Day 27: No reason to get excited

I'm not really in the mood to write this tonight; I'm knackered and had a particularly long day. Or so it felt.

The day started with year 7. Love them. LOVE THEM. Apart from my naughty little one who appears to be skiving my lessons. Hmmmm. I did some crappy "teaching" of speaking and listening skills, and asked them to write a little speech, or begin it at least, on a topic like 'The time I was most afraid'. They were as pleasant as always, and I can honestly say that I actually enjoy teaching them.

Next up was a free, which was spent sorting out various things for upcoming lessons. I was pretty nervous about my year 11s, I hadn't really planned what to do, all I knew was that they were going to perform their Jeremy Kyle speaking and listening task.

Breaktime came and went, and I went off to meet year 11. G, one of the boys who stayed behind to do his media coursework, and who I keep seeing at the busstop, turned up first and helped me rearrange the chairs and tables to imitate a chat show. There was that excited feeling when all the boys came in (again, no girl) to see the place laid out differently and I gave them their instructions. We were going to run through the performance once, then do it again. I had assigned parts for all of the boys but two (including H) took exception to being assigned a girl's part. One of them looked most upset, but I decided that as someone had to do it, it might as well have been him. When it came to the run through, he refused to answer any of "Jeremy Kyle"'s questions - probably because he didn't know the play well enough - so I stepped in as Sheila. The run through was fun, although I was a little disappointed that the audience members just read out questions without listening to what was being said or even whether their question had already been asked. Infuriatingly, I don't think I can mark some of them as a result. Anyway, it went quite well; they got into it by the end, and one of the boys wanted to throw a chair in a classic Jeremy-Kyle way, although I refused. Some of the boys were quite eloquent, which was good; I think that for the rest we'll definitely have to do something else, with more preparation, so they can get it right. When we finished, H came up to me and said "Did I do well, Miss?" I had to say, he did. He knew the play pretty well, I was pleased to say. Bless him.

Next up was lunch, and I started feeling nervous about the two groups after: year 9 then year 8. I knew that in my year 9 group I was going to have the notorious M back, as he'd been in an intervention project for the past 4 weeks or so, as well as a new pupil. As it turned out, the new kid, and in fact half the class, didn't come, so it wasn't too bad. The kids that did turn up were rather irritating, and I AGAIN didn't put my foot down enough, even though they were taking the piss. M and even A weren't too bad. U was a little shit.

Anyway, year 8 again afterwards. Not terrible, not great. For fear of repeating myself, the usual suspects were their usual selves, X was PARTICULARLY rude to me. The rest of the class are clearly getting bored with them, and so am I. It's going to be a new start next week. The lesson went mercifully quickly, and I went for a well-deserved cigarette.

I ended up staying quite late to set cover for tomorrow; I have teachy firsty training in central london; and finally put up my GCSE display, which looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I finally got home around 7, put my feet up and relaxed in front of the last season of BSG, as delivered by my darling colleague. It feels a bit weird knowing I haven't got to go to school tomorrow, but still have to be up at the same time. Either way, no planning - hurrah!