Anonymous

Just been reading the diary of a teacher in the UK. If that's what teachers have to endure every day, why do they stay in that profession? Also, why are things so bad?

I am a maths teacher in a ‘bog standard’ comprehensive school. In the autumn term of 2002 I kept a full diary of a week’s lessons, and this is an edited version of it.
What follows is a description of each lesson: I have not embellished or exaggerated anything, or imported any apocryphal incidents. The only deviations from the facts are the names of the children and the descriptions of certain procedures that are particular to our school. I have changed these only to protect the privacy of the school and its pupils.
Also included are my own thoughts. They are not those of all teachers and I do not presume to speak for any of my colleagues. I consider myself to be a liberal thinker with left-of-centre political leanings. I do not think of myself as either a good or bad teacher. My inspector told me I was a “caring” teacher though in our profession we only quote Ofsted when they compliment us. A. Teacher
Monday

Period 3
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 5/6

The lesson is about the properties of quadrilaterals. The students left our last lesson with a sketch of variously different shapes of quadrilateral, their names and an agreement that the internal angles added up to 360o. In this lesson I want them to use this knowledge to find missing angles: eg, add up the ones they have and take the total away from 360.
Ten minutes into the lesson, most of the class has arrived. Those who got here on time are now bored and talking: they have finished the five subtractions I put on the board as a warm-up exercise. The pupils all came from the same place and left at the same time.
Only about half of them have either a pen or a pencil; only a very few of the girls have both. We do have a school shop where pens and pencils can be bought for 5p each. One girl, let’s call her Susan White, never has a pen. She starts to explain at length how it is not her fault.
Me: “Never mind the story, what have you been using all day?”
Susan: “I borrowed one, sir.”
Me: “Why didn’t you get one at break?”
Susan: “I didn’t need a pen at break, sir.”
Fifteen minutes into the lesson the classroom door opens and Brian Moor falls in, singing to the tune of “This Old Man”:
I love drugs, drugs love me
Crack cocaine and ecstasy
With a sniff sniff here and a sniff sniff there
Now I’m in intensive care
The whole class starts to laugh. Without speaking to him I direct him to his seat. I then challenge a few who are laughing but who I know can be easily quietened. I praise the few who stay quiet. They all become quiet again. Tracy Jones is writing on the desk. When I tell her to stop, she shouts out in an exasperated tone: “For Christ’s sake leave me alone, pick on somebody else for a change.”
I try to start again. I have given up on the warm-up exercise. I sketch a square on the board and mark in a right angle. I ask: “Hands up who knows the size of this angle and what it is called.” Five or six children put up their hands. Mark Anderson shouts out: “A square angle.” Before I can speak, Billy Willis says: “Wrong, you stupid queer boy.” They all start to laugh again. Mark snatches Billy’s book and screws up the front cover.
I move Mark forward two desks and tell both him and Billy off. Mark is wearing two full sovereign rings. These are banned in school; he is about to argue with me about being moved so I tell him to remove the rings. Three boys shout at him: “Ah, sir got you, he got you.”
We are now 20 minutes into the lesson. Brian Moor then starts the rhyme again. I tell him to be quiet. At this point I give up on trying to teach the planned lesson and quickly write five quite long adding-up questions on the board and tell them all to turn to the back of their books and start them. Susan White shouts out that she needs a pen, Brian Mo

or that he needs his book.
Three more discover that they haven’t got pens. I am giving out some pencils when Sam Foster comes in. He shouts that he has been with the head and throws his late-note and daily report book at my desk from across the room.
Billy shouts across the room, asking Sam what has happened to him. Sam says that the “old bitch” (the head) had told him he would be suspended. He is shouting this. I stand in front of him and direct him to his seat. He looks around me and continues his conversation; I tell him to sit down and he ignores me and starts telling another boy the same story. He walks around me and tries to sit next to Billy. I tell him to sit in his place. He says: “No.”
Boy swinging satchelI tell him again to sit in his seat or he will have to leave. He says that he will go then, and walks out, crossing the corridor into another classroom, where another class from his year group is being taught. He starts to talk to them. The teacher in this room tells him to go. Billy says: “I might or I might not.” He is now playing to an audience in two classrooms. A senior teacher comes along the corridor and sees the situation; she tells Billy to go to her office. She reaches out to usher him along and he jumps away from her shouting: “Get off.” He then walks in front of her swinging his bag above his head like a helicopter rotor.
It is now almost 30 minutes into my lesson. Most of the children have finished the five questions on the board. I give out some year seven textbooks for them to do a basic adding exercise.
Brian Moor is entertaining the class by hiding beneath a desk surrounded by chairs shouting: “I’m not here, I’m not here.” I move the desk and tell him to get up. He complains that I’ve hurt him and he is going to phone Claims Direct.
By the end of the lesson, despite being moved and threatened with a phone call to her parents, Tracy has not finished the five questions I put on the board.
Even by the standards of this class, this is a particularly bad lesson. It is only the second time I have given up on my original lesson plan with them.
Tracy has had two or three homes and two step-fathers in three years; Brian and Susan, like many, are on medication to modify their behaviour. Sam is not a real problem as he spends most of his time either in isolation or on temporary exclusion.
The most that will be expected of this group is a few grade E and F GCSEs from children I have not mentioned. I would expect about seven of the 18 to do any homework set. They will repeat the same work at a marginally higher level in years 9, 10 and 11. There are three girls who I think might be promoted to a higher group. This will make little difference to their eventual results but it is the best I can do for them. I estimate that we lose one third of all the lesson time available to poor behaviour.

Period 4
Year 9 (13-14 year olds), set 4/6

The lesson is about dividing and multiplying by 10, 100, 1,000 and so on. They have done place value in years 7 and 8 as well as learning tricks such as moving decimal points and the use of zero as a placeholder. The aim of the lesson is to consolidate the skill by completing table-style worksheets that give random numbers to divide and multiply by 10, 100 and 1,000.
The class arrives punctually; all but three are in within a few minutes of the start. Jacky Willis (Billy’s sister) immediately begins shading in the squares on her worksheet. I take it from her and put another on her desk, while calling for the class to be quiet.
I ask James Brodie to divide 200 by 10 for me; he says he doesn’t know how. Half-a-dozen shout out the correct answer. I talk briefly about moving the decimal point. I then ask another boy a similar question. He gets it right; we move on and have a successful question and answer session apart from one boy, who has made an aeroplane from one of his worksheets.
I tell them to get on with completing the two sheets. Gareth Burns immediately writes zero in every square and asks for more work. I give him anoth

er sheet; he says that he’s “not fucking doing it again.” The word is not aimed at me so I ignore it. He then starts the new sheet without any problem.
We are now about 15 minutes into the lesson. A boy called Anthony Gray arrives — he is late for every lesson, he never has a pen or pencil and does hardly any work at all. He tries to sit next to James Brodie. I direct him to his seat; he refuses and sits next to James. Quietly I tell him to move, most of the class are on task and I do not want to disturb them. Gemma Holmes shouts out to him to stay where he is because other people are allowed to sit with their friends. He moves and I give him a work sheet. The next time I turn around he has moved back next to James and they are both talking. I make him move back.
You cannot make deals with these kids. In a statement like “You can stay sitting there but you don’t talk”, they will only hear “You can stay there”. They are not mature enough to realise that there is give and take or two sides to a bargain. So you are faced with an argument every time you move someone. There will be two minutes of pleading that they will stop talking; three minutes of offering not to talk if you let them stay where they are; a couple of minutes’ moaning about how unfair you are; and then at least two minutes to move. A move within the room will require them to put their coat on, their books in their bag and then their chair under the desk: this is five minutes out of everybody else’s time.
Girl shadingA seating plan is a battle at the start of every lesson. Once it’s in place, you have to enforce it. Often it is a case of a choice of two friends being at different ends of the room and shouting at each other or being next to each other and shouting.
I am helping a girl at the front when I notice Gareth is not working. I go to him to find he has done nothing since I left him. We are now 30 minutes into the lesson and one boy has written just five digits on the whole of his worksheet. The noise level starts to pick up. I tell two girls to stop talking. Shelly has done no work at all, Jacky has almost finished the first sheet and stabs at it with her finger saying: “Look I’m working see, leave me alone.”
I want to split them up but almost every desk is full, there are 30 in the class. I give Shelly an official warning (one more of these and she will be going to see the head) and move her to the end of a boy’s desk. The boy, Philip, says Shelly is not sitting with him and pushes her work off the desk. I give him an official warning too, and sit her down. All this time I am trying to help a girl called Samantha but can’t get to her.
With ten minutes to go and most of the class working, I go around asking each student for their homework sheets; about seven of the 30 have done it. All of them have now got the second worksheet and I announce that their homework is to finish the second sheet. Because I am telling them what the homework is, most start to pack up. I tell them to get on with their work. Anthony, the boy who is always late, starts to walk out. When I challenge him he says that I have set the homework so the lesson is over. I pick up his worksheet and give it to him. When the bell does eventually ring he drops it as he leaves the room.

Period 5
Year 10 (14-15 year olds), set 6/6

Revising data-handling for first module of GCSE; we will be looking at Mean, Median, Mode and Range.
They drift in over the first 10 minutes; there are 11 in the group, three are absent and I have a learning support teacher. Five have no pen or pencil.
I ask if anyone can tell me the name of a type of average. Silence. Eventually Joe Marks says: “Middle one.” I point to a poster describing them. Mike Simons reads the poster out loud and I ask him to tell me the mode of four numbers I have written on the board. He says 10 because that is the biggest number. I recap how to find the three types of average. I ask one girl to total the numbers on the board, she asks me for a calculator.
I explain again and start them off on the

questions in the revision guide.
My learning support teacher works with three girls, I go around encouraging the others to work. They will all only work when being watched.
Most of this group wants to work but work means getting answers wrong, whereas sitting and talking means being able to say that you failed by choosing not to work, which is more bearable.
Tuesday

Period 1
Year 9 (13-14 year olds), mixed set 4/6 and 5/6

Most of the year 9 students are on a trip. We assemble all of the remaining ones in the largest room, take out about 12 of the brightest; and send them off with the head of department. The remainder we split into boys and girls; the girls go with two teachers and I take the boys. I give them A3 paper and start them on drawing posters based on maths symbols and words.
A few like drawing and get on quite well with their posters.
With about 10 minutes to go, a boy whom I don’t know starts making a noise by breathing heavily; the noise is supposed to represent sexual intercourse. He has wrapped his legs around the leg of his table and has drawn quite a good sketch of a man and woman having sex doggie-style. I rip his paper up and give him another piece. I don’t want a row.

Period 2
Year 11 (15-16 year olds), set 8/8

The aim of the lesson is to revise data handling. This is a euphemistic title.
They each have worksheets photocopied from a revision guide. There are 15 in the group. Two are temporarily excluded, one is working in isolation for the day, one is now residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure and three more have just stopped coming to school.
IBoy sleeping always keep the enemy to my front and will walk a long way around the room to avoid exposing my back to them. They all sit one to a desk in one corner of the room; they smell and are weighed down with jewellery. I tell them all to take their coats off, the room is very hot but they still insist on sitting in them. Tim Gray (Anthony’s brother) says: “That’s all right sir, I won’t bother today” and turns away; he puts his feet up on a chair and pretends to sleep. I walk up to him and take his baseball cap off his head. He jumps up and says: “Give it fucking back.” The others start to chant: “Jerry, Jerry.” I try not to laugh and tell him that he can have it back either at the end of the day or when he takes his coat off. He slips the arms out of his coat so it hangs around his waist and I give him the cap back.
A few start work, Tim slips his coat back on but he is turned around, leaning against the wall by a radiator; 10 minutes later he takes it off completely.
John Collins is talking to two boys about the price of the gold chain he is going to have for his birthday. Paul Plant is colouring in his worksheet. Simon Blake is shading in each of the individual squares on a sheet of paper he has found. They are quiet and I don’t really care.
Tim and another boy begin a conversation about a computer game. Most then join in; they compare three or four games. This goes on for about five minutes. Eventually I feel that I should stop it. I walk among them and point at their worksheets with the words: “Get on.” Every one of them is indignant: they all come out with the line: “I’ve done all this” and stab their fingers at about two minutes’ worth of work.
I stand in front of the door and remind them that it is break time next. They know that I will block the door and cost them time. I don’t want to do this because it is my break as well. They don’t work but they do become quiet.
Simon says in a stage whisper that if I don’t move he’ll kick me in the balls and stab me. John Collins tells me I should chill and smoke a joint; he takes out a packet of rolling tobacco and offers to roll me one; they all laugh. I want to laugh but don’t let myself.
The bell goes and they walk out. All of their “work” is on the floor: all of the worksheets have been defaced, the only pencil I get back has been broken into three.
This group has four different maths teachers. A few teachers have refused to teach t

hem. Because maths is a core subject, as a department we decided that it was not fair to any one teacher to have them for three hours a week. There are two girls in the group; one has stopped coming and the other was working in isolation today, but I once heard them comparing notes on Tim’s sexual performance. They had apparently had sex with him individually and as a threesome.
Nearly all in the group are on some form of behaviour control medication. Only two live with both of their natural parents. When you ask them about their ambitions, they reply with the word “college” — just the one word, with no idea of what subject they might take, what qualifications they want to get or what they might do with them afterwards. If you make a comparison between the quantity/quality of their work and what a future employer would expect, they reply with “I’d do more if I was being paid” or “I won’t be doing maths then, will I?”

Period 3
Year 11 (15-16 year olds), set 4/8

Revising frequency polygons from revision workbooks.
The class arrives over a 10-minute period. This is the first period after morning break and most of the pupils have just eaten for the first time since about 6pm yesterday. They are high on sugar. There are 34 in the group. I have enough tables for 30.
I give out the new revision guides. They have heard that they are getting them, they like them. A few start shading in the covers with highlighter pens.
I tell them the work to revise, draw a graph on the board and refer to the first question in the section. A mobile phone goes off and they all start to laugh. I should confiscate it but it isn’t worth the argument. I start again, but the boy with the phone is now openly sending a text message. I tell him to stop. Without looking up, he tells me to hang on a minute. Another phone in the room goes off: he has forwarded the message. Phone in pocketAnother boy in the room, Colin Jones, starts to laugh and then makes a noise as if he is having an orgasm. His mobile phone is in his pocket, switched to silent; he is referring to the vibration.
We start again. Most complain that they can already do it so I tell them to get on with it. Five students have no pen or pencil. About half get on with the revision, the rest start to talk. I notice one girl is doing her English homework. She’s quiet so I ignore it. At least she’s working. The telephone message turns out to be a picture message and soon it is being forwarded around the room. Most of the students begin conversations comparing mobile phones.
I announce that if the playing with phones does not stop, I will send for senior management and the once-a-week fun lesson won’t happen. Most put the phones away. Ninety-five percent of the children in the school have mobile phones; only about five percent have calculators and only about two percent of those know how to turn their calculators on.
This group has their first GCSE exam in four weeks’ time. Most of them have already given up. They aspire to nothing more than casual work and an intricate understanding of the benefits system. Others say they want to go to university: four kids recently have told me that they want to be marine biologists. Why this has become such a popular ambition I do not know. None of them does any homework. When I told them that they would need a maths qualification for a science degree, one girl replied that she wanted to study fish, not count them.
As set 4 of 8, this group should be average. They are bright enough to coordinate their defiance, concentrating their abuse on personal comments: bad breath, BO, poor teaching. They are also bright enough to realise that they are going to fail and to care about it.

Period 6
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 5/6

The lesson is about quadrilaterals. It is the one I didn’t teach on Monday.
After Monday’s lesson I tried to telephone some of their parents. Out of five numbers I looked up in the school office, all but one was a mobile number. Only one was actually functioning. I spoke to Susan White’s mo

ther. Now Gill Black comes in and tells me that Susan has been grounded for a week and it is my fault.
They are generally quiet. Sam Foster has been excluded for a week and Brian Moor is working in isolation so I can expect a better lesson.
I begin with a number sequence. At first they take no interest but then most join in, calling out the next term. A few ask sensible questions.
I sketch a shape, put in some angles and ask if any one can find out the missing angle. One or two put their hands up (the ones I would expect). Billy starts talking to Mark Anderson. As they are at different ends of the room, this means shouting. I tell Billy to stand outside. He starts pulling faces at the door of my room. Then the door opens and he throws in a paper aeroplane. I ignore it.
When the bell goes for the end of school, they all stand up to leave. I tell them to sit down: they can go when they have copied down the homework. I am standing by the main door to the corridor but it makes no difference. Most of the class simply walk out through the door at the back of the room which leads into the nextdoor classroom. When the teacher in there tells them to go back, they tell her to chill and get a life. Tracy Jones attempts to push past me to leave by the main door. She tells me I can’t keep her in because she has got rights.
This is a common complaint. They all have lots of rights. They know how long you can hold them back after school without notice; they know how much time they are allowed at break. They know the nights that they are supposed to have homework and complain bitterly when it is set on a wrong night, even though they never do it anyway. I just wish they would put as much energy into remembering their multiplication tables.

Wednesday

Period 2,
Year 11 (15-16 year olds), set 4/8

More work on the revision guides, concentrating on Mean, Median, Mode and Range.
The class straggle in up to 10 minutes late. I don’t mind this because it is the nutters who are late, and they make it easy for me because they are a divided enemy when they arrive in ones and twos.
I give out the revision guides. At least 12 students ask me the difference between the three types of average. Each time I point to the highlighted box where the definitions are written. This work is easy for them, they all get on with some work, and their language is more or less acceptable. They get on to mean averages. Virtually all ask me for a calculator. I give out one per desk.
My head of department comes in to talk to them about the next month’s exam. They all attempted the first modular exam of the GCSE in year 10 and most got grade D. They show little interest in trying for a grade C; the general muttering is that they failed once, why should they fail it again? I know that at least half of the group could get grade C if they worked.
There are a few kids in this group who do work. How they manage it in the middle of all this chaos I will never know. I really admire these children. Others — mostly girls — want to pass and always begin each lesson working in silence, but start to distract each other after about 10 minutes. But most of the boys have simply given up. They have decided they are going to fail (they are probably not wrong) and they can see little point in working.
The brighter ones who could have passed their exams if they had done some work are beginning to realise this. They are like long-distance runners who have left their final sprint too late. They now realise that they have left working too late; they know that they cannot make up two to three wasted years in six months.
However, true to form, their failure cannot be their fault. Some blame me for their lack of knowledge. Others think it is the fault of a supply teacher who took them for a term two years ago. But any failure has positively nothing to do with them. It is always someone else’s fault. Even when sacked from work-experience placements and made to listen to the written statements about their behaviour made by complete strangers,

they refuse to admit to a fault of any kind.
If I could take these students back to year nine with the attitude that they now have, they could all pass with grade B. But to most, this lesson is an irrelevance. I run after-school revision classes and a few girls come to them. I have heard some of the boys say that only queers go to revision classes.

Period 4
Year 9 (13-14 year olds), set 5/6

A new topic: angles on straight lines and about a point.
The class arrive to find their books on their desks and some easy addition questions on the board for them to start. My support teacher urges them to begin work. James Brodie says: “Yeah, all right, in a minute. Can’t you see I’m talking?”
I send him out; he stands up but continues his conversation. I pick on the boy he is talking to, Gareth Burns, and tell him to start work. He replies in a very aggrieved tone that he can’t because “she won’t give me a pen.” By “she” he means my support teacher. She offers him a pencil; Gareth says that he’s not writing in pencil like a kid. I remind him that we are not supposed to lend any equipment. He picks up his bag, takes a pen from the side pocket, holds it up by my nose and says: “There, stick your pencil.” He then throws the bag against the wall.
I begin asking easy questions. The range of abilities is very wide. Half of the class can take 103 from 180 in their heads. Half cannot take 150 from 180 on paper with confidence.
Then the Head comes in with three boys who are missing and takes out two more. Her presence outside the door silences the class.
I tell them they are to sketch each angle from the workbook and provide the missing figures, showing all working-out. After about three minutes Gareth shouts out that he has finished. I go to him. He has written a list of numbers down the side of his page, none of which relate to the questions; some are values over 500. He says that he’s not doing them again; I tell him he has no choice. He puts on his aggrieved tone again and shouts that he is not going to do them again and that I can’t make him because I’m not his dad. He finishes with a rant I have heard many times before about how he is going to find another school. I wish he would. His parents have applied for two other local schools in the last year. Both turned him down.

Period 5
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 5/6

This lesson carries on the work on quadrilaterals. By the end of the lesson, I want them to realise that opposite angles in a parallelogram are equal.
I have ten parallelograms drawn on the board, the first five with only one missing angle. I am going to hit them running, no lesson starter: straight into the work. I have a learning support teacher with this group for two lessons out of six, but today I am on my own.
They arrive over a 10-minute period. As usual it’s the more capable ones who arrive on time. Initially they are all quiet and begin work. Brian Moor is in isolation. But Sam Foster is back in lessons. At the first opportunity, I am going to throw him out. I know I won’t have to wait long for an excuse. When I give Mark Anderson an official warning for shouting, Sam says without looking at me: “Sir, you know nobody likes you, all the kids hate you.”
I am helping at the back when I see Sam pull the centre pages out of his book. I let him get on with making a paper clapper. He waves it above his head; I snatch it from him, he shouts that I have hurt his finger and he is going to the police. I take his book from him and move him to the empty classroom behind mine; I give him a simple adding worksheet. The room is empty: my hope is that he will run off. He obliges after writing on his sheet that I am gay, a bastard and a pervert. I am amazed that he spells all three correctly.
They all work quite well; by the end, the ones I would expect to have realised that opposite angles in a parallelogram are equal. It has taken four one-hour lessons to reach this point. Maybe five of them will remember what they have learnt by next week.
We teachers

often control the behaviour of the class with the work that we set. Easy work that creates no insecurity will result in reasonable behaviour. Difficult work that creates self-doubt will be meet with aggression. This constantly leads to the dilemma: do we set hard work that will stretch them but also lead to poor behaviour and so cost learning time? Or do we set easy work and get reasonable behaviour — and more teaching time — in return?
I kept them quiet by giving them work that did not make them feel insecure (ie easy work) and by not challenging them about their work rate. I should have been able to stop them after 15 minutes, explain harder work and push them to think. I didn’t because of the issues of controlling them that this would have created. There are times when we mistake activity and silence for learning.

Period 6
Year 10 (14-15 year olds), set 6/6

There are 13 on the roll for this class. Six are on work experience and four are absent or truanting. Only one of the three pupils present has a pen.
Girl with compassesWith only three students, it is possible to sit around a desk with all of them. You can look straight into their eyes. There is nothing there. You explain: they say yes. Your questions start off okay, but quickly become “finish my sentence” type questions and eventually “complete the last syllable of the last word.”
They work well for half an hour and so as a reward I give them the rest of the lesson to do what they want to do. One girl asks me for a sheet of paper and a pair of compasses. She draws a circle with semicircles on the circumference. She tells me that it’s a flower and begins to shade it in. Lost in the motion of the shading, she looks like a primary school child. She is not certain what 5 x 6 is but claims to be sexually active.

Thursday

Period 3
Year 10 (14-15 year olds), set 6/6 and set 5/6

Boy with walkmanThey are all doing a mock exam; we set the room up as much like an exam room as possible. They have two 20-minute papers.
With support, we have four teachers to 30 children. The children all complain about doing an exam. We give out about 20 pencils. After 10 minutes they start to say they have finished. They have all missed out most of the questions, including questions such as “Find 50% of 60” and “one third of 9.” We encourage them to go through and check their answers. At 15 minutes, most are quiet but shading in the front cover. Mike Simmons has his Walkman on and Leann Harman puts her head on the desk and closes her eyes.
Ray Stone starts to rock back on his chair. I tell him off and he deliberately falls off. They all start to laugh; the other teacher gives out the second paper and a calculator, which attracts their attention. They all start the second paper. A quick look through the first paper tells me most have scored between 4 and 6 out of 20. Their average ability, judged against the levels described in the national curriculum, is that of an eight-year-old.

Period 4
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 1/6

This should be my free period but I am covering this lesson for my head of department. He has been called away, so no work has been set. The children are very bright; they have been doing work on brackets.
I write 20 questions on the board while one of them gives the books out; their behaviour is impeccable while I am doing this. They have all arrived within three minutes of the start, one boy apologises for not having a pen. They all begin. One girl has done the questions as fast as I can write them. I find a GCSE foundation book with a short exercise in and give this to her.
Most of these children could do the foundation paper I have just given to the year 10s with no problem. They take pleasure in doing as much work as they can.
The girl who finished first asks me for some harder work. I find a higher level GCSE book and give her an exercise with two pairs of brackets. I give one quick explanation and she is off. The boys in the room start to get a bit bored and talk quietly, while workin

g. They are a delight to teach. An oasis of calm in the middle of all the madness.

Period 5
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 5/6

Lee Hollis, a boy I haven’t seen for two weeks (he has been on short-term exclusion), comes in and sits by Billy. The room is quiet so I ask him quietly to move. He looks up and says: “No!” His “no” is elongated and loud.
I point to the seat I want him to move to; he shrugs his shoulders and looks away from me. I move around the desk and get right in his face and tell him to leave; I know that this will wind him up. He jumps up and suggests he should sit in another place but not the one I pointed to. There is nothing wrong with this suggestion other than that it is not the one I want. I refuse because I know he will walk out. He obliges by leaving through the back door, pushing other students’ work off the desk as he goes. Result. He’s gone. I send a note to the office: with luck, he will get into mischief and be excluded again.
Last year when the Ofsted inspection was announced, Lee was removed to a tuition unit outside the school until the inspectors had left. Other children were moved out of the classroom and into the school’s inclusion unit, while all the part-time staff were brought in on full-time hours. The inspection team concluded that there was “much good teaching and effective learning taking place”, although “behaviour in some lessons is unsatisfactory.” Actually, the children are all such show-offs they behaved much better than usual when the inspectors were in the room.
For the remainder of this lesson their behaviour is generally good. We do all of the work and move on to the extension work. I write good work certificates for Billy and Mark and put them in envelopes to give to their mothers.
I have stocks of positive letters and certificates but too often I do not use them. I am aware that children respond well to positive praise, but too often it is difficult to find the goodwill to use them; also, there is the problem that the children start to ask for them and it becomes another issue at the end of a lesson. Instead we use threats to control the class: “You will lose your break”; “I will call your parents”; “I will keep you behind.” We run anti-bullying programmes and constantly tell the children that using threats is unacceptable.

Period 6
Year 9 (13-14 year olds), set 5/6

I am 15 minutes into the lesson and most are working well when a teacher from the inclusion unit arrives and asks me if I will have Reann Smith (the child from hell) in my lesson. She has been in the unit for four weeks and they are trying to get her into a few lessons before half term.
The class is quiet and I mistakenly think that the support teacher will stop with her. I agree and Reann comes in. I point to a seat by a quiet on-task girl; I feel sorry for her. Reann refuses and sits by Jacky Willis. She will not move. I send a note to the inclusion unit. Reann sits in silence, in a sulk. This is an improvement of sorts: in the Support teampast she has thrown books and even a chair.
Her support teacher returns and sits with her, talking to her about the benefits of following rules. She replies with a series of four letter words. The support teacher leaves and returns with the deputy head. The three of them now discuss the benefits of following rules and remind Reann how much she wants to be in lessons.
The rest of the class are silent throughout this, and we have an excellent lesson, partly because of the in-house entertainment, partly because of those who are missing or on report and partly because of the presence of the deputy head.
At break-time we leave Reann, her support teacher and the deputy head still in negotiation. They are discussing the contract which they drew up regarding Reann’s behaviour in lessons, which includes phrases like “I will try to be good in lessons” and “I know I should not tell people to fuck off”. The cost of the specialist support Reann has received over the last half term is probably the equivalent of the fees for a go

od public school for the same length of time.
Friday

Period 1
Year 11 (15-16 year olds), set 4/8

The group is doing a mock exam. Ben Brooks is in school; this, I know, will be a problem. He starts after five minutes, talking to the boy in front of him in a loud voice: “Do you think sir looks like a paedophile?” Another boy moans about not being able to do the exam. Ben comes back with: “Well, sir is a pretty shit teacher.” He wants me to throw him out; he is rarely in school and in lessons even less often.
I will throw him out, but not yet. At the moment he would cause a scene but in 15 minutes he will be bored and just leave.
Phil Jenks has been drinking from a plastic Coke bottle; he thinks I haven’t seen it. I just can’t be bothered with the row. The bottle is now empty; my lack of action has emboldened him so he starts to throw it up and catch it. I take it off him and throw it in the bin. Ben shouts: “Thief”, gets up, goes to the front, takes it out of the bin and throws it to Phil.
Even the likes of Colin and Phil don’t like Ben. I tell him to leave. As he goes, Phil throws the bottle at him. Ben calls him a cunt.
Ben has a very sad and dysfunctional background. His father is a violent drug addict; he never knew his mother and has had five or six addresses in four years. There are no stable, reliable adults in his life; every adult he has ever known has let him down, including his teachers, including me.

Period 3
Year 8 (12-13 year olds), set 5/6

Mark Anderson is wearing a Nike baseball cap. He tells me his mother bought it for him last night because of the certificate I gave him. Billy comes in with my support teacher; she has caught him hiding under the stairs. He asks if he can have another certificate today, completely oblivious to the fact he has just tried to truant my lesson.
It is, however, a good lesson. While we were discussing a question on the board, Tracy Jones looked up an answer on the tables-square on the wall and the whole class was quiet while she did this. Encouraged by this I decided the work I had planned is not hard enough so I give out some year 9 textbooks. The entire lesson is a success; we finish with some table chanting, they volunteer to try and recite them. It is almost like when I had this class at the start of year 7.
By the end of the lesson we have done twice as much as I would have expected. I send several positive notes home to parents.
I wish I knew what was in the water today: I would pay for it to be added. This was real teaching to more or less receptive students. I enjoyed it and so did most of them.
I am happy. Why am I happy? I am happy because my students came into the room quietly, did as they were told, were not rude and more or less listened when I needed them to. I am happy because my students acted like polite, civilised human beings.
Isn’t there is something wrong when we have to celebrate socially acceptable behaviour?

Period 5
Year 11 (1-16 year olds), set 4/8

I give out the exam papers from yesterday, and photocopies of the paper with model answers and explanations that I prepared last night and photocopied today. They all begin to moan at the amount of paper that they have been given. Phil Jenks says to Pam Cook: “What’s the fucking point in this?” Colin Jones starts copying the model answers on to his actual exam paper. I watch him do it.
I ask if they have all got their papers back. I tell them to start comparing their answers with the model answers. Phil shouts that I have missed half of his marks off. I ignore this. A girl I like calls me over; she has added the marks on the paper and found I have miscounted by one, so I alter her mark and we laugh about it. Phil shouts that this is a load of crap and I can’t even add up.
Then my prayers are answered: a prefect comes in to say that all year 11 students are to go to the main hall because of a dinner-time incident. There is a God.
Student-based learning, giving them space, is one of the things that I believe in most. Phil

’s comment – “What’s the fucking point in this?” — is the attitude of about half of them. Comparing answers that they have got wrong to model answers, asking questions of their own knowledge, thinking reflectively, are the most effective way of learning. Phil, like many, feels insecure when asked to learn like this; they have too much space, so consequently they stand still. They hate teacher-led learning because that means listening and the occasional discomfort of being asked a question, but being led is easier than guiding yourself.
What happened next

The year 11s all took their GCSEs. The 4/8 set — the ones with theoretically average ability — mostly got grade F. The entire 8/8 group failed.
Ben Brooks stopped coming to school. Colin Jones called an outside invigilator “a fucking cunt” during an exam and was not allowed back to school. Michel Jordan from the year 9 group assaulted a teacher, went to live with his father and stopped coming to school. Lee Hollis and Sam Foster from the year 8 group have been put on reduced timetables and only come to school for three hours a day. During that time, Sam assaulted a lab technician and is now waiting for the exclusion panel to meet. Brian Moor has moved school again, making five schools since he was 11.
After five phone calls home, Anthony Gray’s parents came into school. His father told me that his son’s poor time-keeping, attendance, punctuality and lack of equipment were his mother’s fault. She sat in the background trembling. He said that he would sort it out. As they left the meeting room I heard Anthony say: “Are you going to slap her, Dad?” His behaviour improved for one week then returned to “normal”.
IBoy with plane can only look at this situation from the point of view I am qualified for: a mathematical one. There are 168 hours in a week. Allowing eight hours a night for sleep, children are awake for 112 hours a week. They spend 30 to 35 hours a week in school, that is, about 30% of their lives. Teachers have a responsibility but our children are out of school for twice the length of time that they are in it — not including holidays. A lesson lasts for one hour. If 15 minutes are lost to poor behaviour, that is exactly 25% of school time lost. That is the same as losing one-and-a-third academic years or, if you prefer, from Easter of year 10 and all of year 11 from the time spent in secondary school.
Some teachers have a natural ability to control. I know teachers who can walk into a room and all in there instantly fall quiet. I am not one of these teachers; they are very rare. There are perhaps three teachers with this ability among a staff of 40 in my school. Some of their skills are transferable and can be learned, but much of what they have is innate. I have heard a head teacher say that it is only some teachers who have problems and I am sure that that is true. I am also sure that I am one of them.