Citizenship... Urgh!

One of my pastoral responsibilities is to teach Citizenship to my form group, which is interesting to say the least.

Picture the scene: It's last lesson on a Friday afternoon, the scent of weekend hangs heavy in the air, all the children want to do is escape and I'm there telling them about elections and democracy. Bear in mind they won't be voting, in the unlikely event they actually choose to, for at least another four years. This combined with the fact we drift aimlessly from one week to the next make it all a bit of a joke, as I'd come to expect from this school.

The one consolation is that I'm only trapped there for an hour, but there's a limit to how much "informed discussion" you can coax from a bunch of hormonal teens in that hour. They're at that age where they answer everything with a grunt, akin to some primitive creature lurking in a Star Warsian swamp. This, combined with the distraction of imminent escape, make constructive dialogue virtually impossible.

I suppose our aim is to manufacture a generation of informed thinkers, with awareness of their civil responsibilities and who challenge wrongdoing. But any effort we make in the classroom is far outweighed by the prejudiced conditioning they often receive at home. During a recent discussion about racial equality I had a girl tell me that black people were to be treated with suspicion because they were all potential terrorists.

Still, I haven't got much longer to put up with this embuggerance.

Who Wants to Be a Teacher?

I was watching the box earlier and there was a Tonight special on ITV called "Who Wants to Be a Teacher?"

Former teacher Chris Tarrant hosted this fly on the wall documentary, which focused on some of the negative behaviour plaguing classrooms up and down the land. The main question posed was should pupils with extreme behavioural problems by kept in mainstream schooling?

The liberal left argument is that excluding dangerous and disruptive pupils catalyses a downward spiral that costs more to resolve in the long term. Far better to endure a few tantrums now than have them end up in prison later. The counter argument is that the criminal actions of some pupils are so severe that they pose a danger to themselves and those around them.

The show highlighted the real life cases of Connor and Reggie.

Connor, a primary school child who assaults other children and members of staff, is being educated in a special unit on Teesside. The unit, part of a mainstream school, gathers together the rough diamonds and tries to educate them about the error of their ways away from the other children. The footage shows one instance of Connor hitting and spitting at his teacher, who battles to restrain and calm him.

Conversely Reggie is educated in a trendy-left mainstream school which, to the extreme detriment of the well behaved majority, doesn't believe in segregating their wayward peers. The school in Luton receives financial incentive not to exclude pupils so it keen to keep them in the classroom at all costs. The usual rules of society are put to one side as the staff endure the constant grind of Reggie's challenging behaviour. The footage shows two learning support assistants guarding Reggie on a break time detention, where he's kicking out at the furniture and fittings of the room.

Should either of these children be entertained by the mainstream state education system?

An Inspector Calls

If you were to question one hundred teachers about what they dreaded most about the job I reckon Ofsted would be one of the most popular answers.

As a trainee I'd managed to dodge the school inspection regime by rotating between placements. I knew that the school where I got my first full time teaching job had received a mediocre Ofsted report and were expecting a follow up visit in the not-too-distant future.

No more than six weeks into my first year of teaching and the Head got the phone call we'd all been expecting - Ofsted were coming to conduct their monitoring visit some time in the next 20 days. An emergency staff meeting was called and everyone huddled in the staffroom to await our orders from on high.

Ofsted had requested a copy of the School Improvement Plan, which would take at least a couple of days to reach them and a couple more for them to digest. This meant we had about a week's breathing space before they could potentially turn up on our doorstep. Cue frantic dash to get everything ship shape and Bristol fashion.

One of the first instructions was to get our classrooms tidied and displays up to speed. The school had walls that had been damp, crumbling and bare for years. These needed to be spruced up with colourful backing paper and eye-catching work. This was a challenge for me because with only six weeks under my belt eye-catching work was pretty thin on the ground. Next step was to make sure all our assessment data and planning was spot on, with particular emphasis on differentiation for SEN and gifted and talented youngsters.

In the office the secretarial staff were feverishly working away to ensure that everyone's personal file was updated. The caretaking staff were replacing pieces of non-slip flooring, PAT testing all electrical appliances and making sure the fencing and doors around the site were safe and secure.

About two weeks later I arrived at work to find "Ofsted here" scrawled on the staff noticeboard. My heart sank. I had my three lessons well planned and thankfully had two hours of PPA time. The inspector had a lot of documents to check and meetings to attend, so the chances of him coming to observe one of my lessons was pretty low. My first two lessons went smoothly with no sign of the inspector. During my first PPA hour I visited the staff computer room to find senior colleagues frantically bashing out lesson plans and comparing notes on their inspection experience so far.

It was now the last lesson of the day and my final chance to be observed. The bush telegraph told me that the inspector was having a meeting with the Governors for the last hour of the school day. To my great relief I had again managed to avoid Ofsted. Amazingly it turned out that lessons in my core subject had not been observed at all.

I won't be at the school the next time they inspect it.

Back to the Chalkface

I can't believe my summer holidays have gone already.

But it wasn't all sun, sea and sangria during August - I made the sensible decision to get my first few weeks of work planned. In the final week of the holidays I made a couple of visits into school to re orientate myself with the classroom layout and deliver some of my personal belongings.

The first week of term started with a training day, which allowed me time to double check all my resources before having to confront a live audience.

Understandably they were quite a lively audience too, with lots of chattering about how well the holidays went and how much (or not) they were looking forward to embarking on the new school year.

The first couple of weeks the school was in the process of introducing new behaviour and pupil tracking systems. This meant a lot of confusion and unanswered questions for my established colleagues and an absolute nightmare of uncertainty for me.

Some of the pupils, no doubt sensing my uncertainty at the new arrangements, attempted to test the boundaries by baiting the new teacher. This is a problem many NQTs face during their first couple of months in the classroom. I regret to say that one class in particular are getting the better of me and really wearing me down.

When I accepted the job little did I realise how disorganised and poorly equipped the school was. Things that should be routine are an absolute ball ache of unnecessary petty bureaucracy. For example, if I want to photocopy something I have to take my own paper to the machine. Last week I had to buy my own paper for the copier because the school (unbelievably) ran out. What sort of school runs out of paper?

I'm not enjoying it one bit at the moment.

This term could break me.