I thought I'd share a few mildly amusing stories from the classroom.
Merry Christmas ****ers!
The Shopping List
We were in the 3rd or 4th week of term.
Year 7 class. ICT.
That's the lowest age group. They've just come into the school, so we're still seeing how well they perform with ICT. The skill-level varies a lot with this age, based on usage at primary school, and at home.
It was a very simple task on Microsoft Word.
Data Inputting for one lesson, then some simple formatting for the second, with a bit of extension for the more competent.
So for the first lesson they were copying a menu onto Word, then if they finished it they'd format it with colours/pictures/borders/fontstyles etc.
There was one boy in the class - we'll call him Bob.
Bob has Aspergers. Not a very funny mental condition - he can take things very literally, and is very suggestible. He also gets easily wound up.
He's actually a ****ing nightmare and is one of the main reasons I'm about a lesson behind with this year 7 class compared to my "good" one.
I'm not making fun of Aspergers here. Don't think I am. It isn't funny at all.
Anyway, the boys were all happily typing away.
One boy wants to print off his work, but the printer isn't working.
I turn away and fiddle a bit with the printer (it had a minor paper jam, so nothing big).
The door is behind me.
I hear the door open and close.
This is quite unusual - all boys have to ask me if they want to leave the room to go to the loo or whatever.
Noone has come into the room, so I look around.
"Where's Bob?" I say.
One boy happily chirps up.
"Oh he went to Tescos to buy all the items on the menu"
It dawned on me what he meant.
I opened the door and pelted down the stairs.
Sure enough, there was Bob, about to head towards the front gates of the school, ready to go shopping for this "shopping list" I'd given him.
I never did find out which kid told him that it wasn't a menu at all, but a shopping list he needed to go and buy.
Little ****ers.
Island Ikeda
It was my first Business Studies lesson with my year 10s.
They'd just started their GCSE Business Studies course.
The first topic in it is "Needs and Wants" - very simple stuff.
The BS department likes to ease the pupils in gently, so has a little scenario to demonstrate needs and wants.
It's just a map of an imaginary island, with trees, rivers, and things on.
The pupils have to decide what they will do in the first 24 hours on the island, based on what they need and what they want.
They're only allowed what they could fit in a matchbox.
I tell the boys that the best answer will get a commendation (a reward thing).
So we go through a whole load of options, with boys telling me that in 24 hours they'll do everything from collecting water, to berries, to hunting wild boar, to felling entire trees.
Anyway, we get to the last boy. He's been quite quiet up until now (very unusual for him - he's a pretty big troublemaker now). We'll call him Rob.
I ask him what he'd put in the matchbox.
He tells me "I'd put a few condoms in Sir!"
The whole class laughs.
I went into about-to-punish mode, but I stopped - I thought I'd give him a chance.
"Yeah, what I'd do is fill it with water because they expand, and then drink the water on the way to the berries, then fill it with berries as much as possible, then try and camp under the trees sir"
"Right..."
He got the commendation. I was very impressed with his lateral thinking. I still think he just wanted to say "condom" in my class, though
The Excitable Pupil
Now this didn't happen to me.
My friend Greta told me about it (she's just started, like me).
Anyway, she was taking a class of year 10s too (15 year olds).
They were watching a film.
Films in class are miraculous - they seem to freeze every pupil, which is quite bizarre to see.
She saw something out of the corner of her eye though, as she was watching the film too.
It was a rhythmic motion from the corner, right at the back.
She turned slowly and watched the pupil out of the corner of her eye.
He was behind everyone else, so noone could see him.
Sure enough, he was cracking one off in her class.
"What should I do?" she thought.
She could have stopped him, but that would have scarred him for life and he would never have lived it down.
So she just let him finish it off, then wipe his hand on his friends bag, and continue watching the video.
Jeez.
It's stories like that that make me glad I'm a male teacher. Boys would never dream of wanking in a male teacher's class.