I walked out of the meeting at the stated end time.
This was yet another revolutionary action taken by me in this strange school. My other anarchic actions include taking a chair out into the playground when I was on duty so that I could sit down and watch the kids rather than standing for an hour and taking time off in lieu. This marks me out as a dangerous radical seeking to destroy the foundations of educational society!
For some reason, not entirely clear to me, I have the keys for the entire school; a bunch of jangling metal that Joseph Marley would not have rejected to add to his burden of chains. I feel more than slightly Dickensian when I withdraw the gleaming mass of what looks like copulating keys from my briefcase.
I still have not calmed down from losing a free period yesterday after we spent last week planning (why oh why) how we could cover the head of English as she went off on her jolly to Canada. A few plaintive bleats for consideration as far as free periods were concerned were made in the meeting and we were assured that representations would be made, but that all planning might go out of the window is anyone was absent. And someone was absent. And all planning went out of the window.
It is situations like this that make all the union bones in my body ache. This school runs (as indeed do all schools) on the goodwill of the staff. This school more than most. There is no attempt, none whatsoever, to find supply teachers. My appearance last year must have been like a bolt from the blue when I came in to replace a teacher, but by the time I arrived the staff situation was rapidly reaching critical mass and Something Had To Be Done. It is not sufficient for a school to react when there is a slowly cooking disaster in course it should react when there is a perfectly ordinary situation which requires a supply teacher to take over the day to day teaching that needs to be done.
This school needs a union and it needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck and told that teachers are people too and should be considered professionals. The real trouble is that the school would probably say that they look after their teachers well, because people are nice and polite and colleagues always look after each other. But the pay is, to put it mildly, crap. The time table is a joke with a school day extending from 8.15 am to 4.45 pm. It is hardly surprising that in such a long day every teacher has at least one free period a day. Different groups of kids have different weeks with half days appearing in a bewildering sequence for different years. But the teachers’ day is the same. Not all teach more than one 8.15 start but a long day gives the timetabling staff a lot of spaces to play with.
I have now calmed down a little because the day has at last ended and home life has begun!
We went out to Castelldefels town to buy ONCE tickets and have a drink. This was soon augmented by snacks which in my case were tapa of patatas bravas and an extraordinary risotto with ceps and covered with a thick dusting of cheese. It was truly delicious and altogether an unexpected pleasure to find something so fine in an ordinary little bar in the centre of town!
I am at present reading one of the books which I was given to celebrate United Nations Day, ‘The Final Empire’ by Brandon Sanderson. I am just under half way through and it has been a positive delight to count up the clichés which abound in the book.
There is the Map at the front of the book with such places as the Canton of Orthodoxy Headquarters and Lake Luthadel with characters like Reen and Kelsier.
We have been introduced to the innocuous girl who has exceptional powers who is being helped by the man who survived the worst tortures of the Dark Lord. There are religions galore and Steel Inquisitors – and I love it all!
There is something very comforting in feeling yourself in a safe pair of writing hands and it is a good game when you can start counting up the literary influences as each new ‘twist’ to the plot is revealed! Again I want to emphasise how much I am enjoying the book; I actually left it at home today because I knew that I would be tempted to read it at inappropriate times if I took it to school.
Not only my enjoyment but also the realization that I have a Terry Pratchett (‘Unseen Academicals’) waiting for me is encouraging me to read with a certain amount of dispatch! Then there are the Larsson books and the volumes that the school purchased to coincide with the visit of the writer all waiting for me too.
Roll on the weekend.
This was yet another revolutionary action taken by me in this strange school. My other anarchic actions include taking a chair out into the playground when I was on duty so that I could sit down and watch the kids rather than standing for an hour and taking time off in lieu. This marks me out as a dangerous radical seeking to destroy the foundations of educational society!
For some reason, not entirely clear to me, I have the keys for the entire school; a bunch of jangling metal that Joseph Marley would not have rejected to add to his burden of chains. I feel more than slightly Dickensian when I withdraw the gleaming mass of what looks like copulating keys from my briefcase.
I still have not calmed down from losing a free period yesterday after we spent last week planning (why oh why) how we could cover the head of English as she went off on her jolly to Canada. A few plaintive bleats for consideration as far as free periods were concerned were made in the meeting and we were assured that representations would be made, but that all planning might go out of the window is anyone was absent. And someone was absent. And all planning went out of the window.
It is situations like this that make all the union bones in my body ache. This school runs (as indeed do all schools) on the goodwill of the staff. This school more than most. There is no attempt, none whatsoever, to find supply teachers. My appearance last year must have been like a bolt from the blue when I came in to replace a teacher, but by the time I arrived the staff situation was rapidly reaching critical mass and Something Had To Be Done. It is not sufficient for a school to react when there is a slowly cooking disaster in course it should react when there is a perfectly ordinary situation which requires a supply teacher to take over the day to day teaching that needs to be done.
This school needs a union and it needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck and told that teachers are people too and should be considered professionals. The real trouble is that the school would probably say that they look after their teachers well, because people are nice and polite and colleagues always look after each other. But the pay is, to put it mildly, crap. The time table is a joke with a school day extending from 8.15 am to 4.45 pm. It is hardly surprising that in such a long day every teacher has at least one free period a day. Different groups of kids have different weeks with half days appearing in a bewildering sequence for different years. But the teachers’ day is the same. Not all teach more than one 8.15 start but a long day gives the timetabling staff a lot of spaces to play with.
I have now calmed down a little because the day has at last ended and home life has begun!
We went out to Castelldefels town to buy ONCE tickets and have a drink. This was soon augmented by snacks which in my case were tapa of patatas bravas and an extraordinary risotto with ceps and covered with a thick dusting of cheese. It was truly delicious and altogether an unexpected pleasure to find something so fine in an ordinary little bar in the centre of town!
I am at present reading one of the books which I was given to celebrate United Nations Day, ‘The Final Empire’ by Brandon Sanderson. I am just under half way through and it has been a positive delight to count up the clichés which abound in the book.
There is the Map at the front of the book with such places as the Canton of Orthodoxy Headquarters and Lake Luthadel with characters like Reen and Kelsier.
We have been introduced to the innocuous girl who has exceptional powers who is being helped by the man who survived the worst tortures of the Dark Lord. There are religions galore and Steel Inquisitors – and I love it all!
There is something very comforting in feeling yourself in a safe pair of writing hands and it is a good game when you can start counting up the literary influences as each new ‘twist’ to the plot is revealed! Again I want to emphasise how much I am enjoying the book; I actually left it at home today because I knew that I would be tempted to read it at inappropriate times if I took it to school.
Not only my enjoyment but also the realization that I have a Terry Pratchett (‘Unseen Academicals’) waiting for me is encouraging me to read with a certain amount of dispatch! Then there are the Larsson books and the volumes that the school purchased to coincide with the visit of the writer all waiting for me too.
Roll on the weekend.
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