This Year 11 boy will be me in a few years

Today was an off-timetable day at my school, which meant that I had to sit through the exact same guest lecture given to four different Year 11/Sophomore groups. Which meant that, as I was sitting in front of the class within view of all the children, I had to have a look on my face that suggested that this was the most fascinating lecture ever to have been given in the history of lectures. My goodness, children, this is such a groundbreaking lecture that as soon as this class is over I shall rush off to alert the presses. Nay, I must alert God Himself. In the meantime I shall grip the arms of my chair for support as I struggle to contain my growing excitement over the course of 70 minutes each time the lecturer uses words like "functionalist" and "essentialist." For the fourth time that day.

At some point during this 70-minute lecture, perhaps about 45 minutes in, one of the boys burst out laughing. It was the sort of joyous laugh where he knew damn well he was going to be in big trouble, but so great was the comedy that stifling this laugh would be hazardous to his health. So let 'er rip. After a few seconds he managed to repress the rebellion, but he couldn't quite manage to stop the shaking, the silent, mirthful tears that steadily streamed out of his eyes, and the occasional snorts and squawks that accompany any laughter made to be silent for a long period of time.

The lecturer ignored this boy, who was essentially having a seizure in the corner, and continued on with his lecture, either with the courage of the Titanic band or with the helpless stupidity of a Mariokart player who has just driven off Rainbow Road. I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I quietly suggested to the senior teacher that we invite this boy to step outside to compose himself and then come back in.

Instead of taking advice from someone who knows a thing or two about uncontrollable giggling, the senior teacher stomped over to the giggling boy and started bawling him out. As soon as she started doing this I had to stifle a sympathy giggle, because anyone prone to fits of uncontrollable giggles can tell you that the only thing funnier than something funny is something funny in an inappropriate situation. And so the boy started almost hiccuping laughter, alternating between silent giggles and very loud guffaws that would burst out every now and then. I actually felt terrible for him because he looked desperate to stop giggling so that he wouldn't get in trouble, but each time the teacher yelled at him to stop being silly whatever he originally found funny increased exponentially in hilarity.

Eventually the teacher realized that she was only making the situation worse. Unfortunately, she still didn't quite get it. She stopped yelling at him, but replaced the yelling with the stink eye.

And so the lecturer droned on with his horrifically boring lecture as the teacher angrily glared at a child whose laughter was actually starting to propel him out of his seat. And instead of relieving this poor soul of his misery by sending him out into the hall, the teacher continued to maintain intense eye contact, as though her looking angry enough had the power to make something stop being funny.

Eventually (after grumpily staring at this child for about five minutes with hilarious results) she took my advice and kicked the kid out of the class, leaving him to cross the room to the door as he wiped joyful tears from his eyes and noisily walked into chairs and walls because of his laughter-induced blindness.
And the lecturer just kept plodding on.

The Bungalow.

So there’s this one classroom that I teach in that’s a bit like a mobile home. Every time I walk into it I always half expect to find some obese Mississippian named Sharla who is missing several teeth, and so it’s always a shock to instead find 25-or so English 12 year olds.

What I mean by “like a mobile home” is that it feels as though it’s one tornado, or heck, it’s even one half-hearted gust of wind away from completely collapsing and killing us all in a news story that the Daily Mail will somehow find a way to blame on both immigrants and ‘elf ‘n safety.

How do I know that this bungalow is unsafe? Because it quakes like…like….shit. Every simile I’ve tried to come up with is offensive, so I’m just going to skip the similes. But I feel as though with every step I take another window pane wobbles and screams for mercy before exploding, while meanwhile the bookshelves wearily concede defeat and willingly implode into themselves as they give their children one last, sad, knowing glance. “This fate awaits you, too, my child,” the bookshelves say as they collapse into restful oblivion.

Okay, obviously nothing’s collapsed or shattered yet. Though I am convinced that my shaking our classroom trailer by my ENORMOUS T-REX FOOTSTEPS will eventually bounce some of the smaller children out of their chairs just like in a moonbounce. And, yes, I get it. I’m fat. But there is still no excuse for how much the bungalow shakes when I walk around. Or indeed when anyone walks around. One of the smaller girls who has the same mass/density/whatever the relevant science word is, as a three month old baby manages almost as well as I do to get the trailer to rattle around like a washing machine making its break for freedom. It’s the sort of eerie, inexplicable thing that the Doctor needs to sort out for us.

I gotta admit, it’s distracting. Though not, admittedly, as distracting as the constant smell of fart. I told someone earlier today that young teenagers always smell of fart, BO, anxiety, and (in the case of girls) way too much perfume. And that’s not strictly true. Much like the city of Chicago, middle school/KS3 classrooms have Fart Pockets. And I’ve said on this blog many times that I think farts are hilarious, but that’s also not strictly true—the truth is that I think OWNED farts, farts whose credit is proudly claimed, are funny. So in the case of the silent fart pockets that lurk in my classroom and haunt my teaching experience, I’m not a happy camper. Basically my teaching experience can be summed up with this: I wander around the classroom and from time to time think to myself, “Oh goddamn it, not again.”

I also want to take this opportunity to express my fear at the thought that the more I teach the more the farts of children take over my life.

Jackie: Year 8 Champion Farter, Girls Division

Today a girl farted in my lesson and laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair.

And, dear reader, I must be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a clearer sense of vocation than I did right there. I am 100% meant to be working with children.

It was during an ICT lesson, so it wasn’t the sort of thing done to interrupt a lesson. All the kids were getting on with their work. I saw this girl was giggling a bit, and her friend called me over. Without any kind of warning to brace myself, I entered into a new level of stench just as the friend announced, “Miss, Jackie farted!” At which point Jackie turned bright red and completely lost her shit (not literally, thank God!), and before I knew it she was convulsing with laughter on the floor. This angelic, well-behaved and intelligent young woman was reduced to a hilarious mess on the floor by a single fart.

“Yes, child,” I wanted to say to her. “Just yes. Clearly you understand what is truly amusing in this world. I have nothing left to teach you. Your education is complete. Go forth and be awesome.”

These kids are just so amazing. This champion farter is just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness. Sometimes they horrify me, but mostly they just say the most delightfully bizarre shit. And I mean “shit” in the wonderful sense.

One girl decided that the British Empire was not the result of a desire for power or money, but rather a desire to acquire a bunch of lands with strange names like Swaziland. Another girl wrote a letter to her husband fighting in the trenches of World War I and confessed her affair with the milkman. Another kid created a new religious TV character who was a vampire and a Christian, someone who begged his victims for forgiveness right before draining them of all their blood. Another boy argued that Christians should be in favor of cloning because then we could resurrect Jesus, clone him, and then “we could all have our own personal Jesus.” And then there’s the Year 8 child who doesn’t say awesome things but just looks like Edward Scissorhands, minus the scissorhands.

Man, I’m going to miss these kids when I leave this school at the end of next week. I am genuinely worried that the kids at my next school won’t be as strange and wonderful as the ones I adore at this school.

Oh God. I just got all soppy and sentimental over a fart.

Yet another subject I suck at teaching

(from yesterday)

In addition to being the worst geography teacher ever, I found out today that I’m the worst food tech teacher (home ec teacher for Americans) in the history of English education. Not because I don’t know any proper information about food (well, I don’t), but because I am a firm believer in bowl-licking. Should I ever become a mother, I will probably be one of the few in the history of the modern world that would not shriek, “BUT YOU’LL GET SALMONELLA!” when I catch my children eating more brownie mix than they’ve poured into a baking dish. No, I’ll say, “Eat up!”

And all 28 of my theoretical children will die of salmonella.

So today in food tech we were working with cake icing—salmonella was not an issue here as icing is just sugar and butter. However, as a teaching assistant for today’s six lessons I was expected to figuratively slap the hands of the little devils who stuck their hands into their bowls of icing for a cheeky little taste. And THIS has proven to be my most challenging task as a teacher. Because I can’t blame them for it. I mean, fuck me, if I weren’t 23 and a trainee teacher I’d be fighting those kids tooth and nail for a share of their icing. God bless ‘em, lick away, the time when that will no longer be socially acceptable is fast approaching for people their age. Lick away, children.

On a related note, I hated that the proper teachers made one class leave their cupcakes for later because the kids had gym immediately afterwards and would get sick. That’s the whole fucking point. If you eat yourself sick after the age of 18 you’re a pig, but under 18 and you’re just a kid. Let kids be kids, I say.

But back to my main point: licking the bowl. It’s hard to tell the kids off for something I don’t think is all that wrong (yeah, I know it’s not hygienic in general, but in this instance it was a private bowl of icing, not for public consumption). To me it’d be like telling the kids off for liking Doctor Who or wanting to learn Hebrew. Some of the poor dears didn’t want to be naughty and asked me, “Can I lick the bowl?” And I had a burning desire to yell, “FUCK YEAH!” and triumphantly pump my fist in the air.

Realizing that if I acknowledged their question I would have to tell them no and kill a part of my soul, I chose to tactfully ignore the question. After their question I would let my eyes suddenly glaze over and act as though, “Oh wow, something absolutely fascinating just happened out the window and I’m going to walk away from you now to go check it out.” And then I secretly hoped that they would take the opportunity to go ahead, embrace their joyful youth, and shove a hearty thumbful of pink frosting into their mouths while none of the teachers were looking.

The problem is that towards the end of every lesson the kids got wise, and those mischievous surreptitious dips into their bowls of frosting gradually turned into blatant icing feasts. Which, let me clarify, I do not give one solitary shit about. The other teachers, however, kept glaring at me whenever a child would snarf some icing and I said nothing to the child in question.

Finally this one kid was quite overtly piping frosting directly into his mouth. I thought this was the greatest thing I’d seen all day, as this kid was clearly the happiest kid on the planet, with his head tipped all the way back and the piping bag in the air guiding a steady supply of blue heaven into his mouth. He just looked absolutely thrilled, with that look of joy on his face that you rarely see in children at school. Part of me wanted to give him a nod of solidarity, as if to say, “I’m with you in spirit, buddy. If you fuckers weren’t in this room with me I’d definitely give that a go.” But responsibility kicked in.

Not wanting to be too much of a hypocrite, I chose to say something friendly, something like, “You know, that icing would taste much better if you put it on the cupcake you’re decorating first.”

And this boy briefly put his bag of diabetes down and let the mirth disappear from his face. Suddenly he became very serious as he told me, “No, it wouldn’t, Miss.” He wasn’t trying to be cheeky, he was just speaking the truth.

All I could do was look at him, smile, and say, “You’re right.”

So basically I am the worst geography teacher ever.

The other day I got to sit in on a Year 7/6th Grade Geography lesson to familiarize myself with the class before I have to start teaching them in the coming weeks. Yeah, my specialty is religion (and just barely), and yeah, I only really realized that Weather and Climate are two distinct concepts last week, but for some ridiculous reason I’m supposed to be teaching children about Geography.

During this first class the teacher made the foolish assumption that I can in any way be trusted to answer questions about maps as she announced to the class that “Miss X--- (me) is more than capable of helping you if I can’t get to you.” This invited an army of small children to wave their hands at me for help.

To complicate the matter of my inability to give meaningful analysis of a map, I also zoned out while the teacher was giving out instructions on what information to draw from the map and put into a table. So then I ended up with the lethal combination on my hands of having no fucking clue how to find any information nor any idea what to do with said information even if eventually and miraculously found. What compounded my embarrassment was this: after the teacher had finished giving the instructions and while I was sitting there thinking, “Oh Jesus, I’ve really fucked myself over again by daydreaming again, there’s no recovering from this one…,” the teacher asked some little dude with glasses in the front row to repeat the instructions for the rest of the class.

See, there was a glorious little moment where I thought, “Thank God, another chance!” and I heard the little nerd say as much as “Well…” before I caught a glance of the field outside the window and started thinking about what a heartbreakingly old country England is, and I started imagining Victorians ambling through the field being ashamed of their legs, and peasants in the Middle Ages walking through the field trying to catch the plague, and various blue pagan peoples running around centuries before that, and then I started thinking about dinosaurs. Specifically about cavemen riding dinosaurs through this field. Yes, I know cavemen never rode dinosaurs, but this is why I teach religion as opposed to science/history. Well, by the time I woke up from my mini coma all I heard was the teacher saying, “Yes, well done, thank you.” And then all you could hear in my head was a very loud “SHIT. ON. IT.”

I have to say, even after “helping” kids with this activity for a solid 40 minutes I still genuinely have no idea what they were supposed to be doing. However, I’m pretty proud of how well I managed to cover my complete ineptitude. The kids would ask me, “Miss, I’m having trouble finding things to put in my chart, can you help?” And I’d take their maps in my hand, stroke my chin very meaningfully, and silently shit my pants. The kids didn’t realize I was having a panic attack because I’d cover it with a very solemn “Ah, mmhhmm” and a bit of a nod. Then I’d hand them back their map and say in my most teacherly way, “Well, take a look at the map and why don’t you just describe to me what you see? Then I’ll come back in a few minutes and you can let me know how you’re getting on.”

The response of most of the children to my utter uselessness was to simply give me a suspicious look and get on with their work, but some little jerks who actually wanted to learn gave me some follow-up questions. One asked, “Is this a hill?” He pointed at a bunch of squiggles and dots that seemed to be completely indistinguishable from the thousands of other squiggles and dots on the damn thing. To my untrained eyes, if that one spot he pointed at was indeed a hill then clearly the rest of the map had to be just one massive hill. And, for that matter, ALL OF ENGLAND was a hill. So I once again took the map, pretended to give it a meaningful glance and intellectual frown, shat myself, and then calmly abandoned all responsibility: “That’s a great question. Why don’t you discuss it with your neighbor and then let me know what you guys decide, okay?”

I know that as a teacher you shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that you don’t know the answer to something. But surely there’s a limit to how many times you can say, “I have no idea” in any given lesson before the kids start to suspect (quite correctly) that you are a shit teacher.

Another child pointed at a line and asked, “I don’t know what this is. Is it a railway?” This child, too, was assured that he had asked a great question, and then told, “What do YOU think?” His response was to look at me as though I were completely drunk, because this is a Religious Education teacher question. “What do you think?” is my default question for getting kids to share their own thoughts and opinions about questions with no wrong answer. Well, I say that like it’s some kind of carefully crafted weapon in my pedagogical arsenal, but actually I usually only use it as a response when I in no way understood what the hell the student just asked me. The key thing though is that it invites an extremely open-ended response. However, in geography it either IS a fucking railway or it isn’t. You can’t sort of be a railway.

So, long story short, I’m so far proving to be an absolutely useless geography teacher.

Don’t get too worried though—it wasn’t all bad. To put it mildly, the kids think I am a certified badass. Not because any aspect of my personality is in any way actually badass, but rather because they think my accent is basically miraculous. To them, when I open my mouth a combination of gold and Katy Perry music streams out. When I spoke to a small group of kids for the first time this one kid actually looked like he was so overwhelmed by my awesomeness that (if he remains in such awe) he might just have to consider investing in Depends for my classes. Liberated by his certain loss of control over his bladder, he called out in a voice filled with reverent wonder, “HOW DID YOU GET THAT ACCENT?” Umm, well, 22 out of your 23 years lived in the US tends to do it, but I wish I had asked him to give me his own hypothesis. Maybe I’m really from Essex but this is the teacher voice I put on? Maybe I had a stroke?

Do you think I’m sad that I am loved solely for my accent? Bitch please, I am sooooo gonna milk this. While I may be a completely inept geography teacher, at least my ego remains as inflated as ever. Thank God for that.

RE according to Sam

After Friday you should expect a massive post about my first taste of teaching (it’s in the works, I just can’t be bothered to finish it until I turn in my paper on Friday), but in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about this paper. If you’re not part of the Religious Education Massive*, then I should probably explain that we need to plan how to teach Christianity to middle schoolers (Key Stage 3) over six weeks. So basically I have six lessons to teach all of Christianity. Whatever, no big deal.

(*I learned the word “Massive” the other week, and apparently it’s like a gang…and now I can’t stop using it for everything. I’ve even started using it to refer to certain items of clothing, like my underwear is no longer my underwear but rather the “TOP DRAWER MASSIVE.”)

What I hate about this assignment is that I have to make the lesson plan that looks good, not the lesson plan that I would desperately like to do. The lesson plan I have to do is carefully justified with education policy documents and research into how kids learn. The lesson plan I would LIKE to do is justified with “because I feel like it.”

Actually, my justification would be in the form of song. I’d sing “because” to the tune of “We’re Off To See The Wizard” from “The Wizard of Oz.” So it’d be like, “Because because because because becaaaaaauuuuuuuse….” And then say, “Because I said so.” It’s the sort of thing that makes me think I’ll be a fantastic parent one day.

Anyway, what is this fantasy scheme of work? Well, basically we’d just sort of walk around—my God would there be a lot of walking. And we’d listen to Christian pop and haredi techno and Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” and it’d be fine. Occasionally we’d feed ducks and talk about it, and when we felt like it we would spend hours with our noses in the Bible, looking for something to laugh about. You know, the sort of thing that gives me the giggles during services (“These men are not drunk as you assume—it’s only 9 in the morning!”).

When we got bored we’d make fun of Midrash and then, if we were still bored, we’d invent the field of Christian Midrash just for laughs. We’d make fun of the Talmud for obsessing over minutiae that God Himself doesn’t have time to worry about, and after we finished we’d put together a “WHO WORE IT BEST?” fashion magazine spread for various popes.

We’d make frequent visits to churches, mosques, synagogues, cult centers, whatever, and for once in my whole method I’d lay down the law and I’d beat any kid who set one foot out of line. Unless someone farted, in which case the children would be encouraged first to laugh and then to loudly debate which member of the congregation dealt it. And rank the church on The List.

As I have completely unpredictable whims, one moment we’d be kumaya-ing it up and looking at squirrels somewhere, and five minutes later I’d be screaming at them to sit their happy asses down, shut up and open their books. I very humbly believe that this system, my system, is the best system of education. Ever.

Writing is against my birthright.

So I’m still having trouble comprehending this whole issue of pens in UK schools. From my limited experience (observations in six schools—still prolly more classroom experience than Michael Gove), I’ve concluded that British children must be allergic to pens. At the start of every class period inevitably a small riot breaks out as the kids loudly inform Miss that they don’t have a pen or demand that Sir lend them one from the supply that he finds himself forced to bring with him.

I find it genuinely fascinating that it doesn’t occur to these children to bring their own goddamn pens to each lesson, and I often like to speculate on the thought process behind that one. I imagine that these children think that they are going to simply do interpretive dance all day at school and are then on a daily basis deeply shocked and offended to find that going to school usually involves writing at least a couple things down in your notebook—“Wait, we’re going to have to write things down? IN SCHOOL???”

I really just don’t get it. In my school people rarely forgot pens. And if you did you would very quickly have a quiet word with your neighbor to ask, completely humiliated and one step away from performing public self-flagellation, whether you could borrow a pen. And if that neighbor was me, you would then have to sign a contract. Because I was that desperate to not have any friends.

The kids’ aversion to pens is almost as confusing to me as British teachers’ obsession with having the kids underline things with rulers as opposed to simply letting the children do the terrifyingly bold and dangerous task of freehanding lines underneath entire words (dare I even imagine such a world?!), which seems like such a frustratingly massive waste of time that it might even earn itself its own blog post.