Day 14: 14 hours

14 hours ago I entered the school. 14 minutes ago, I left it. It has been a loooong day. Reflection is difficult when you're this tired so I'll do another speedy recap, and hope that I'll have more energy tomorrow.

Lesson 1: Year 9. I asked my HoD to sit in with me as I wanted to give them a written assignment and I was worried how it would go down. They were quite well behaved to begin with, and I was especially pleased to see that the boy who had given me a hard time in the previous lesson was impeccable, did his work, and was very responsive. Unfortunately it descended into chaos when they finished the assignment earlier than expected, and little A threw a pen at someone, and I had to physically break them apart. Urgh. Worst part was that I didn't report it on the electronic system as I was so busy, and forgot to do it the next day. Must do it first thing Monday. My HoD, who missed the end of the lesson, gave me really positive feedback, which was nice to hear. I wasn't too impressed with how it ended, but I was happy with the first half at least.

Lesson 2: Year 10. As I kept A back to tell him off, I was a little behind it letting the year 10s in, and I'd also forgotten I was going to be observed by my subject tutor. I got the books and folders out, and the starter I'd created - a mini facebook profile for Juliet, where they had to fill in her status updates depending on the scenes. I was quite proud of this, till one of the boys in the group pointed out to me that I'd put her name as "Juliet Montague". Cringe. They also spent a good few minutes filling them in and then commenting on how sad I was for making it, and that I'd used the old version of facebook. Lame. Anyway, the lesson went pretty well, actually. We read one scene, and I talked through it, to explain the language. The kids were really responsive, and had some great points. Luckily the passage was about Juliet thinking about sex, so it was pretty easy to get them interested. There was one great point when I talked about virginity and holding the bedsheets up to show there was blood etc - a few looked grossed-out but one girl piped up that it was "what [her culture] does - with the husband's family waiting outside the room with guns in case she's not a virgin". Hilarious. Unfortunately the class was disturbed when half of them were pulled out to be finger-scanned so I had to revert to watching the film - hurrah - and planned to finish it the next lesson. I spent my last (free) hour being debriefed about my lesson. My tutor was really encouraging, and it was great being told something went well.

After that, as school finished at 1 and we were leaving for the theatre then, I had time to be bought a sandwich and eat it, then have a sneaky cigarette before we got on the coach for An Inspector Calls. There were 5 staff going and only 21 students. This was due to a rather embarrassing decision made by the powers that be, which I won't go in to, but it meant that we didn't have time to sell or even give away the remaining tickets. Whatever, we went off on our merry way to the Strand, and sat at the front of the coach, listening to the entertaining banter of the year 11s at the back. They spent the entire journey making fun of random passer-bys (the most entertaining thing was a 3-legged dog) and we pulled up to the theatre to see there were at least three other school groups in front of us in the queue. I actually felt quite protective of our lot, who looked very smart in their blazers next to a preppy school group from Rochester (so their teacher told me.) My colleague had gone off to see if he could sell back our remaining tickets, and we were rather smug to hear that we had been reseated at the front of the auditorium rather than the very back. The kids all had their little bags of popcorn, which they were asked to put into plastic cups to prevent rustlin'. There was a rather embarrassing moment when a stuck-up woman in a twin set and pearls tried to get past them to what she thought was her seat, but they were so involved in sorting their sweets out they didn't move and she had to push past them, only to find one sat in 'her seat' and then had to shuffle back past to complain. As it happened, her ticket wasn't valid. How embarrassing.

So the show started, and the kids got into it. I'd never seen it before, but it was pretty good. The Inspector himself was a little bad, speaking very quickly and often stuttering his words, which ruined it a bit, but the show kept the kids engaged the whole way through. Right at the end, the model house on stage explodes, and the boys in the front row nearly fell out of their seats when the dining table flipped and shards of crockery crashed towards them; one boy actually got a piece of plate in his lap.

When the show ended, as we were leaving, one of the theatre's managers complimented my colleague on how well behaved the kids were, which was nice.

We got straight onto the coach, and zipped back to school although had to get off on the way and walk the last mile due to traffic. It was slightly depressing to go back to school for prospective parents' evening, so I picked up a pizza and my colleague and I waltzed through the front gates, unfortunately walking past the entire SLT with our pizza boxes. Oops. The evening itself wasn't too bad - I sat in my colleague's room, cutting out lizards to stick on her wall, and chatted with about 5 parents the whole time. I finally left at half 8, and got home by 9, exhausted. It had been a long, but good, day.