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.
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