»9th October 2009

School

What ho. This is another one of my 'in the planning for months' updates. Well, 'planning' is a word I should ought to avoid, it gives all kinds of wrong connotations. Anyway, moving swiftly on.

School?

Yes, my next genius career move has been attempting to get into teaching. As an idea, it has its routes in year 12 of college/sixth form where I volunteered at my old junior school probably thinking 'it will be funny' or something like that. Five years on and I'm back at the very same school volunteering again. Progress!

It's supposed to be good practice to write down what you do on work experience placements and the like, so like with the T&A and Leeds Guide I've been keeping a log for this bout of unpaid work too. The trouble is, the school hasn't been some two-week 'hello, intern' affair, nope, I've been going in three or four days a week since some time in June, discounting the six week summer holidays of course.

'So why didn't you just write something on this in the six week holidays?'

I'm not entirely sure, I might have been lazy or something.

My 'what I did at work today, lol' log has slowly ballooned into an epic, if almost entirely boring account of every single hour I've spent at the school volunteering. Here's a basic summary, try and stay awake at the back...

So, two broad sections in this period: the first before summer involving moving through the year groups in key stage 2, and the second beginning in the autumn term and being based in year 1. What an exciting summary. Now I'll start wholesale copy-pasting from the log.

Year 1

To begin with there was something unquantifiably terrifying about the five-year-olds. This was my first fifteen minutes in the classroom.
First thing in, one of them started crying, eek, I stood around looking useless.


Why are you crying?!? AARRHHH!? I'm really shit with the tablet pen.

blog_09_09_20.html

This was going to be the blog update for 20th September, but I couldn't think of anything else that was fucking me insane. This resulted after my first attempt to fill out my PGCE application on the GTTR website.


Things That Have Been Fucking Me Insane
GTTR's stupid-piece-of-bullshit Website
Want to become a teacher? Well fuck you, you're going to use our woeful online application system. Remember how much fun you had applying to university through UCAS? Well we still think you're a child who can't be trusted to approach universities or colleges directly and so you'll have to go through us. What does that mean for you and your weekend? Well do you remember that shitty site you went on a few years back that had huge one page forms that timed out all the time? Yeah, well we've brought that back from the internet graveyard to torment you. And when the website does time out (which it will) will we let you log back in? Fuck no, not until you've waited an hour. Can't remember your username? Well don't look at us like we ever thought to email you that shit when you registered.

If you could beat someone to death with their piss poor excuse for an online application system, then I would be doing that to GTTR right now.

It doesn't have to be like this either. I've been using the Leeds City Council and Kirklees Council websites to apply online for various jobs. Those websites actually work. They warn you when things might time out; they don't cram everything onto one stupid page that's bound to time out in the first place; they don't lock you out of the website for an hour because you didn't log out, timed out, or whatever bullshit reason it is; they even remember your details from your last application so forms are mostly filled out as soon as you load them. As Apple are so fond of saying, it just works.

Just working clearly wasn't circled enough times on the half-assed mind map GTTR made when they were designing throwing together their website. I'm not even sure I'm logging in with the right username anyway seeing as GTTR don't seem to know what to do with the email address they asked me for. I'm pretty sure GTTR's fondness for 12-character text fields carries over into usernames, but it's not like I can tell if I have the details because I have to wait 'up to an hour' before I can log in again after my first attempt at filling out the gigantic qualifications page timed out. I could have written down the details sure, but when was the last time you signed up for something and didn't get a confirmation email? 1998? Thought so.


Enough ancient history, back to the fifties. I did eventually fill out the application form though it's still not complete as I'm currently waiting on references. Apparently, everyone who taught me on the MA has retired or gone on 'study leave'. Great.

Jokes

For some reason, the work experience diary has become a repository of my numerous abortive attempts at humour.

After another trip to a family party/reunion thing down in Staffordshire. One of the teachers is from Newcastle and was recomending I paid a visit to the city. There must be something I don't know about Newcastle because the Leeds Guide had a major hard-on for it too.

28/09/09
made pre-prepared corny joke about 'I went to Newcastle... under Lyme' ho ho ho.
29/09/09

Glossary Fun: SEN - Special Educational Needs. ETAs refer to the SEN folder often seeing as it's their job to work with the children who need extra help.
After phonics it was P.E. and ███ ███ said I could 'pull some children out for SEN' (I made a crap joke about pulling their hair or something) to reinforce what they had been doing in phonics.
███ ██████ and/or ███ ███████ said that it was really helpful having me helping in the lessons seeing as ████ can easily absorb one teaching assistant entirely. I made a joke that I was like 'the hit squad' sent in to fix trouble spots, 'the elite' etc.
01/10/09

More Glossary Fun: IEPs? Individual Education Plans - these have objectives for individual children so they don't fall behind. They are found in the Necronomicron SEN folder.
At break I filled out IEP's for those in Blue Group who had them. This was the first time I'd done this all week and I took the opportunity to make crappy jokes
I made the crappy joke at some point about 'time to put that history degree into action' ho ho ho.
Later on at the Eid Bazaar...
I made a series of crappy jokes. Ho ho ho.
At the Eid Bazaar I was on the front door with the deputy head where it was 50p entry for adults whilst 'Kids go free!' Naturally, this resulted in further 'humour'...
I joked to ██ ██████ that we'd be like the bouncers. Ho ho ho.

Are you on the guest list?

05/10/09
The first was a PHSCE(?) lesson framed aroudn healthy eating which involved RUNNING AROUND and the second was a music lesson that involved MAKING SILLY SINGING NOISES. I joked that this would surely result in chaos. Witty back and forths ensued, yes, ho ho ho.
Witty? Really?

The 'running around' and 'silly singing noises' lessons were to be covered by a supply teacher. This seemed particularly cruel, supply teachers have an uphill battle to begin with. Surprisingly though, the two lessons went exceptionally well, mostly because the running around lesson was taken as an opportunity to tire out the children for the forthcoming lesson where singing was switched out for clapping and other 'body percussion' noises.

I felt rather proud of myself yet also rather bemused the day after when the supply teacher had left a note to the teacher saying how the class had been. Part of the note read:
Very good help from Mr. ████████████. Good discipline.
Clearly, all that time taking notes from Kindergarten Cop has paid off. I still need to practice my disapproving glare and try and attain that correct pitch of voice that can cut through the noise of a classroom and strike fear into the heart of any five-year-old. With practice, I'll be able to make plants wither with a glance.

06/10/09
He mentioned that my CRB check had come back and I made the joke about 'well it only covers the stuff which they KNOW about' which I think landed
A joke 'landing' still doesn't correlate with it being funny.

07/10/09
Went to ████ ███████████'s to drop off my plastic folder with the lesson plans. Joked that I have [a plastic folder] 'like a real employee!' ho ho ho.
The plastic folder was the centre of yet more jokes as the week progressed...

08/10/09
████ █ said I could do some reading and asked if I had my reading group list. 'No, it's in my folder... which I don't have.' 'That's not very professional!' and upon returning with plastic folder in tow I exclaimed 'Like a pro!' Oh much hilarity was had.
At break I hanged aroudn again, probably making more crappy jokes to ███ ███████.


Lesson plans are for closers.

OFSTED

The Office for Standards in Education move in mysterious ways. On monday afternoon, a particularly grave-looking headteacher appeared suddenly in the staff room as I was about to make my exit for the day. All the teachers had been called there in a bit of a hurry, I thought we were under attack by the goblins again and waited around trying to stay out of his field of vision until one of the other ETAs came in and said 'Do I need to be here?' 'No.' With that I radioed for air evac and got the hell out of there. Once I was on the chopper and heading back to base I found out what was going on. I'm not actually quoting from my stupid log here, by the way.
[14:48] Carl www.extarscube.com: well the exciting development this week was the surprise appearance of ofsted

[14:48] Carl www.extarscube.com: and that's surprise as in ringing up at 2:30 on monday saying 'see you on wednesday'
An OFSTED inspection is singularly the most terrifying thing ever. There was a palpable sense of tension on tuesday. OFSTED inspections are unusual in the first half of the first term seeing as only five weeks into term, lots of things still haven't got off the ground. Tuesday was a day of frantic preparation, getting half-completed paper-work in order, hastily throwing together wall displays. I decided it would be a good idea to come in on thursday again so I'd be in for both days of the inspection, firstly I'd be able to help out a lot and be given various jobs which would help with 'Operation: Start Getting Paid'; and secondly I'd be able to get some experience of OFSTED inspections whilst not being in a position of any particular responsibility and thus stress.
OFSTED are like some combination of Russian Commissar and the Spanish Inquisition.
It was a strange non-lesson after break, presumably to allow further preparation for OFSTED. I spent an inordinate amount of time sorting out the blasted felt tips, pencils and crayons, making sure there were one of each colour in each tray etc. This didn't happen of course but I did get it sorted out. I also tidied up the writing area, got some more paper from the resource room, where I made additional sarcastic remarks about the staff questionaire OFSTED had left 'I strongly agree with everything in the school...' 'I'm a happy camper...' When the children came back I made an effort to try and rein in some discipline whilst they were passing a ball around the circle saying ways in which they could behave well tomorrow. This descended into farce after it was discovered that the ball could squeek.
The idea of an anonymous staff questionaire was undermined by the fact I had to tick the box saying 'teaching assistant' and add 'voluntary' onto the end of it. So I unfortunately had to keep my strong feelings about the governors or the leadership of the school to myself, because as the voluntary/fake ETA, I totally know all about that kind of shit.
I made additional sarcastic remarks about the OFSTED letter, at one point commenting 'OFSTED: Ruining your life.'
I got a photocopy done of the lesson plan so I have something to wave at OFSTED people if they decide to ask me anything, 'everything is just super!'
The shit was properly lined up ready to hit the fan come wednesday morning. It was then a guessing game of who will get an inspector and in which lesson? Numeracy and literacy are regular fixtures on the timetable, so they should run like a well-oiled machine okay. A topic lesson involving paint and/or music/singing would be less okay. Presumably as part of sticking to school policy, ETAs had to sit on the carpet with the children during the teacher's input. This didn't sit well with me at first, and I tried to avoid doing so by busying myself preparing tables for the lesson or tidying.
Numeracy was very tense. I once more sat on the carpet, with a greater sense of ease. I worked with purple group, cutting up play dough into halves and quarters. This went fairly well though ███████ and then ███████ became silly. Mostly kept a lid on it. An inspector came in the class by mistake at the end of the class, and ████ ████ was nervously laughing after he said he was in the wrong classroom.
During one lesson I got to take one of the children out into the shared area and read a story. This probably had something to do with keeping me looking busy.
Whilst I was reading to ████, a female inspector emerged from their base (nest?) in the room next to ████ ███████████'s. She asked me who I was 'I'm the voluntary ETA, I'm thinking of getting into teaching next year.' She asked me if I'd had a CRB check 'Yes, it came through the other day. I started in September and had applied for it then.' She seemed satisfied with this and just said 'I'm just asking because I'm one of the inspectors.' to which I glibly replied 'Oh right, really?'
OFSTED chaos came to a head on Thursday. My guard was down, there wasn't any expectation that there would be inspectors in the class I was working in again. All was going well until numeracy. I once more had to oversee the exercise learning basic fractions, i.e. halves and quarters, that involved... playdough. I should have been more careful, previous times I'd worked with the playdough had been successful, this time however, was not. I was with one of the groups I always have trouble with... It was becoming very noisy... Playdough was flying through the air... A complete morale failure ensued... Just as the OFSTED inspector sneaked into the classroom. Like some sort of evil spider he then proceeded to hide just out of sight as the playdough fiasco continued. By the end of the lesson, the playdough table was kind of like the American base at the Do Long bridge in Apocalypse Now.


It's a bit of a stretch to say this is an artist's impression of what happened. It's largely how I remember it, though.

I had already become suspicious of the playdough. I had earlier found out that the stuff is home-made which made its oozing consistency all the more malevolent. Somewhat shell-shocked from the panic induced by the playdough disaster, I appended my list of important rules never to be broken.

  • Never get out of the boat.
  • Never use playdough.

    • In conclusion? I'm not entirely convinced any of that will make any sense to you, but when it comes to copy-pasting from my own account of events, it could only have made sense by also being boring. The log itself currently stands at 30,000 words. 'Seriously?' Seriously. Even I couldn't be bothered wading through such a vast account of 200+ hours of pretending to be an ETA so I'm not sure it even makes sense to me.

    Oops, looks like I wrote all this crap and forgotten about my initial good idea for this update which I had actually planned out in advance. Let's see if I can throw this together. The chronology will get fucked up now, seeing as most of this refers to stuff from work experience: part I, i.e. the summer term.



    'What the hell is that?'

    Yeah, I thought this would need some explaining. Okay, vaguely working clockwise from top left: