Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 October 2004 16:05:51
OK, so now I'm even more p***** off.
I had a horrible lesson with Year 6 yet again today. Fourteen behavourally challenging children in one class (no, that's a lie, as there are two who are lovely, poor things) is just too too much. I have them for an hour a day every day for maths and whereas they were making good progress in a group of seven, the seven additions I have had to the group have totally disrupted it. Not that their behaviour is particularly worse than the other half - just that they now all spark each other off, and they each demand individual attention which is too much to stretch myself between. They won't do their homework, they throw a paddy if you so much as look at them (one today refused to work at all because I wouldn't let him work in pen. In the previous lesson he refused to work because he had been asked not to work in pencil!), they are rude to your face (one gave me a clear two finger gesture today and then pretended he was counting on his fingers!), they make animal noises, they flick their pencils across the table, and won't do any work unless you are sitting right alongside them to "help" them - regardless of how easy the task.
I was at school two hours longer than I should have been, and had to cancel meeting my friend for lunch, just to write up all the paperwork to report it.
I met the deputy as I was heading for the front door with my coat on. No comment on the fact I was still there way into the afternoon. A cheery "oh, are you feeling the cold?" Her response to them being confrontational about homework: "Have you tried just not giving them any, or making it voluntary?" Her response to the chaos that their lessons are: "Well, other teachers have to teach them too, you know" and her best suggestion "Maybe your classroom helper could take two of them out and work with them one-to-one". Great, and just leave me with the rest of the little darlings and no help.
I decided to go to bed and try to sleep it off this afternoon and was woken by the phone ringing. It's the head. He commiserates with me about the class, and explains that he has the same problem with a number of them being in his French class, albeit diluted by twenty five hard workers and him only having five of my fourteen in there. I feel heard, and appreciated, and reassured - although he didn't have any good ideas for solutions, except to say that they're looking at making his French group smaller!
Then he finishes his phone call with two little asides:
Tomorrow we have a training day. I am only contracted to work mornings and was wondering whether to leave at midday or to ask if I could be paid for the afternoon. He informed me that he expects me to be there and hopefully it won't run too late. No chance of pay, though. He just expects me to be there and will be extremely displeased if I am not. And his justification for no pay is?.......
.... his other point. Three weeks ago I was booked on a course. It was a Saturday course, and I was paying my respite carer £60 to have my boys for the day so that I could go. It had been my idea to enroll for the course, and I'd found out all the details and made the arrangements, with the head's approval, even though it was a Saturday from 9-3 and they weren't even providing lunch! On the Friday afternoon my son was sent home sick from school - vomitting and with a horrendous headache and a high temperature which continued through the night and into the next day. I had to ring up and cancel the course. Because I dropped out at the last minute, the school was billed the £30 they had paid for me to go. So I owe the school that money.
Thus ended the phone call, made to reassure me after a pretty stressful morning. Gee, thanks boss. It makes me feel really glad that I struggled back into school with my poorly tummy and incredibly painful earache this week. This is SUCH a rewarding job!
OK, rant over. Normal service will be resumed.