerk".

Then when confronted in a lesson,

The student spits back with aggression,

"Allaaaii! I don't get on with you, you know,

My tutor says you go too slow,

I'm G & T - differentiate!

You gotta challenge me, yeah mate!?"

Losing it

Sometimes you can't rise above it. It's impossible to avoid feeling genuinely angry, disappointed. I swore at my GCSE class today. "I don't feel like fucking teaching this," I said quietly as I sat down in my chair. How was I meant to muster up the energy, the charm, the enthusiasm for something when every time I began to explain the topic, every time I tried to introduce an activity, every time I made the effort, students who are sitting their exams in 6 months time were chatting, throwing paper, out of their seats and shouting out? Not little eleven year olds, but 15 and 16 year-olds. Every time I asked for silence it lasted no more that 30 seconds. I was ill (alright, not ill as such, more 'man-flu'-ill) and tired. I'd spent several hours that week planning the lesson, ordering in the revision books they would need, trying to plan a trip for them...it can be a thankless job!

The proverbial cherry on top was that I was being observed. My 'thinking' self detached from my 'teaching' self and spoke to it: "What the hell are you doing? How could this get any worse? Why don't you just cry and leave the room?"

It's the combination of factors (under the weather, tired, nervous, being observed, losing your voice, no breakfast, rude children in the class...) that can lead to a crisis point such as this.

I wait to find out what my feedback is. I'm sure I'll learn a lot, but it hurts nevertheless that this class, this exam class!!!, is not fully under my control.

***

And Finally,

FS, Year 8, today wondered whether the 'Kinder transport', which saved some 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi occupied Europe, had anything to do with the train in Narnia.

Heimlich Heroics

AY was choking. Shit! The classroom has banks of computers and little Year 8s are mostly screened from view. I hear the commotion and look up. He's bent double in his chair, hand clutching at throat, startled friends backing off in surprise, turning to call out to me: "Sir, he's choking! Sir, he's choking!"

"He's choking on his gum!" someone shouts out. I make a split-second decision. Heimlich Manoeuvre. No question. No choice. I grab him from behind, make a fist with one hand and push it into his solar plexus with the other. He coughs in my grip, but carries on choking. I do the same again. The kids are shouting louder now: "SPIT IT OUT!", "COUGH IT OUT!" "Go and get the nurse!" I reply and press my fist once more into his stomach.

Suddenly CA steps forward. "He's not choking, Sir. I think I might have pressed his neck when he grabbed me."
"What?"
"He grabbed me, so I pushed him back, so I put him in a headlock and I pressed his neck when he was in my headlock."
"You mean he's not choking, he's just coughing because you hit his windpipe?"
"Um...yeah."
"So I just performed the Heimlich Manoeuvre for no good reason?"

To add to my embarrassment, it so happened that I was teaching in a room with two glass walls. The staff on reception had a clear view into my classroom and were looking on with bemused and distrustful expressions as I appeared to manhandle a child in my care by violently embracing him and punching him repeatedly in the stomach.

Deez Kidz!

Today SR and XP taught their year 8 Enterprise classmates how to count in German as part of a project whose aim was to encourage pupils' presentation skills. On their introductory PowerPoint slide they kindly gave us a brief summary of the language:

"German is spoken in Germany and nearby areas and countries. It is mainly spoken in the back of the throat."

---

My year 7 French class were thinking of ways to help them memorise the French numbers 1-20. FC put up his hand:

Me: Can you see a pattern? Have you got the hang of it?

FC: I know how to remember eighteen.

Me: Dix-huit? How?

FC: It sounds like These Wheats.

Me: This Week?

FC: These Wheats.

Me: How will that help you remember that dix-huit means eighteen?

FC: Because it sounds like These Wheats.

It reminded me of that great bit in Series 4 of The Wire:

Meet the Parents

Today Form had 'Progress Review Day' - a chance for me to meet their parents and discuss their lessons. From 8am to 8pm. Ugh.

High points included:

• conducting a conversation in Slovakian. (I assumed from his furious nodding that M's father understood me perfectly.)
• slipping into the vernacular in an overt attempt to 'relate' to a kid and his mum while simultaneously covering a lie: "C, the only reason teachers put you into detention is because they give a toss. If you were stupid they wouldn't bother."
• discussing the ins and outs of a day release clause in the contract of a tutee who has just been signed up by a Championship football side's Youth Academy.

Low points mainly included cringing at my own choice of phrase:

• "Hi, welcome, do take a seat. Let me get the paperwork out of the way and then we can have a chat."
• "...you need to buck up your ideas"
• "...you've made a solid start, but you need to maintain it"
• "I'm running just a teeny-weeny bit late, sorry."
• "I'm running just a wee bit late, sorry."
• "I'm running just a tad late, sorry."

I might as well have been wearing my tweed jacket with leather patches and read from the book of Teaching Clichés.

Last lesson on a Friday ain't so bad no more.

Me: (On a roll) Je prends le petit déjeuner. What does petit déjeuner mean?

Year 8: (Enthusiastic, engaged) Lunch

Me: (Happy with their enthusiasm and engagement.) Almost, but petit means little, so what does it mean?

Year 8: (Hands waving, thinking, learning.) Breakfast.

Me: Well done!...incidentally, has anyone wondered why breakfast is called breakfast?

Year 8: (Ramadan has recently finished.) Oh yeah! It's cos you break your fast!

Me: That's right!

Y: (Out of left field. Thinks he's caught me out. Finger raised and eyebrow craftily cocked.) But Sir, isn't it called breakfast because you eat breakfast cereal!

Justice is not blind. She texts with fake nails on.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a teenage girl in possession of a mobile phone, fake orange nails with tan to match, chewing gum and bad attitude must be in want of a sense of injustice.

I find it the hardest nut to crack: a chavette on the warpath.

Me: Time for you to do your coursework. You have to learn your draft off by heart.

Her: I can't be bothered. I'm too cold, Sir open the blinds!

Me: Just learn your coursework - you have half an hour to learn a paragraph off by heart and you will be finished.

Her: Ugh, Sir, you're so moody today. I'm too hot. Someone shut the blinds!

Me: You're in my lesson so you must do some work. What you write today will affect your final grade.

Her: I'm not going to do work if you're so moody. Just cos you got vexed at your last class it's not fair that you take it out on us!

"It's not fair." That easily tripped 'fairness'-alarm. As easily tripped as the fire alarms which seem to get tripped when it's most convenient for a student that they are tripped and least convenient for a teacher. Tripped. It's a powerful retort that seems especially popular among the girls. In their warped minds, they immediately feel wronged, and therefore in the right, and no amount of reasoning/shouting/bribing/ignoring/cajoling etc. can bring them round to just getting on with whatever it is you've got planned in their best interest.

"Could you please go and get some paper, Billy?"

"That's not fair! How comes you always choose Billy!?"

"Could you please go and get some paper, Stacy?"

"That's not fair! How comes you always pick on me!?"

Venn Diagram

Sometimes you realise that a teacher, and school in general, is only one of a series of influences on a child.

AOB came to my class a week ago - last lesson on the Friday. He is the school's most notorious 12 year old. A year ago the school received a phone call that he had been chucked out of a pub down the road. He was found with the keys to a stolen car and a bag full of new mobile phones. One day he'd missed school and when a teacher rang home to check up on him, his mother retorted with something along the lines of "oh yeah, I've not seen him for a couple of days either." He smokes and hangs out with criminals. I was determined that he should not get wind of the fact that I'd heard all about him and that I was wary of him, but instead should have the opportunity for seeing his new French teacher as a fresh start.

I was not hoping for the best, however, when as he came in he announced that "I only went to one French lesson last year, Sir. I'm shit!" Usually when students think they're bad at something they don't bother trying. Others make it their mission to ruin the lessons for everyone else as well. But to my surprise AOB was polite and enthusiastic for the whole 100 minutes. He put his hand up and gave everything a go, gave me the opportunity to reward him, listened to others and moved seat when asked.

What's the problem? This teaching lark is a piece of piss. Even the criminals respond to me now that I'm in my second year and a seasoned pro.

I left a message on his mother's answer-phone praising her son, and wrote an email to the Learning Support teacher who has spent the most time with him and knows him best. She replied asking me to come up and see her.

It turned out that AOB had earlier that day been suspended for five days for threatening to stab a teacher, that it had been presumed that he had run out of school at lunch time and that he had been expressly forbidden by the Principal from attending any lessons. His good behaviour and attendance in my class had not only been against the express instructions of the Principal and her Deputies, but had also been a carefully calculated 100 minutes of excellent behaviour.

Too true.

Am explaining the concept of gender to an eager class of Year 7s. Exceptionally, I switch into English:

Me: Who's heard of 'grammar'? What does 'grammar' mean?

G: It's like your mum's or your dad's mum.

Boom goes the dynamite.

Heard outside the school gates

Little Year 7 boy leaves the school gates.

Met by his older sister (?) in grey, white and gold matching hoodie and tracksuit, big hoop earings, muffin top, Croydon facelift, aged perhaps 17.

Sister: Y'aright!?

Boy: I got a merit today!

Sister: You're a right little geek! Well done! You gonna become a proper bod then?

Boy: (shrugging off her pinch to his cheek) No!

Sister: (to her mate) He makes me laugh!

She takes out a key.

Sister: Now listen, you've gotta take this key and let yourself in yourself today. Don't fucking lose this key cos I'm trusting you with my life. I've gotta go to the pub. When Mum comes home you have to fucking tell her that I brought you home first before I left, but me and Stacy have to go to the pub now so you make sure you go straight home yourself now, OK?

Boy: OK.

Sister: There's a sandwich in the fridge. Oh, and don't open the door to anyone, OK?

Boy: OK.

Sister: Give us a kiss then. (Hands him the key and walks off with her mate.) He makes me laugh!