Day 17: Cover-tastic

Ah, departmental training day. Just the relief I needed from my three 4-period days in a row this week. I spent an hour or so last night prepping the cover work for my lessons, having been given the sage advice from a colleague: "don't spend more than half an hour on it - they won't do it." I found a few tasks for each of my classes and left it till the morning.

I allowed myself a little lie-in today, getting in around 8, and cleared anything of value out of my classroom, making sure to lock the filing cabinets so that nothing could be pilfered. I carefully laid out the work on my desk and ran. I felt sorry for the poor bastard who'd be covering my lessons today, although not sorry enough to hang around. As the whole department was having cover (apart from the colleague who 'took it for the team' because a cover teacher didn't turn up) we were expecting riots on the corridor. The kids go a little crazy when there are supply teachers around - we all noticed the difference when the HoD was off a week ago - so no one wanted to be around the bloodbath.

Anyway, I'd been asked to go through a sample of coursework and mark it myself using the scheme. This is harder than you'd think, especially if you saw how vague the criteria was, so I had a go, with a little help from a colleague, and whipped through the selection. We were sat in the conference room, and I'd brought a selection of sweets to keep us going. I think the less said about the day the better, but basically we all went through our scores to compare, then remarked any we disagreed on. In the course of the afternoon I tidied my year 11 coursework folder and marked H's media coursework. He got 12; much better than a 3. I looked through all my year 11 kids' marks - it was quite depressing, and I need to sort out how I'm going to squeeze the last few pieces out of them. I'm not convinced that they should be entered for the literature paper, especially as they would all need do that elusive 5th piece of coursework, and an extra exam, but I feel guilty taking the chance off them. I need to think about that one.

A quick diversion - A in year 9 got in a spot of bother yesterday and is having all sorts of intervention. I'm glad to hear it's not just me - everyone seems to know his name at least. I suppose the challenge will be in working with him when he's back in my class to show I'm not giving up on him. It's a shame he's so damn abrasive. I like to think there's good in everyone, no matter how deeply buried, but he's not half trying to prove otherwise.

The day went pretty quickly, overall, and I returned to the department just before the last bell. My year 8 class were causing trouble, by the look of it, and I was a little disconcerted (is that a word?) when one of my troublesome kids (who had all given the supply a hard time - so we'll be giving them a group detention) asked me where I'd been.
"Miss! Where was you?"
"Do you mean 'where were you'"?
"That's what I said - where was you?"
"Where *were* you?"
"Ok, where were you?"
"I had training for coursework marking fun."
"I wish you'd been teaching us instead."
*Miss faints with shock*
Whether she was taking the piss or not, it did make me smile. The poor supply teacher looked a little stressed, and I felt bad that he stayed to be debriefed when he clearly wanted to run a mile.

So I stayed late, did planning for tomorrow, and attended an IT training session. It was a relief to get home, as I was feeling EXHAUSTED. This must be the hard part of teaching - having to go through all the rigmarole AND feel tired at the same time. Time for bed - four lessons tomorrow, and prep to do in the morning. *gulp*