Me The don’t see you
What life is really like teaching in a secondary school…
It’s 5:30am, still dark outside when I haul myself off to the gym before making my way to school. Having that time for me is the only way I’ll make it through the day.
I’m always one of the first teachers in. I sit poring over lesson plans and activities I’ve thought up to make sure the kids get as much out of their education as possible. The morning rabble pours into form time. There’s shouting, swearing and students hugging as if they didn’t just see each other the day before.
I strain to hear as they mumble ‘yes’ to the register, then gladly let them file out for their first lesson. I’m relatively new to teaching, and so, when one particular teacher stops by, I brace myself. Her patronising tone grates on me as she treats me like a child, shoving opinions at me about my lesson structure.
Then the kids file in, it’s my year seven class first – aged 11 and 12 – but that doesn’t make them any easier to deal with. One student falls off his chair and I ask if he’s OK. ‘Of course I’m not, you…’. I can’t tell you what he said, it’s too rude.
He sits under his desk and refuses to move, so the behavioural team comes to deal with him. After that comes the deluge of invasive questions. ‘Miss, are you the teacher that’s pregnant?’
I roll my eyes and ignore it. To be honest, I’m just grateful my class has stopped looking at me like I’m dirt. It happens when you start at a new school and you’re replacing a beloved teacher. The students hate you.
A couple more lessons pass, and I have an observation, in which the children choose to behave poorly. This class had been the topic of staffroom conversation at lunchtime, so I know they’re in a foul mood.
Observations are part of the job, but it’s not nice when you do all you can to engage with students and they ignore you. Our Oftsed rating is good, although I often wonder how.
‘I can’t read this because it’s not on purple paper,’ one girl says, holding her worksheet in the air. School has become a very cushy environment. Students demand work on different coloured paper to help them read better.
It costs money and resources that are already scarce. The school even gives out fidget toys to help with ‘concentration’, but all they do is distract me from teaching and students from learning.
In my final class of the day there’s a fist fight. Punches are thrown. I’m not trained to handle this, but instinct has me running to break it up.
Two more students see this – my two naughtiest – and surprisingly they stop me from getting involved. They break it up themselves, then stay behind to check I’m alright.
Moments like that make the job bearable – deep down, the students do care.
When I get home I crawl into bed, and finish marking the same essay for the fiftieth time. Do I love my job? Yes. Is it for the faint-hearted? Absolutely not.