First Of The Year

Yr 8 History, E5

My first class for the year and there’s only been about a week of school. Just as I start them off decorating the front cover of their workbooks, a teacher comes in with a class set of books. She tells them their regular teacher will be away for a while. With my permission, she then goes through the syllabus and introduces today’s lesson, which is on The Dark Ages. She leaves, and I hand out the books and sit back as they work quietly.

They’re a typical start of the year junior class: prepared to knuckle down and behave themselves, eager to learn. This is, of course, as good as it ever gets in a school. It can only go downhill from here.

With time on my hands I write out my first list of the year:

10 Literary Themed Pop Songs (and their references)

- Lucy’s Eyes, The Clouds (Wordsworth)
- End of The Night, The Doors (William Blake)
- Calypso, Suzanne Vega (Homer)
- Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush (Emily Bronte)
- The Sensual World, Kate Bush (James Joyce)
- Summertime In England, Van Morrison (Coleridge, Blake, Joyce, Wordsworth, etc)
- Don’t Stand So Close To Me, The Police (a very brief mention of Nabokov!)
- Hey Jack Kerouac, 10,000 Maniacs (Kerouac, Ginsberg, William Burroughs)
- You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Bob Dylan (Rimbaud, Verlaine)

- Dover Beach, The Bangles (TS Eliot)

I came up with this because I seem to have encountered some of these songs lately. 

Meanwhile, a couple of boys in the class are niggling each other. After a warning, I move one of them to the front. He complies meekly. See - discipline’s already getting out of hand!

'Silent' Reading Session

Yr 10 English, T1

A Friday arvo silent reading session. Kids are sitting against the walls reading Mad magazine; some boys are lying on the floor looking at car mags; some kids are actually sitting in their chairs reading actual books.

Rather than involving silence, wide reading in this class seems to involve a lot of talking and social activity – especially chatting about the contents of various magazines doing the rounds. I have to check, particularly with the boys, that they’re not looking at porn.

Despite being reminded yesterday to bring a book (I ought to know – it was me who reminded them) a few students forget to do so. I send them off to the library. Most come back eventually with various reading matter. One bookless boy gives me a note, which reads “Rami cannot borrow. He has lost his library card and has books overdue.”

I wander around the room checking out what they’re reading. I tell the group of boys lying on the floor that they look very comfortable, and would they like a cup of tea? They readily agree. One wag says he’d like some biscuits to go with it.

Some books/magazines/authors the kids are reading:

Girlfriend

Mad magazine

Looking For Alibrandi

A Buffy novel (hey, a kid with good taste!)

Dr Harry Cooper (the tv veterinarian) book

Dolly

Christopher Pike book

Paul Jennings book

Hogan's Heroes

Yr 7 German, C7

Not much to say here, really. A bunch of eager little year sevens. I hadn’t found any work left for them before I came in with them. It was looking bleak. What do I do with them? What do I know about German? Luckily, a teacher comes in just as I settle them down and gives me a pink sheet with the teacher’s planned activity written on it. It says: “Make a word search using the days of the week and months”. That’s it, that’s their work for today. Oh well.

I read out the instructions and they start off happily enough – with the exception of one lad, who yells “boring”. I yell it back to him, which seems to get a laugh from the class and puts him in his place. I call for volunteers to write the words on the board (in German), and a half dozen hands go up enthusiastically. This is one of those emergency teacher’s tricks I’ve learned over the years: make use of their knowledge when your own is lacking.

I let three students – all girls – come up and write the words on the board. One of them writes the days of the week, the other two share writing the months. I’ve told the second girl she can write up six of the months, but she writes up seven, the greedy thing. It’s incredible how much they love any opportunity to write on the board. The German spelling turns out to be rather tricky – is frietag spelled ie or ei? etc – but after some consultation they get it right.

As I do the rounds around the room one student asks me if I’m a German teacher. I tell her no, I only know a few swear words and some words I picked up from watching Hogan’s Heroes. She wants to know some German swear words, but I decline.

Book Of Excuses

Yr 8, PE, Room 10

My period five and six is a double lesson with year eight PE Tennis. The teacher has opted to have me take them for theory. I take them into a computer room and tell them they’re to write a page about their favourite sports and hobbies on Word or Powerpoint, including a picture. It’s a simple enough assignment, but I struggle to get even a couple of sentences out of some of them for the entire two periods – though most do bend to the task eventually.

By the time sixth period comes around there’s really not much for them to do. The teacher has included a backup exercise allowing for the students to ‘research an Australian tennis player of your own choice on the internet and write about them’, but most are content to just read and write emails. A couple of boys do an ‘English’ assignment that requires them to do detailed drawings of old two-seater airplanes using Paint. Later, one of the boys shows me the assignment, including his beautifully detailed airplane – turns out it’s legit!

My main problem in this class is a couple of girls, Renee and Loran, who keep wanting to leave the class. First they want to go to the toilet, then for a drink, and then Renee insists she has to see her sister at the period five break. I joke with them that they probably have a book of excuses that they draw on for inspiration. This seems to inspire them into action, and they spend a few minutes coming up with said book. They show it to me. It says ‘Book of Excuses’ on the cover, and the detailed contents include, among others, the following excuses for leaving the room:

- Need 4 sex

- Need lez kiss

- Horny

- Mother

- See boyfriend

It’s quite amusing. I tell them it’s good, but needs work, pointing out that ‘mother’ doesn’t really mean much – as in, “Can I go out?/Why?/Mother” – Huh? They laugh and go off, to perfect their little project. Later, they ask if they can go to the library to photocopy their masterpiece. I let them go just to get rid of them. Near the end of the class they come back with a nicely photocopied and stapled manuscript of excuses.

Whitlow's Fantasy And Science Fiction Books

Yr 11 Info Tech, A6

I don’t have much in the way of info for this class. Teacher didn’t leave instructions and the only Info Tech teacher I found said they should be working on their ‘outcomes’, whatever they are. I go into the class, tell them “Outcomes, do it”, and they all jump in front of their computer screens. Hey presto!

It turns out their outcome is to design a website or brochure for a fictional shop called Whitlow’s Fantasy and Science Fiction Books. Sounds like fun. One student, Tim, has decided his shop owner will probably have a mullet, so he’s searching the net for a mulleted guy to go on his internet site. He picks a picture of the grottiest-looking mulleted loser he can find.

One student, Reno, who seems a bit more lethargic or distracted than usual, gets up to go to the printer; but he wobbles as he walks, like he’s on drugs or something. I mention on the sly he looks a bit drugged out, but he assures me he’s ‘clean’.

I hate it when students’ work takes them to the internet. They almost always use it to muck around. Apart from remonstrating some students for mucking around on the net, there’s not much for me to do.

Handcuffs

Yr 8 English, room 31

Boy, this is dodgy! Teacher’s notes are “Work on next sheet in English Rules 2”. Only trouble is, as the students saunter in in dribs and drabs, slouching around, it’s apparent none of them have bothered to bring said textbook - and their lockers are far away. I end up with nine students – the rest have either left the room without permission or are on the year eight camp. To make things worse, this class is in one of the rattiest-looking portables in the school, and it’s situated at an extreme edge of the school, as though it’s been quarantined.

Most of the students sit up the back. There’s one girl, Melanie, who sits alone up front. She’s busy drawing all over the table with yellow highlighter. When I ask her to clean it up she replies quietly, venomously, that she can’t. Her attitude is sarcastic, hostile; I sense enormous angst due to the fact that she’s a loner in the class. I figure it’s better to mostly leave her alone. I have to speak to her again later when I find her cutting up bits of the table with her scissors, but she eventually settles down to watching the antics of the other students.

Two boys, Joel and Kevin, are holding court in the corner of the room, regaling anyone who listens – and they talk so loudly no one has a choice – about possible careers they’d like to have: these include astronaut, pizza deliverer and porno star.

A girl tells me that another girl would have been in class but she had been handcuffed by some boy to a pole and couldn’t get away.

Two girls get a bit antsy and wander around the room. One of them asks me why I’m not getting them to do any work or at least something to pass the time. Exasperated, I reply I’m not there to entertain them, and that they had work to do but no one could be bothered to bring it; so I’m just sitting this one out.

Normally in this situation I’d hand out some word finds or puzzles or something, but I didn’t bring any. I know it’s silly – I’m an English teacher, why don’t I just teach them some English? – but you really have to know it’s hopeless giving students almost any work that’s not from their actual teacher. You have to be a real charismatic raconteur-cum-entrepreneur to pull it off, and that’s not me.

The class comes near to an end - and guess what? – that girl who’s supposedly been handcuffed to a pole comes in. And she has one end of a pair of handcuffs on her arm! Unbelievable.

Most of the students head out the door well before the bell. I could yell and rant and rave for them to stay, but I can’t be bothered, and I wonder how affective it’d be anyway. The few that obediently remain include, strangely enough, Melanie, the sulky loner. When I see it’s getting too much for them and they’re champing at the bit, I release them a couple of minutes before the bell. Gives me just enough time to clean the room up. When the bell finally goes, I walk out decorously, like nothing much has happened - just a normal day at this strange, strange country school.

Media Class

Yr 11 Media, R8/24

Oh my god, it’s Media Studies, a subject I’m actually competent and qualified to teach! Usually it’s stuff like Woodwork, Maths or PE.

The students have a choice of three activities: storyboard, cd covers and news report. Most students want to do the cd covers since it requires using the computers, but the room they’re in doesn’t have them. Typical. There was a room swap due to exams in their usual room, which has the computers.

The teacher’s notes include the following, to do with the news report activity:

“They may wish to look around the school for suitable scenes as the whole lot must be filmed in the school.”

Oh yeah, they’ll love that I think – an opportunity to wander around the school, bludging in the guise of ‘research’. I don’t mention it.

I go around the room speaking to each group (there’s three of them, from only eleven students) helping them with their storyboards and news reports. The basic activity seems sound – they are to present two different versions of the same news report, one looking at an issue in a positive light, the other in a negative light.

One group of girls are doing their news report on a fashion show. I’m thinking it’s not a very hard-hitting issue to cover, but typical of young girls, and maybe there’s an opportunity to cover it in terms of body image and stereotype. But the girls aren’t interested – they hardly know what I’m talking about; they see the issue as just being about good clothes and bad clothes. 

The second period is pretty much more of the same, but we’re now in Room 24 and I let some of the more responsible students use the computers. Some of the boys have sneaked out their Diskmans on the way down and are listening to what sounds like techno crap. I let them - it seems to keep them happy. It’s much better than having a class of bored, restless students. We ride out the rest of the period relatively unscathed.

School Camps

Yr 7 PE, A9

I have four students. The reason being that they’ve just finished a three-day camp yesterday, it’s a school sports day today, and tomorrow’s a public holiday. I guess after all that the parents figured, why bother? The teacher’s instructions say “Probably no one. Try Workbook p15”. I abandon that idea and just spend the time talking to the kids, asking them how the camp went, etc.

I’ve got Dylan, Scott, Hayley and Kimberly. Dylan’s a bit of a rebel: he tells me about the various adventures he got up to on the camp, including raids on the other huts and disturbing the animals on their visit to Healesville Sanctuary. The girls enthuse about the animals they got to touch – wombats, koalas, emus, even a snake. Scott’s a fairly straight, sensible kid. He asks to go to his locker and get a book. He doesn’t participate so much in the conversation.

I try relating some of my own stories about camps I’ve been on, but they don’t seem to be interested in what I have to say. Can’t say I blame them, but it’s strange how a lot of the older students can’t seem to stop asking me questions when I have them.

So anyway, I find out lots about this camp. There was square-dancing (Dylan tells me he and a mate dressed up as girls in mini-skirts); one student got injured mucking around on a trampoline (typical); the food was okay but the eggs were like custard (one boy kept eating everyone else’s vegetables); and the teachers woke the students up with their constant noise in the early hours of the morning (hmm, it’s usually the other way around!).

Nice Jumper

Yr 10 Math, A5

I’m about ten minutes late for class! The reason being that I thought I had year 8 Music, which is actually the next period. It’s okay though: I get to the class and the kids have seated themselves and are working quietly. I write some instructions on the board: ‘Finish 5.4, 5.5. Review questions 1 – 6.’ Oh-oh, they’ve started to muck around! No time to write, gotta sort this out…

I’m back. It was Andre, he was taking off the edging from around his table. He broke a bit off and used it as a sword to prod others. I stood in front of him and made him put it all back.

Now some girls are playing up, fighting each other. I think they’re doing it for my benefit. One of them, Amber, is always saying hello to me when I see her. She’s very friendly and we get along well. I go over to them and chastise them. I warn Amber I’ll move her if she continues. She smiles, touches my jumper and says, “It feels nice.” Megan, her friend, laughs. I tell her it’s just a woollen jumper and go back to my desk.

Almost all of them are getting restless now. It’s not surprising: the reports are all done and they have work experience next week. There’s not much time left so I give in and let them do what they want. Alenushka (yes, that’s her name!) decides to see what’s going on in the room adjoining this one. She parts the flimsy rollback door and talks to the teacher next door.

Meanwhile, Andre’s fighting with his mate Derek. I tell them both to go outside and sort out their problems. They leave laughing and incredulous. I wonder if I did the right thing.  What if they really start fighting out there? Was I irresponsible? They come back in soon after, it looks like they’ve worked out their problems.

Just enough time for a quick Top 5. Oh, by the way, High Fidelity was on tv the other night, and I watched it again. Such a great flick. It speaks so eloquently to anal, list-making music obsessives like me.

Top 5 Sci Fi books (one per author)

The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Martian Time-Slip – Philip Dick
A Canticle For Leibowitz – Walter Miller Jr
An Alien Heat – Michael Moorcock

I had to make this one per author, otherwise they’d probably all be Ursula Le Guin’s (my favourite author). Not a bad list, for short notice. It’ll do for now.

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