Another Nail In The Coffin

I've been in the same school for about six weeks now and days are generally quiet but every now and again there's an explosive event, sparked by seemingly very little. As this week is my last one in this particular school working with the nearly permanently excluded kids, I thought I'd share with you one such impromptu incident. Below is the report I had to write up on my penultimate day in the school. Obviously I have changed the student and teachers' names but everything else remains as I recorded it.

“ ? had finished working on the computer and as I logged her off she went over to the other side of the room so see ?, who'd just entered the room. When I went back over to the other side, she was sitting in the teacher's chair and refusing to move. Eventually she moved and stormed out.

I went out into the stairwell and had a chat with her and she seemed reasonably calm. She then came back into the room and aggressively demanded “pass me my flipping nails” (the fake nails ? had previously confiscated some half an hour/40 minutes ago after she started putting them on in the middle of a lesson). She repeatedly said this and ? went for “on call” (there was no walkie-talkie up here this morning as the battery had died).

While she was out of the room, ? came back in and started screaming “pass me my nails” again and “now's my home time – it maybe not yours but I'm going home now!” She pushed passed me and tried to get at the drawer, even trying to physically pull the chair I was sitting on away from the desk.

Members of the Science department (whose office is next door) came in and helped intervene. She stood at the side of my head and yelled into my ear “Give me my nails!” This then turned to “Pass me my fucking nails – if you don't get her to give them to me, I'll punch her fucking head in – I'll punch her right in the face!”

Other members of staff stood between me and her and one managed to convince her that the false nails were locked away downstairs in an office. Tables were moved and she was escorted out of the room away from me but said “fucking bitch – why don't you suck dick?” as she left. She also overturned the computer screen (thankfully undamaged) before being escorted out and causing a loud scene on the stairs.”

Immediately after this incident I heard wailing, fittingly demonic-sounding to be compared to a banshee. Three members of the senior management team had to restrain her and lead her out of the building. The police were later called on site. Prior to all this, the student in question had been working uncharacteristically hard and had had an exceptional day the day before.

This incident is the closest I have ever come to reliving my days at the crumbling West Leeds High School. Having been doing supply teaching across central London and even Essex, on and off for the past year and a half, I have never worked in a school as consistently rough as my old long-term Leeds employer. The students I have been working with for the last six weeks are all essentially in the “knacker's yard” - contrary to the name, “The Study Centre” actually seems to have been created as a place to collect evidence of bad behaviour so that the school's worst pupils will be accepted to a PRU (Pupil Referral Unit). Having someone shout in my face isn't that pleasant but at the end of the day, what is shouted is pretty laughable – the fate of some of these children isn't.

Dumming Down Eurovision

This year's Eurovision winners (Ell/Nikki representing Azerbaijan) sung an aptly named number called "Running Scared" - something a large quantity of the country's population do on competition night. During the run-up to the royal wedding I was busy planning ways to avoid the event, eventually settling on a nice lie-in and evening trip to the dog races. For Eurovision however, I'd e-mailed out a "save the date" plea more than a month in advance and actually planned on being awake for TV footage. It may well be the annual event many love to hate but Eurovision has a place in my heart. I can actually remember lying in front of the TV as a teenager with a cushion carefully placed under me, willing my favourites to win and even once voting for a British entry. Nowadays, like the royal wedding was for many, Eurovision is merely an excuse to get a little merry.

Terry Wogan's commentary seemed to get progressively more inflammatory towards our competitors as each year passed and as his retirement grew nearer. Wogan's sarcastic banter provided the perfect stimulus for the creation of a variety of Eurovision drinking rules. Having missed Graham Norton's debut as Wogan's replacement, I was mildly disappointed by his dummed-down style of presenting. Twelve of us squeezed around the TV and devised this year's drinking rules, banking on some infamous Norton sexual innuendo and bitchiness but less than half-way through the competition we decided to ditch the rule.

In asking Norton to tone it down, the BBC have destroyed the competition's celebrated playful commentary that for many was one of the main draws of watching Eurovision. This year's Düsseldorf show distinctly lacked the mullets and spandex of previous years and seemed heavy on child contestants. One entry (yes, Spain) actually decided to unintentionally mock deaf Eurovision fans by only performing part of the song with sign-language to leave viewers guessing as to what the rest of the song was about. But reliably, as usual the English entry was shocking:

Despite the song's title, "I Can", Blue proved they in fact "can't" by delivering a song significantly more dire than Ireland's rather catchy "Lipstick", performed by the loathsome Jedward, looking somewhat Gagga-ed:

After shots of everything drinkable in the flat and four slumbering viewers, I didn't win our in-house bet and the only memorable stand-alone performance came from Moldova:

Dressing up in items from a chosen country and bringing dishes from said country for a European feast was possibly more educational than watching the show. I now know the Fins eat liquorice and that apparently both Spain and Sweden share a love of rice pudding. I'm now looking forward to sampling next year's feast.

Belated "Bieber Fever"

Back in school, still in the “Study Centre” and taking the odd cover lesson, I'm once again exposed to prepubescent fads and heartaches. Up until this week, I've done a very good job of avoiding the “Bieber Fever” but have suddenly been floundering in a world of hormonal teenagers. Of course I know what the Biebs looks like but I'm not sure I'd ever actually heard one of his songs or at least not intentionally listened to a whole track, knowing that he was responsible for it.

Prior to this week, my only real Bieber-related research was prompted by my sister who thoughtfully alerted me to the existence of an amusing website (http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/) that may well have single-handedly influenced our young Canadian icon to ditch his signature hair-style.

This week began with a Technology cover lesson with a distinct lack of work set. While a kindly LSA (Learning Support Assistant), scampered off to find some work, I took on the challenging task of entertaining the class and attempting to keep them seated. Noticing the boys and girls seemed to have migrated to separate sides of the room, I decided to ask the boys what was wrong with the girls to be told in less kind terms: “they ming”. Asking the boys who they deemed acceptable, I was surprised when a well-spoken boy admitted he fancied “Kate Middleton” - less surprising was the amount of females claiming Bieber to be their ideal man. I've previously taken a Technology lesson in another school where pupils had to design watch straps for celebrities and found Bieber to be just as popular, although a surprising amount of male class members seemed to be designing pink flowery watches with him in mind.

As the week went on, most of our study centre pupils managed to get themselves excluded for their poor behaviour. In order to alleviate the learning support unit and to ensure we were usefully occupied, we started to take on overflow pupils. Instead of mouthy students calling us “fat cows” and telling us “they hope we get stabbed and they get to watch” or that “we'd be shitting bricks after meeting” their parents, we were faced with a cooperative student who'd refused to remove a new ear piercing. Covering the Hindu belief in reincarnation for R.E., the Biebs popped up again as our blushing diligent pupil decided she'd like to be reborn as the Canadian boy wonder.

Later on deciding to somehow tackle a music lesson with no instruments or teaching resources, we found a lesson plan online that involved watching a music video with and without sound to discuss the marrying of visual imagery and song lyrics. After watching and dissecting Blind Melon's No Rain,

we had time to spare so decided to allow our pupil to choose an artist. Drum roll.... can you guess who I finally Youtubed?

Watching “One Less Lonely Girl” was an amusing exercise as we, like our lone student earlier, blindly watched Bieber's video having no idea what the song might be about, except for clues the title gave us - would it be a sinister-sounding rock song about a serial killer ridding households of moping lonely girls? We had no idea but watching our infatuated pupil smiling inanely at the screen was entertainment enough.

I was never really one for crushes as a teenager and can't even come up with a similar late 80s/early 90s phenomenon to the Biebs. New Kids On The Block were pretty fresh-faced but I don't remember nearly as much hype. Perhaps early Take That is the 80s/90s equivalent I'm looking for? Whoever it is, I'm pretty certain there was no solo artist matching Bieber's popularity or tender age, possibly because marketing tools were somewhat more limited back then (3D films?!).

What this whole music exercise did reveal is how misleading muted videos can be, while Bieber's was pretty predictable, Zero 7's Distractions was the exact opposite of what I'd imagined would accompany the lyrics:

An interesting exercise for those unusual moments in life where we actually have some time to spare – especially if you're rarely exposed to music videos.

Love Thy Privacy

As a teenager, village and small town life isn't the most exciting way to spend your days, especially when buses to larger surrounding towns are so infrequent and catching trains require kindly chauffeuring parents or the very same unreliable buses. Growing up in the countryside there's really very little to satisfy once you get beyond the romper suit stage - unless of course you're already massively into gardening, rambling or suitably outdoorsy activities like horse riding. As soon as I was old enough to realise this, I set my sights on leaving the "Garden of England". Once the University application stage came along, the majority of my chosen educational institutes were Northern cities far from home and ALL were much bigger places than the historic market town of Cranbrook I originally hail from.

Now, as an adult-in-denial, I enjoy my return visits to Cranbrook but still wholeheartedly prefer the pace of city life. Many of my friends are either returning to country living or contemplating the move. Discussing the prospect at the weekend and the advantages/disadvantages, reminded me of Channel 4's Love Thy Neighbour. More and more regionally-based reality TV shows seem to be cropping up (MTV's Geordie Shore, ITV's The Only Way Is Essex, E4's Made in Chelsea...) but the only one that has managed to attract my attention was Love Thy Neighbour - albeit accidentally.

Returning from London to Leeds every weekend generally means Friday nights are spent catching up with The Boy and The Major and Saturdays are for being more active and perhaps hooking up with other friends. Several Fridays running I was quite literally glued to the television by the array of hideous characters appearing on Love Thy Neighbour. The show promised one of twelve contestants the prize of winning a home in the Yorkshire village of Grassington, near Skipton. Each episode would introduce different configurations of the "family unit", be that a gay couple, an unmarried three teen family, new age travellers, a lesbian partnership, a British-Indian couple, a single mother and her son or young lovers still living with parents.

Out of the contestants that I did catch, the most sycophantic one made it to the finals and this was no real surprise given that some of the village members came across in an exceedingly negative light. I watched in a state of disgusted hilarity as a certain villager rallied around gathering information for a popularity poll before smugly telling contestants his findings.

If the programme aimed to promote traditional English village life with its sense of community then it was a complete failure. Judging by the array of contestants chosen from all walks of life, producers most probably sought to highlight small-minded village views as mildly prejudice folk were shown attempting to appear open-minded while judging whether a transvestite and his wife would make the perfect Grassington addition. The village's irritating lack of basic resources and privacy encroaching way of life merely acted to remind me how unappealing living in the sticks in a small community is. Give me a city any day! Still, if the show hoped to stimulate tourism in Grassington it may have worked some magic on me - I'm now slightly tempted to make the small journey from Leeds to Grassington, if only to do a spot of repugnant z-list celebrity resident spotting.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/love-thy-neighbour

2 Many Teachers

I'm currently in the unusual position of actually having regular daily work. Until the end of May I no longer have to live with a mobile phone next to my head or wait until the morning to find out what the day holds. When I originally signed up to this gig I was lead to believe I'd be mentoring Year Eleven students needing help with their English in the run-up to the fast-approaching GCSE exams. On arrival on Tuesday, I soon discovered this was certainly not the case.

I've worked in this particular Hackney school on many occasions so know quite a few members of staff. When the HR person normally in charge of me was otherwise engaged and seemed to have done a disappearing act, I sought out the English department. Having covered quite a few English lessons in the past, the Head of Department was well aware of me and promised to locate my new home once she'd dealt with tutor time.

Entirely clueless as to what I'd been employed to do, the ever-helpful English Head finally sniffed out my indirect employer and I was told where to report to. Ascending to the fourth floor, I was met by two others who greeted me and appeared equally bemused – one of which I'd previously worked with in another Hackney school and both, also temporary staff with the same agency. It seemed I would actually be teaching and “managing” the school's most challenging children who'd been withdrawn from the normal school timetable and were in and out of exclusions.

Day One:

Although school begins at 8.40, in the “Learning Centre” pupils arrive at 9.30 and leave at 2.30, forty minutes before their peers. All lessons are out of sync with the normal school bells and students are collected and deposited at reception by a member of staff. Today “Lower School” have decided the three day week means they're entitled to a longer Easter holiday and no-one has showed. Five Year Elevens arrive, however, but a few hours later three have done a runner and we are down to two pupils and three members of staff. Just before 12.30, it's time for one of the pupils who is on a personalised timetable to leave and I look around the room in disbelief – by now, with the addition of two LSAs, there are five members of staff and only two students. There is very little for us all to do so two of us tidy and organise this shambolic room that looks more like a dumping ground than a classroom.

Day Two:

No Year Elevens show and only one Year 7 decides to make an appearance, despite phone calls home the day before. We've already sorted out the room and I went around all the departments the day before trying to collate resources for each subject to help to try and deliver a balanced curriculum. There's very little to do. The “Learning Centre” regular seems to manage to busy himself elsewhere while two of us team teach, taking it in turns to have a break or teach our only punter. Both English specialists, we struggle through a session on cells, laughing hard when we came across an amusing Youtube video.

As the day progresses, yet another Teaching Assistant comes to take refuge in this peaceful corner and we move on to Geography. Finishing up with some literacy, we decide enough is enough and allow our diligent student to do an Internet search for "The Walking Dead" – a show he's already enthusiastically given us blow-by-blow accounts of and I'm familiar with. Just as we're rewarding our out-numbered worker, the new Head walks in to see him reading zombie-related material displayed on the SMART board and to comment on our three to one ratio. We're just glad she didn't appear a few hours earlier, when despite instructions to the contrary, our 11 year-old pupil started playing graphic zombie death scenes on the SMART board.

Day Three:

Today's a busy day. The same Year Seven pupil arrives fifteen minutes early and two Year Elevens arrive on time. Now there's one teacher to each pupil and every now and again Teaching Assistants come to say hello. After yesterday's surprise visit, we hope the Head Teacher doesn't decide to come in when we're watching The Ultimate Zombie Survival Guide (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EbeqPynF2s), although this time it really is work-related - pandering to our future leader's tastes, we're making a hypothetical "non-fiction" leaflet based around this subject matter. With the royal wedding taking place, the first week is over. Now we have to hope there's a steady growth in student numbers working in the centre so the school might continue to somehow justify the need for us until the end of May.

Flirting With The Epic Demands Of Family Outings

We'd discussed and planned this trip weeks ahead of our departure date but after a spell of freakishly hot April weather, had to make last minute decisions to travel by night. We were all packed up some time ago but still seemed to be dithering around the flat, making a final dash to find a screw-top water container. Although I'm still safely far away from the screams of discontented exceedingly demanding babes, I feel close to understanding the epic planning each journey must take for new parents.

With the first of the Bank Holidays beginning the next day, we were doing the drive from North to South to spend Easter with my olds but as Bank Holidays are popular away times, our built in son-sitter was unable to take on the job. Fearing our new addition might think we were abandoning him so soon after welcoming him to the fold, instead of expensive catteries we'd decided to introduce him to Big Nanny G, the Dear Old Granddad and his southern uncles and cousins.

Packing the car took several trips up and down in the lift from our twelfth floor vantage point to the parking spot on minus three. Aside from the normal entourage of weekend bags and laptops, we had carriers full of Easter eggs, snacks for the road and new additions to the car like giant sacks of cat litter and cascading bags stuffed full of Major Richard Parker's favourite play things and snacks.

Naturally the VIP in the plastic holdall would be taken down last but first we had to encourage him to use his toilet, ply him with travel sickness pills and adorn him with a £15 “calming collar” that would last no longer than a month. I cleaned the tray half an hour before we planned to leave, hoping that, as normal, the sight of fresh litter would encourage him to leave his mark but alas no such luck. Slightly perturbed, I moved on to the even greater challenge of administering the meds.

Having dealt with some pretty sick pussies in the past and also some decidedly stubborn ones with a knack of suddenly spitting out pills almost five minutes after apparently swallowing them, I was expecting the worst but actually got a pleasant surprise. Concealing a large white ginger-flavoured travel sickness pill behind a cheese and chicken treat worked like a charm and The Major actually swallowed the pill first rather than the munchie on both occasions. The weird smelling powder covered collar proved more tricky but even so, we were finally ready to roll.

After laying out the plastic sheeting to protect the back seats from any cat-related accidents, I positioned myself in the back of the car next to the black plastic holdall and a suspicious looking ginge. Surrounded by bags, the car seemed dwarfed and thoughts of a very grown-up family estate car momentarily entered my mind.

On the road at last, The Maj and I were taxied along as The Boy took the role of chauffeur while I acted as calmer, repeatedly stroking a rather disturbed barrel of fluff who occasionally made alarming noises and repeatedly did rather distressing snake impressions. Not long into the drive a rather unpleasant smell manifested itself and The Boy and I both convinced ourselves it must be coming from the rural outdoors the motorway cut through – when the smell disappeared we felt all the more justified by our beliefs like proud parents, silently congratulating our self-restrained offspring.

It wasn't until we were about half an hour from our destination that an even more revolting smell dominated the air. Now most definitely in the thick of the Kentish countryside we convinced ourselves those pesky cows were the culprits. Unfortunately the smell continued to linger this time and was followed by loud panting noises and drool hanging from The Maj's lips as he began to panic.

Pulling into the drive, we swiftly came to The Maj's rescue and took him into the house first. Opening the metal grid door to his travel case, we were met by the sight of two not very neat and exceedingly pungent piles of poop. Queue discussions about necessary preparations for a bath and lots of purposeful procrastination.

Thankfully, despite most probably sitting on his produce like a hen warming its eggs, The Maj had someone managed to salvage his beautifully soft clean coat and arrived fully in tact. Unlike parents of newborns, we thankfully wouldn't be bathing a poo covered giant ginger baby but were still left with the lovely job of depositing the goods and unpacking an exceedingly full car.

When Saving Money Becomes Expensive

We've all had those regretful moments of uncertainly when we've been out shopping... All those times you've found something you kind of fancy but know you shouldn't really buy, think perhaps is not quite right or can't quite afford. Invariably you don't buy the tempting object and later, once at home with time to mull over your decision, you wish you'd been more spontaneous and just bought it, perhaps even actively searching for the item weeks afterwards.

To this day, I still regret not buying some plastic PVC effect black and white wedge trainers when I was about fifteen. Honestly. I still shop with one eye open, half expecting to see their reflective charms, even though my taste has somewhat changed since my teenage years and I'd probably never wear them. Another more recent regret is my failure to try on some dark navy knee high boots in Krakow. Having already fairly thoroughly searched shoe shops in every city I'd visited, I'd established dark navy is clearly not currently a fashionable colour – particularly not in boots. Finding them in Krakow, was something of a small miracle but of course the timing wasn't good because I had very little money. Instead of walking away without trying the boots on, I should have at least given them a go because now I have that constant niggling uncertainty as to whether they'd have been perfect or not. I'm not going back to the city anytime soon and now in my head I have the perfect boot inaccessibly tucked away in a Polish shopping centre. I'm sure if I'd just tried it on, I would have either bought the damn thing or would have found them to be not so perfect – either way I could stop mentally berating myself and perhaps even abort the navy boot mission.

Sometimes I even manage to take over-conscious shopping one step further by refusing to purchase certain items if above a set price – particularly if this price is considerably higher than that normally found in said shop. A classic example of this was my failure to buy a grey and black horizontally striped skirt in Primark. At £9 the skirt was above my standard £5 mark for skirts (I know that's a tough call but hey, I'm not lowering my expectations) and also in excess of the pricing for a similar style Primark skirt. I “uhmmed and ahhhed” for so long over this garment, I eventually decided to purchase it in the sale. You can of course guess what happened next.... Yes, in the sale they no longer had it in my size! So, what did I do? Unlike an ordinary person, I didn't give up – instead I asked my parents and unofficial honorary in-laws to check branches local to them, while I trundled across London to all the Primark stores in the capital, went to Bradford, tried the other Leeds branch and even managed to convince my poor long-suffering boyfriend to take a trip to Wakefield. Of course, having wasted all this petrol money and still not succeeded, I may as well have forked out the original £9. I'm glad to say the story's not a wholly unhappy one as I eventually got the same skirt in white and black in the sale for £5, purchased some fabric dye and made my own almost identical black/grey skirt.

Unfortunately dye isn't always the answer. The Boy and I adopted an Ikea sofa-bed from his parents and having finally decorated the flat's spare bedroom, decided we needed a purple sofa cover. Covers in Ikea all cost somewhere between £70 and £100 but pink ones in the sale were a mere £30. We got the pink covers and purchased some washing machine fabric dye but of course the covers were too large for our washing machine and all the local laundrettes we asked, did not allow dye in their machines. Managing to swap the machine dye for cold water hand wash dye, seemed like the perfect answer – at least in theory. The covers were huge and took virtually a day and a half of continuous exhausting ringing and pummelling before they dried almost the same colour they began. The whole exercise was a complete waste of money, energy, water and my time. Not to mention the fact, I ended up with purple tinted hands AND right before an interview!

The final solution seemed to be to buy fabric spray but having used a whole can, once again the colour had barely altered (all for a few patchy blobs) and a whole £10 canister hardly covered one side of a two part cover. We've both since had to admit defeat and will either recycle the stubbornly pink covers at the tip, boot sale or freecyle them. We're still without purple covers so now face either forking out for a large suitably coloured throw or the full price of non-sale covers (on top of the £50 we've already wasted on various dyes and the ill-fated pink covers!). Again - ridiculous but true (and I haven't even been featured on Ripley's Believe It Or Not).