The Night Tolkien Died

Yr 9 Maths, T2

They have a worksheet on Index Laws, whatever they are – something about simplifying algebra equations (I was never a good maths student!). I start off by reminding the students that, contrary to popular opinion, when I show up that does not mean there’s no work. I hold up the worksheets they are to do as evidence, and say “I have it here”. I then say “But it looks like it’s pretty easy, so if you finish quickly then you can have a bludge.” This seems to satisfy them and they settle down to work.

Before long a couple of boys have finished. One requests to go to his locker to get a book to read. The other wants to go to the library to get a book he has had on order for two months. He’s champing at the bit to go, but I say no, telling him he can surely wait a couple of hours. He pleads, so I make a deal with him: if I’ve read it or I know the book I’ll let him go. It turns out it is a book I know, if haven’t read – Soldier Boy, by Anthony Hill. He goes.

I receive the pink roll sheet that the students have been passing around and writing their names on. Some wag has included as part of the class Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussain, Hitler, plus George W Bush and Tony Blair. I remark that it’s all correct – they’re all bad guys. Some kids question this, but I stand my ground.

The other boy comes back from his locker with a book, The Night Tolkien Died. I’m intrigued, so I ask to look at it. I tell the boy to go away so I can read the title story. He seems a bit indignant, but complies. I happily pass the time browsing through the book till the bell.

Cinema Show

Yr 7 PE, C7

This is kinda interesting: I have a tag-team situation with Kate, a scrumptiously gorgeous substitute (unfortunately, married) who I’ve known for a while on the rounds. We’re instructed to show a video (Harry Potter) to our respective groups. I go down the gym to round them up while Kate sets the video up in the designated classroom. When I finally get them to the room Kate has set it out beautifully, with chairs all arranged in order like a cinema. I make a quip about popcorn being for sale in the foyer, and Kate joins in, saying something about programmes being available.

We encounter our first glitch when the video machine doesn’t seem to play the tape properly – it keeps stopping. I volunteer to get the other machine in a room nearby. It’s locked up in a cupboard, but I quickly gain the keys. Problem is, once I’ve opened the padlock I still can’t open the door – the latch has been bent by some hoon. I go off to the tech department in search of a hammer. Eventually, after some hammering, I get the door open and roll the new machine into the waiting class, where Kate has been keeping the kids occupied with a few rounds of Celebrity Heads.

Kate tries the tape again and it turns out the problem is with the tape – it doesn’t play properly! I volunteer again to go off in search of a different tape – any tape – amidst sundry, mostly unrealistic suggestions from the students about what to get. I go to the staffroom next door and find Back To The Future. Good enough! I’m back before Kate has got her game of Celebrity Heads well under way, and we finally settle down to watch the film. It’s nearly fifteen minutes before the end of the first period when the movie starts. Luckily, it’s a double period for us. The kids complain predictably about my choice of movie, but it keeps them occupied until the end of the second period.

What a lot of mucking around just to show one bloody video!

Jelly Lick Aerobics

Yr 8 Aerobics, Room 11

It’s a class of young aerobics girls. They have to write up a report about their recent trip to an aerobics presentation at Melbourne College. They seem like a nice bunch of friendly girls and most set to the task, albeit noisily. I chat amiably with the girls sitting in front of me.

To my surprise, one girl up the back gets out a packet of jelly crystals and starts licking up a handful like sugar. Before long other girls are grabbing handfuls and doing the same. So I’m sitting here watching a bunch of young girls sticking out their long tongues lapping up jelly crystals like thirsty kittens. Just hold that picture for a second…

I make some brief notes for this afternoon while they work and/or lick: ‘Buy cereal, cash check, scan more photos, listen to girlsongs, watch Brides of Christ and Jamie’s Kitchen tape.’ Jeez, how mundane! Anyway, the girlsongs thing is in aid of a sixties girl group compilation I’m compiling. I’ve got the best of the Shangri-Las, the Chiffons, the Shirelles, the Angels, the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Dixie Cups and more. It’s gonna kick ass!

The licking ends and most get back to work. One girl up front speculates to her friend what having this class of loud, giggling girls must be like for me. She suggests a nightmare. I think to myself, well, I think something else...

I write up some Buffy lists:

Top 5 Buffy Villians

Spike
Angelus
Glory
The Master
The Gentlemen

Top 5 Buffy Babes

Buffy
Willow
Faith
Kennedy
Dawn

I wanted to include Anya here (I liked her in the early days), but I’ve kind of gone off her lately. God, what am I gonna do when the show ends? Is there a Buffy withdrawal service somewhere?

Typing Tutor

Yr 10 Keyboarding, E3

I’ve got a Keyboarding group, they’re all – or most of them – using some fancy typing tutor. Boy, keyboarding’s come a long way from when I used to do it and we had real type writers. The typing program these kids are using has all these whizz-bang special effects and animations happening to keep the little darlings happy while they type what it tells them to type. They can choose from all kinds of funny background scenarios, like sharks and cowboys, and there’s one where a starship blows up various objects in space, depending on whether the kids get their typing right.

Even so, some kids aren’t happy, they think it’s boring. Typical. I have to keep an eye on some of them, who are trying to sneak onto the internet, while others are sneaking goes at a paint program and others are playing Mario. I speak to the Mario players, who say they’re just having a break. I let them go – I can see they have been working.

A girl on the other side of the room complains about the Mario players (ie: how come they get to play games, while we work). I tell you, it doesn’t matter what you do, someone’s always gonna be unhappy.

I walk past an unattended computer which has the screen saver on. It’s a revolving text message that loops and twists around the screen, changing colours and size as it goes. It says ‘Lesbian Muff’.

Me And The Captain

Year 11 Maths, B10

Well, this is weird: I turn up to class, but the students don’t. I check the timetable, in case I got it wrong, but no, this is where they should be. I go looking for them – the library, the gym, etc – but all the year elevens I find say they’ve got a spare. For all I know some of them were my students pretending not to be – I wouldn’t know, I haven’t even got a class list. I go back to class where it’s still empty. Suits me; makes for a nice easy class and I’m still getting paid for it. It is boring though sitting here in an empty classroom, so I write up a list.

Top 10 Captain Beefheart tunes

Moonlight On Vermont
Big-eyed Beans From Venus
Dirty Blue Gene
The Blimp
Neon Meat Dream of a Octafish
Abba Zaba
Tropical Hot Dog Night
Ashtray Heart
Sue Egypt
Old Fart At Play

Love the Captain. I’m planning on doing my own Beefheart-esque tunes soon, using lyrics taken from stuff I’ve written in class about students I know. A couple of titles so far are ‘Nickel Rose’ and ‘Nay OmiO’.

The monotony is broken by a couple of year seven girls acting as roll monitors. They stand uncertainly at the door, not sure if they should come in. I tell them my students have run away. They’re amazed. While I write down the entry in the roll one girl writes something on the blackboard. It says: “Brooke is gay, very gay.”

Lesbians

Year 10 VET (private study), T2

Pretty laidback class. About half of my twelve students are doing some study, the rest are, well, bludging. My job is basically to babysit. Shweeeet! It’s a free-dress day too. Most of the kids are wearing jeans, sneakers and sports tops. Exchanging one uniform for another really.

You should have seen the kids in my last class: years sevens, and some of them were dressed up to the nines. One little girl, Sinead, was wearing a sophisticated little gold party top with plunging neckline (plunging into very little!) and spaghetti straps. One of her friends said she was trying to impress her boyfriend. That’ll do it, I thought to myself – but said to her it wasn’t very appropriate for school. Ah well, they’re year sevens – what do you expect?

Anyway, back to this class, check it out - a couple of girls have spent most of the period in each other’s arms. They’re either lesbians or very comfortable with each other. One of the boys, Aaron, asks them if he can ‘watch’. One of them, Blair, says “Join us”. Aaron enthusiastically runs over, but he’s only pretending; he knows she doesn’t really mean it.

God, look at them: now the other, Renee, is leaning her head on Blair’s breasts, which are covered by a flimsy white low-cut top. Oh baby…I know this seems like weird behaviour for a classroom, but believe me, really it’s not. The kids don’t even expect me to say something to them about it, and I don’t. I mean, it’s only ‘private study’.

Another girl, Kristin, is starting to play around with some hard lollies she’s brought to class. They’re those little round sour-balls covered in coconut. She’s throwing them around, trying to get them in the bin, which is behind me. She knows it’s annoying me but she doesn’t care, and frankly, neither do I. She takes great delight in calling them her “hairy balls”.

Breakfast Cereal Boxes

Year 8 PE, Room 11

They’ve got theory, or something like that, so I’ve put them in a classroom. The work left by the teacher is an activity where the kids are to design their own breakfast cereal box. Weird, huh? The kids don’t seem to mind, and get to dreaming up various ideas and drawing them. One kid’s got a cereal made of worms, another one insists on a design that incorporates a picture of a certain teacher.

A couple of girls come in late and I just give them the work and leave them alone. A student later tells me they’re actually not supposed to be in this class and should be sent away. I tell him I don’t care, just as long as they’re occupied somewhere then it shouldn’t matter. When the girls realise I know they’re not supposed to be there and I don’t care, the joke they’re playing seems to lose it’s appeal, and they decide to leave. One of the girls tells me, “You’re a strange man.” I take it as a compliment.

"Go Back To Your Caravan Park!"

Year 10 Politics, Room 31

They’ve got bookwork on Federation. I send a student off to the library to get the class set and I start writing the teacher’s questions and page references on the blackboard.

It’s gonna be a difficult one, I can tell. I’m in this pokey little portable out in the middle of nowhere – not very conducive for study - and I’ve already had to yell at a couple of students for bringing food into class. The two students, both girls, happily share a chocolate bar, despite my threats. I tell them they’ve got detentions, but they obviously don’t give a shit.

So anyway, the books come and I start distributing them around. When I get to the chocolate-eaters one of them, Annie, objects to the way I toss the book at her, like I’m supposed to hand it to her on a pillow. We have some words and I move on. Little bitch, she has no intention of looking at the book anyway. The girls at this table all glare at me and I can tell it’ll be uphill getting any work out of them.

The class settles down for a while as I continue writing questions on the board and do the roll. I have to yell at the other chocolate-eater, Ashleigh, for throwing her wrapper on the floor. Geez these kids are such slobs! I’ve got maybe half the class working. Three boys come in late and sit down silently in front of me, as though coming in late is expected of them. They offer no explanations when I ask for one. I leave it. I just don’t have the willpower to lock horns with them.

I guess I should say at this point that the year tens at this school really are a hand-full. They were horrible as year nines, horrible as year eights, and yes, horrible as year sevens too. But they seem much worse now, because they’re older and more hardened and far less friendly. They’re like a bunch of rabid dogs.

I decide to give the chocolate-eating girls another try. In the course of telling an increasingly aggressive Annie that I’m only doing my job she calls me a name. She keeps yelling at me, calling me all kinds of nasty things. I tell her to leave the room, but she refuses to go. She keeps yelling at me, so I eventually crack it and yell back at her “Why don’t you go back to your caravan park?” There’s a moment of stunned silence, followed by a “What did you say?” from Annie. I tell her she heard what I said.

Then it gets worse. She goes right off the deep end: I’m a “fuckin’ this, fuckin that”, etc.

After a further war of words I leave the room to get the teacher in the portable next door, who I know is a senior teacher and who’ll be able to sort her out. I bring him in and, seeing who it is, Annie storms out.

I tell the kids left that the show’s over and try to settle them back down. It’s hard going, and I find I’ve now got just about everybody against me. One of Annie’s friends, Rebecca, starts in on me now, being as cheeky and rude as she can possibly be. I figure she wants to join Annie, so I decide not to send her out as well. This just means that I’m stuck with her for the rest of the class, and she tries to be as vindictive as possible towards me, to get back at me for what I did to her friend, I suppose. It’s like she’s Annie’s lieutenant or something and she’s taking over her role. We exchange some more words and eventually things settle down.

I sit and simmer and try to calm down, as though this hasn’t affected me. But it has: my hands are trembling. When the bell goes I don’t even look up to see what Rebecca’s doing. If I did and she said something nasty on the way out I think I’d kill her. I get up and look at the blackboard. It’s only half-filled with the questions I wrote up. I didn’t get to finish writing them all.

I can’t describe just how much a shitty class like this takes it out of you as a teacher. I feel drained, pissed off and ashamed that I let my anger get the better of me. So much of this job’s about control – control of the students and self-control. The way I feel at the moment I don’t want to come back to this school. I don’t know if I could face these little year ten shits again.

It eventually passes and I do come back; but I always live in dread of getting that class again.

The Fab List

Yr 9 English, C6

All-boy class. The boys are supposed to do some textbook work on the Henry Lawson story The Loaded Dog. I bring the books but they insist they want to do their magazine assignment instead. I give in, knowing they’ll probably bludge. It's a pity, coz I love that Lawson story. They’re a rough bunch, but I get on reasonably well with them – as long as I’m not making them do too much work.

One boy, Jarrod, shows me his magazine. It’s a bike magazine. I open the cover and see an ad for shoes featuring little pictures of shoes barely covering the nipples of some girl who’s picture he got off the internet. I tell him, “Very subliminal.” The rest of the boys are pretty much bludging.

After I've re-read the story to myself there’s not much else to do but listen to the boys’ lurid conversations, so I do a list. This is one I’ve been thinking about for a little while. The idea is to think of all the most important pop music artists since The Beatles – and starting with The Beatles. It’s a list not just of the most important artists of the various pop eras, but rather, a list of the groups and artists who made their times ‘fab’, as exemplified by The Fabs themselves. All according to my own tastes, of course.

Fab artists through time:

1964 – 65: The Beatles

1966: Bob Dylan/The Byrds

1967 – 68: The Beatles/The Kinks/The Rolling Stones

1969: The Velvet Underground/The Band

1970 – 71: Led Zeppelin

1972 – 73: David Bowie

1974: Paul McCartney (Wings)/Elton John

1975 – 76: Abba

1977: Sex Pistols

1978: The Bee Gees

1979 – 80: The Clash

1981: AC-DC/Thin Lizzy

1982 – 83: Culture Club/Human League

1984 – 85: The Smiths

1986: Guns n Roses

1987: Go Betweens/U2

1988 – 90: REM

1991 – 93: Nirvana

1994: Pearl Jam

1995: Blur

1996: Oasis

1997 – 98: The Spice Girls

1999: The Verve

2000: Travis

2001 – 2002: Coldplay

…So, what do you think of that? And, yes, I do mean it about The Spice Girls! They truly made their era Fab. What artists have been fab this year?

Lurid Holiday Stories

Yr 7 English, A1

It’s the first class of the first day of fourth term. No work has been left for the little darlings, so I write up my own made up on-the-spot lesson on the board:

1. 15 mins talk about what you did on the holidays.
2. Write about what you did on the holidays, the highlights, the lowlights, etc.

Predictable, I know, but always a reliable post-holiday starter. Most of the kids are noisy, but most get down to the work soon enough. I go around the room encouraging kids to write. I get the usual “I didn’t do anything” responses. They’re either just being lazy or lack imagination. One girl up the front has no such problems – she’s powering away writing about her camping trip.

One little girl, decked out in eye shadow and shiny lip gloss, enthusiastically tells me she got her navel pierced. Her dad apparently wasn’t happy because she didn’t tell him, and so was grounded for the rest of the holiday. She and her friend then tell me about their car trip to a shopping mall and how they almost made a car full of guys nearly crash on the way. I start to wonder what they could have been doing to cause that, when one of their friends gives me a graphic demonstration of them simulating oral sex with her thumb and fingers. It’s amazing really: these are twelve year old girls already testing their sexual powers over men and enjoying it immensely.

Another girl, Casey, wants me to read what she’s written. It’s a lurid and badly spelled account of various trips to the cinema with friends and a hopefully imaginary account of a dalliance with her ‘boyfriend’ in someone’s bedroom. She comes up and asks me what I thought of it. I tell her it’s a “nice fantasy”. She says she particularly liked the bedroom bit. I’ll bet.

Lists

Yr 12, Physics, A2

Very quiet class. Only eight students and they're doing a SAC, which entails writing up an "extended investigation". I've got them for the first of double period. This is sweet: no little recalcitrants running around being noisy and giving cheek. I spend the time writing up some top 10 lists. I know it stamps me as incredibly 'old school' and just a touch nerdy, but I don't care.

Top 10 Twentieth Century Novels
Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Ulysses, James Joyce
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
1984, George Orwell
My Brother Jack, George Johnstone
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Watership Downs, Richard Adams

Top 10 Nineteenth Century Novels
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoievsky
Huck Finn, Mark Twain
Tess of the Durbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

Top 10 Sixties Albums
Arthur, The Kinks
The White Album, The Beatles
Blonde On Blonde, Bob Dylan
The Band, The Band
Beggar's Banquet, The Rolling Stones
The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground and Nico
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Younger Than Yesterday, The Byrds
Gilded Palace of Sin, The Flying Burrito Brothers
Dusty In Memphis, Dusty Springfield
Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix

Top 10 Seventies Albums
Muswell Hillbillies, The Kinks
Blood On The Tracks, Bob Dylan
Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin
Number One Record, Big Star
Tapestry, Carol King
Tea For The Tillerman, Cat Stevens
Cosmo's Factory, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John
Never Mind The Bollocks, The Sex Pistols
Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones

The Gap

Year 11 English, C5

I write the things they have to do on the board: Journal, Vocab, Write out speech, Video review. It should keep them busy. It doesn't! Well, the good kids are working, but the rest aren't. Strange, considering it's getting towards the end of their term - they should have heaps of work. Oh well.
The room has a curtained partition to the next room and it doesn't close properly. Spitballs are being thrown in and out of the gap. It's becoming a war. I move my offenders to the front, but the spitballs keep coming through. Will the teacher in the next class please control her students! Fat chance: it's Tatiana, a weird old European biddy with woolly blonde hair who's just riding out the job till retirement.
I can't believe these boys: they're so feral! I don't know if it's just a natural outcome of their being hormonal year eleven boys, or that they've had a few bongs this morning, or maybe both. The stupid foghorn noises they make, the obscene comments and gestures. They're talking about Saturday night parties, and they think they're still there. One boy's now saying to a girl, "I don't care, I'll kill both your babies," by way of insult. I would never dare talk like that when I was a teenager. There's something about their incredibly uninhibited freedom of expression; I'm kind of envious. Life's a party to them.

Sex Organs Sheet

Yr 8 Health, E8

It’s another one of those wacky sex ed classes. I have a bunch of handouts to give the kids. There are two sheets of diagrams outlining the male and female sex organs, and another set of sheets with labelled cross-sections of same that the students are to cut out and glue over the appropriate sections of the diagram sheets. I’m provided with glue sticks and scissors, and the students are ready for some fun.

I start handing out diagram sheets. At first it’s random: some kids get the male diagram first, while others get the female diagram. But it becomes fairly obvious early on that most kids want to start with an opposite sex sheet. One girl enthusiastically yells out “I want a penis!” From then on the innuendos come thick and fast, and the class begins to sound like a Benny Hill skit.

The exercise goes quite well, if a bit messy – glue starts getting everywhere. The boys in particular seem intent on using as much of it as possible, and at the end of the class many of the glue sticks are empty. I wonder why?

Skye Boat Song

Yr 8 Indonesian, C7

This is the same group as the Ella Rae class. But Ella Rae, and a number of other trouble-makers, aren’t here. Great! Must be because it’s the day before the Melbourne Cup weekend holidays and they’re having an early start. The ones who are left are fairly friendly and ready to work.

The work is a crossword handout on words to do with ‘family’. Their teacher has even helpfully put the Indonesian translations on the back of the sheet. All but one of the kids twigs early that the answers are on the back of the sheet. Only after quite a while does the clueless one finally realise his oversight, and slaps his forehead in frustration – all that work for nothing! It’s funny.

Some girls finish and start playing one of those schoolyard hand-clapping games. The routine they do is pretty complicated and they do it flawlessly. Across the room some other girls finish and, influenced by the other girls, try the game themselves. But they’re pretty inept and they end up with something that looks like patty-cake patty-cake. Again, it’s funny.

One of the experts is a lovely creature named Skye. She starts telling me, apropos of nothing, that her parents named her after an island. She seems to think it’s dumb. By way of cheering her up I tell her how the island of Skye is a favourite Scots holiday destination and that there’s a song about it – Skye Boat Song. I manage to refrain from singing a few bars. Skye asks me how I liked the recent student performance of The Crucible. She knows I saw it because I bought my ticket off her. She was hawking them outside the canteen and told me her older sister was in the play and I had to see it. I simply couldn’t refuse her. I tell her I liked it, but missed her sister. She was apparently sharing her role with another student on alternate nights. I’m being genuine about liking the production. The students really rose to the intensity levels demanded by the play. Skye’s friend, Tegan, adds that her cousin was in the play too.

It occurs to me while we’re talking that the girls are probably intentionally diverting me from giving them more work to do. I don’t mind. I know my job is to act as a kind of safety valve for the students. With me, they can blow off some steam, or maybe talk about things they probably would never talk about to their regular teachers. It can be a holiday from school for them. Kind of like a trip to Skye.

Ella Rae

Yr 8 Health, E3

It’s Health, which in this case means Sex Ed. I’m provided with an overhead projector and a transparency worksheet featuring various sex ed words and their meanings all jumbled up. Unfortunately I can’t enlarge the sheet too much, so the students can’t see it too well. I ask the ones at the back to come to the front to get a closer look, but some are too ‘cool’ to do it. I decide to dictate the sheet to the class. This requires me to yell out things like ‘nocturnal emission’ and ‘scrotum’ and give their meanings. The students, of course, are loving this.

There are a few trouble makers in this class, and I start to have to deal with them. A couple of girls start crawling around on the floor and under the benches. I send one of them outside for a few minutes. Another student – Tom, who has ADD – has started wandering around the class. I try to keep him in his seat and concentrating on the lesson, but it’s hard when the lesson’s pretty much over.

Another student – Ella Rae – who hasn’t tried to do any of the work, is noisily holding court with her ‘followers’, so I send her out to join the other student. I eventually let the other student back in, but Ella Rae wants to come in too. I tell her to wait her turn, but she keeps sneaking back into class. I get frustrated with this, so I end up shoving her outside, which causes some kind of scandal among the other students – oh my god, you pushed her! etc. Ella Rae and a couple of her mates go up to the office to “tell on me”.

I settle the rest of the students down, but some keep throwing accusations and threats at me. This is turning into a really ‘fun’ class. I tell them I’m not worried, since I intend to tell the Deputy Principal about what happened (which is usually required when you ‘touch’ a student). They seem to think I intend to say I didn’t push Ella Rae, and so they say they can all report me, since they all saw what happened. But I set them straight that I have no intention of denying pushing her, and they seem satisfied with that.

After the class, I see the DP and explain the situation. He’s sympathetic and just tells me to be careful with that group in the future, suggesting that I let him know when I next have them so he can come in and settle them down if he has to.

Kathryn

Yr 10, English, Room 22

They're doing book work. Very rowdy class. There are about three social groupings, all sitting together in large table formations, chatting away. I try to break them up, but meet stiff resistance. I settle with a compromise: they can stay together if they do their work. This meets with varying success. In one group they're writing notes to each other. One girl, a pretty blonde called Kathryn, has a note that she's folded into an aeroplane. Her friends insist she's written it for me. They're keen for me to read it, but I take it, screw it up and leave it on my table.
God, the things they talk about! I catch snatches of dialogue from the large group of boys and girls - something about how one of the girls likes licking hairy balls (!?).
Some boys at the back of the class have thrown two paper balls at me. I didn't see it, but I pick out my two likeliest subjects and send them off to the co-ordinator. They laugh it off. The girl, Kathryn, is crying now because her 'friends' keep picking on her about her notes. She runs out, upset. The friends follow her later to apologise. They come back, but Kathryn doesn't. More papers are being thrown around now by the boys sitting up the back. I suspect one of them was the real culprit who hit me earlier.
The room's looking a mess by the end, so I get the boys at the back to pick up papers. Others are getting out of their chairs in preparation for the bell. It's getting out of hand. I stand by the door to stop them from pushing out, but there's a side door at the back that leads to the next room and some have already escaped through it. I keep calm and let the rest out at the bell. It's a war of nerves, this job. The room is still a mess, with papers and chairs strewn about. I see the note that Kathryn wrote still on the table. I look at it. It says, in blue texta, "Will u fuck me? Kathryn".

Pride And Prejudice

Yr 8 English, C1

It’s an all-girl class: one of those nice cosy little groups that senior female teachers like to give themselves. The classroom’s also cosy, with a well-ordered desk; and there’s even a couch that the students love to sit on when they get the chance (ie: when I’m not looking). I have the video of Pride and Prejudice, and I’m to show them the first episode. This is great: I’m an avid Austen fan, and I love that show! A couple of girls share my delight when I tell them what they’re going to see. It’s all so girly. I’m tempted to yell ‘Who’s for a round of hockey?’

The video machine proves difficult to get working, and while I’m fiddling with it I worry that the girls will get restless, but they’re little angels – except for one girl, Nicole, who insists on playing hairdresser to her friend. She stands behind her combing and playing with her hair.

I finally get the tape going and settle down to watch Lizzie and Darcy do their thing. Nicole’s still playing hairdresser, but when I ask her to stop she just says she can watch the show and still do her friend’s hair. Who am I to argue? Another girl, Edel, tells Nicole she’s ugly, just to be spiteful. I almost tell her she isn’t, that she’s pretty (which she is) but catch myself just in time. That’s a whole can of worms I don’t want to open! Nicole doesn’t seem to care anyway. She continues braiding hair, quietly unfazed.

I proceed to give a commentary on the story, mentioning how Darcy represents pride and Lizzie represents prejudice. Someone asks “What’s prejudice?” I say “Look it up in a dictionary”. It occurs to me that one of the enthusiastic girls is a dead-ringer for the actress who plays Jane in the show. She’s just a younger version of her. It’s uncanny. I wonder if she realises.

This is really one of the nice classes. It’s actually a double period for them, but unfortunately for me, due to the vagaries of juggled timetables, I have a different class second half. When the bell rings I’m sad to go.

Fireworks

Yr 9 Science, E8

They have book work. I write the page and exercise references on the board. A couple of students, boys, come up to me at the start and tell me their technology teacher will be taking his class out to the nearby oval soon and set off some rockets they’ve made. The boys ask if they can go outside to watch when it happens. I say okay. In fact, I figure I’ll take the whole class out when the time comes. I know it’ll be pointless trying to keep them on task when the fireworks go off just outside their window.

They work pretty steadily. I wander around the room. A student I go past wants me to have a look at some lyrics he’s downloaded from the internet. What he’s doing with them in class, I don’t know; but he seems quite absorbed in them. He tells me they’re about the September 11 disaster, and asks me if I know who wrote them. I have a look and tell him they seem to be the lyrics of The Rising, by Bruce Springsteen. The boy asks me about Springsteen, speculating “Does he play the rock stuff?” “Yes, he does play ‘the rock stuff’”, I reply in profound understatement. I can’t understand why he didn’t know anyway, since he downloaded it - but no matter. I can’t believe he doesn’t know any of Bruce’s stuff. I mention Born To Run, but it draws a blank.

It’s time to take the class out and see the rockets go off. We go out and most of us sit on the embankment overlooking the oval. It’s a pleasant sunny morning. The technology teacher takes his class of boys out to the centre of the oval and they set up their rockets. Each of the boys who made a rocket gets to wire it up to the detonator and set it off. They go off spectacularly. Soon, the other two classes on this side of the school have joined my mob on the embankment, enjoying the distractions.

I chat with one of the other teachers. We’re enjoying the break from work. But the other teacher from the class at the far end, she’s not happy. She’s obviously uneasy at the prospect of having to take her kids outside for something as frivolous as this, when they should be working. She fidgets and frets and looks on disapprovingly. Some teachers just don’t know how to relax.

Our fireworks show finally ends, with little or no loss of limb or life, and we trudge happily back inside to wait for the bell for recess.