Days 42 and 43: Fatigued

To every teacher I've ever had,

Please accept my apologies. For everything. For every note I passed in class. For ever asinine offhand comment I made to be funny, or worse, controversial. For every time I was off-task because I wanted to chat to my friends. For every time I had to be asked to return to my seat, to stop swearing, to "be calme". For every poem I wrote which ridiculed you in some way. For distracting anyone within a 3 metre radius because I was bored. For every time I didn't listen and had to ask what I was supposed to be doing (I still do this now.) For every time I refused to join in the lesson and sat at the side of the gym sulking or sometimes crying. For the obscene things I used to do in music lessons. For every time I answered you back. For every time I said you were a crap teacher. For every lesson I said was boring. For thinking you had it easy. For thinking I was always funny. And right.

I am so so sorry.

Tuesday and Wednesday seemed to melt into one. I'm not sure where one ended and t'other began, but I'll start with Tuesday morning. I took a leave of absence to attend an occupational health appointment, thinking it was going to be a medical, and was somewhat irritated to find that it was in fact a 10 minute conversation about my knee injury and whether or not I have any "limitations" as a result. I don't. "Then you're good to work!" the miserable woman told me. Great.

I got into school midway though my year 9 lesson, but couldn't bring myself to take over the class, so ended up planning what I would do for my year 8 lesson. This was a good thing, as I ended up having to rearrange my plan as I hadn't spoken to my colleague with whom I share the class and therefore the lesson I had prepared was too far ahead.

I had stayed up till 2 marking the year 10 coursework the night before, ready to give it back to my year 10 class. I had given some scores back - 1 A* so far, although wasn't entirely confident in my ability to mark properly, so should have asked someone to read through them with me before I set about giving them out. As it turned out, one girl (Turkish madam #1) had been given an admittedly low mark of an E, which at 2am seemed fair, but in the cold light of day, and under her deathly stare, I realised was probably wrong. I did have my mentor check it, and he pushed her grade up 6 points to a D. Oops. The rest of the year 10 class were pretty happy with what they got, although I did get another couple checked by my mentor to make sure, and most were pushed up a bit. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the quality of the work. I gave out at least 3 A* (I think I may have been too generous with 2 of them) and lots of As, Bs and Cs, plus a few Ds.

After year 10 filed out I had year 8. I had been dreading this group, and rightly so. They were little bastards. The behaviour is shocking, and their attitude to me just completely overwhelms me. They are so rude. Not all of them, in fact some are quite sweet, but the small group have just completely ground me down. I kept them all back 5 minutes because they took so long to shut up, and kept three back longer to chat to, one of whom was so so rude to me and as she left she called down the corridor something along the lines of "I hate you miss and that class and I'm not coming back..."
Amusingly, I am trying to have her moved, so as she's been told as much (well, that she's being moved up a set) she obviously doesn't care anymore. Vile. Of course, it's my fault for not being stern enough, and not doling out the warnings when they speak to me like that. I guess I'm just so taken aback by them that it catches me unawares.

So that was Tuesday. Today I had three lessons, and was being observed in lesson 2 by my tutor. I was relieved to have my colleague in with me for year 9 first thing, although I feel under extra scrutiny in the class, as I'm not really connecting with the work we're doing so I feel a little crap at explaining stuff to the group, who were on the whole quite good today. I'm still not sure what I'm doing with them.

After year 9 was year 11, and they were really good, actually, apart from one of them who left the class early, but that's not the point. We were going to do Dulce and Decorum Est, which was a coincidence considering it's remembrance day. I showed them a video of trench warfare, we talked about world war 1, and most of them were able to do the work set, which was nice. The feedback I received from my tutor was, on the whole, positive, although she gave me lots of great pointers and advice. I was really pleased with some of the guys in the group, as they came out with some great stuff. The whole group also observed the two minute silence impeccably, which was nice to see.

I had a break, then year 10. I decided, last minute, to do a research lesson, which was lucky, as I wasn't sure what to do really and the kids were super excited to be using laptops. A few of them took the piss but I wasn't really that bothered - it was last lesson. I gave the girl her new mark, and she was pretty gracious about the whole thing, which was nice of her. I doubt I would have been.

After school I went to a college meeting, which was interesting, and I found out that one of my year 11s has been placed on the "could get a C so work hard on him" list, which I found a little disturbing. He's definitely a bright one, but I feel a little overwhelmed at the prospect.

All in all, a longish couple of days. I have so much work I need to catch up on, which is stressing me out, but at least we're over the "hump" now and I'm going home on Saturday, so am thinking mainly about that. I might drive past my old school and leave a bunch of flowers. You know, to say thanks.