Day 81: The (Year 11) Boys are Back in Town

I suppose I should be used to the Monday morning dread by now. It was exacerbated by my apprehension about coming face to face with year 11, and handing back their mocks.

I finished marking the last couple this morning, and was delighted to see that two of the boys had come out with C grades. What a miracle! I should have guessed that the marks were a little too good to be true, because as I was showing off my colour-coded spreadsheet to my mentor he pointed out that the maths was wrong. NO! How could excel fail me so? With a bit of tweaking, I found that the Cs were in fact Es. Not so impressive.

The day itself started with year 7. I was quite looking forward to the lesson, although I got an unexpected new student (again!) who, as it turns out, is ex-transition. I should have checked my emails sooner because there was one from his transition teacher who recommended he sit with the other ex-transition kid in my class, but ah well. He seemed pleasant enough. We watched the (rather terrible) animated version of Romeo and Juliet and the kids wrote a summary. Or were supposed to anyway. It was a nice, easy lesson, and a good start to the week.

I had the next three lessons off, so spent them prepping and marking, and finally had a meeting with my mentor. He went through my marked mocks, and pointed out where I was a bit too generous. Awkward. We also talked about what I need to do with the year 11s over the next couple of weeks, as I'm not teaching the lit. scheme I want to give the guys as much practice as possible.

When they eventually turned up they were for the most part bouyant but receptive to the exercise - making targets for themselves based on their mocks. I genuinely like a lot of the boys, although some of the more difficult ones weren't in. K, however, was. He did no work during the mock, instead writing out the poems as the answer. I asked him gently and quietly if I could speak to him after the lesson. He was slumped over his desk, moaning that his side hurt.
"It'll only take a minute. You're not in trouble." I said.
I was pretty amazed that, although he tried to walk off, he did come back when I called him - a first. He even sat down and talked to me when I asked him if he didn't understand the exam or he just couldn't be bothered. He was honest: the latter. I wasn't sure what to say - I offered him help; he didn't want it. I suppose it was nice to have that interaction at last with him.

After school I had training with Teachy Firsties, and was amazed to see I'm the first one to sort out my second school placement. That's got to be a record. I suppose I'm especially excited about the placement because, not only is it at an Outstanding school - and I've never even seen one before - but, and more importantly, I get to miss the week before half term. Whoop!