Day 71: Easy does it

After a terrible night's sleep, my alarm clock was not my friend this morning. My brand-spanking-new alarm clock that is supposed to wake me up gently with artificial sunlight did do the trick, although the discordant beeping cut through my snoozing like a rusty hacksaw.

It's weird coming back in after two weeks, but my desk and room were just as I'd left them, so I blundered on with prepping for my first and only lesson of the day - year 7. I wavered between teaching the new scheme, painstakingly put together by my colleague, or taking the easy route and just showing the end of the Beowulf film started at the end of last term. Shakespeare, or rather, his introduction, won out.

I went down to briefing with my second cup of (black) coffee for the morning, and was joined by the majority of the staff, including some I'd never seen before, for our acting head's "special announcement". There was a tense sense of anticipation fizzing in the room, we'd all received the same email, and the acting head eventually read out a prepared statement from the headteacher who stated that he would not be returning to his post. I won't elaborate on the reasons for his premature departure, but it came as little surprise to the speculating staff.

First lesson was a bit of a let down, to be honest. I was determined to be exciting and peppy for Shakespeare - I am a fan, after all. However, the lesson was a little flat, and I was annoyed that, as I'd not been able to access the scheme from home, I hadn't taken the time to add any sort of video clip or music that I would normally. The lesson also ran a little short, so I let them talk amongst themselves at the end for 5 minutes. We ended up watching some awful trailer for something called "Killer Bean" that one of the girls was gassing about.

As I let them out I felt a little defeated, the sense of which was exacerbated when a colleague talked about how engaged his group had been on the same subject, as they'd discussed all sorts of exciting contextual facts ("They throw poo out their windows, Sir") which I neglected to share with my group. Oh well.

The rest of the day was rather disappointing. Far be it from be to begrudge a school free from year 10s and 11s, but I wasn't anywhere near as productive as I would have liked. I did manage to make a To Do list which is rather intimidating, so much so that I failed to complete a single task on it in my 4 free periods. Better luck next time. I've also realised that my written assignment is due in a week, and will be spending all weekend working on that one. D'oh!

I took a stack of books home with me, as well as my year 8 APPs which they'd been moaning so much at me to mark. Little blighters. At 9.45pm I've so far failed to complete any which doesn't bode well for my early night.

There's always tomorrow, I suppose.