Getting the buggers to behave

Have you read the papers this week? There always seems to be a teacher who has behaved badly. This week there was the teacher in Germany who killed a rabbit and ate it ...but then again we are always told to produce practical lessons and that was very practical – not a worksheet in sight! There was another teacher whose pupils found topless photographs of her. She was working at a top boys’ school. As a former topless model didn’t the school consider it might be a bad idea to employ her at an all boys’ school? I’m not a topless model but would probably think carefully before applying for a job at an all boys’ school. When I was a student teacher, I remember what some teenage boy students could be like. I turned up for my teaching practice smartly dressed in a black suit. Unfortunately the school uniform turned out to be a black blazer. I was waiting outside the classroom and the teenage boys assumed I was a new pupil. I got to hear all their banter and excitement about having a student teacher. Then I went in and taught them.

Perhaps having to be a role model makes teachers rebel. When my teaching is not going so well, I have often thought about packing it all in and getting a job as a stripper, but it’s never a serious thought... is it? I have read about a male teacher who was caught moonlighting as a stripper and a female teacher who took up the new career of being a porn star as it was better paid. It must be the impact of teachers’ pay cuts.

5 days to go until the Easter holidays. Life is good right now as a teacher. There’s planning and assessments to be done and then that’s it. I’m ready for the holiday, some relaxation and some serious scoffing of Easter eggs. My 5 year olds are not usually happy to be presented with an assessment booklet full of too much writing but since I have renamed an assessment ‘a quiz’ things have been good. I also tell them the quiz is a reward for working so hard and that they will find it great fun. They feel obliged to at least pretend they are enjoying it as they wouldn’t want to appear ungrateful, which is a great relief after the tears and tantrums I got when I called it ‘an assessment’.  The teachers are looking forward to the holidays, so are the children. The parents on the other hand are not so happy