Day 26: There's gotta be some way out of here...

After my very best impression of a miserable school girl being packed off to boarding school, I reluctantly got on the train and made it back to London.

I did not want to go to school today. Maybe it was my time at home? I don't know. What I do know is that I just couldn't think of anything I'd rather do less than teach some of those classes.

So I got in, earlyish, and after morning all-staff briefing set to work sorting out my first lesson: year 8. God, I hate that group at times. Luckily I'm getting to know the other kids in the group that aren't as annoying as the 6 notorious ones, and I'm getting to like them too. The lesson was ok. We used the mini whiteboards which they enjoyed, but spent too long on the start of the lesson so didn't read as much as we should have. I let the kids read for a change, which they enjoyed, and had a MASSIVE go at the kids that laughed at one boy for mispronouncing something; I hate the way they take the piss out each other. I can't get over how disrespectful some of them are to me, it's obscene the way they answer me back.

Anyway, after that lesson I had year 7, which was quite fun. The kids did an assessment after we had talked about shoplifting and I played them the oompah loompah song (we were reading Roald Dahl's Boy.) Nothing to report.

I had lunch, and took the time to mark my final assessments and get the next lesson ready. Year 9. I was concerned to be having A back in the lesson, but I knew I'd have my colleague in there to support. As it happened, the class was a bit crap. My colleague told me my behaviour management was lacking, which meant that the activity didn't work. I'm still not good at keeping them quiet, mainly because when my colleague is there I fall back on him doing it. I just can't seem to get my head round it; I don't like getting challenged by the kids when I give them a warning and I suppose I try to avoid the confrontation now, which is really bad. I will have to work on this tomorrow.

Last lesson was year 11. They were pretty restless but I split them into character roles and they were supposed to prepare their parts for the speaking and listening activity tomorrow. They're going to be pretending to be the characters from An Inspector Calls on the Jeremy Kyle Show; they were horrified at the idea of being filmed doing it. Two of the boys got lumped with the "girl" roles but someone had to do it. Hopefully it'll work, although we'll see.

So that was the day. I ran out the place for a cigarette then had to go back for Teachy Firsty training. I left after marking my three leftover year 9's assessments then came home to lovely company and the last episode of Battlestar Galactica season 3. I need to prepare for tomorrow so I'm going to do that now. Back to the grind; 9 days to go.