…and stole my iPod, mobile phone and all the notes from my wallet. Which amounted to only $35, thankfully. My mobile phone was found later that day in one of the classrooms I have access to through my office by a student who handed it into the office. So, at least there’s that. We have some idea of which classes may have had access to my office, or at least, which teacher left it open, but no real leads. Which is why I’m going iPod shopping tomorrow night. Despite the fact that I have my phone back, and I’m not nearly as angry as I was Tuesday night when I realised what had happened, I’m still upset and disgusted. Someone went through my bag to get my stuff. If they’d kept my phone, they could have harassed my family and friends.
Not only that, I care about our students. The fact that one of them would do this to me makes me sick and depressed. The only positive thing is how sympathetic and shocked the students have been when I’ve talked to them about it. Kids are constantly coming up to me in the halls, asking whether I have my stuff back.

But hey. At least we don’t have school pets.

Trying something new today. I got the idea to do a run down of my ‘typical’ day at work somewhere online. There isn’t really anything typical about my days, if only because of the way a secondary teacher works - with a timetable, so they’re not teaching the same kids from one day to another. So, this is today:

7.00 am: Wake up, get dressed. Pack up my laptop and cables for work. Forget to bring my meds downstairs to have with breakfast, so I have to come back up for it.

7.20 am: Have breakfast (weetbix clones from Aldi every morning, microwaved in winter). Brush teeth etc.

7.35 am: Take meds back upstairs. Put on basic makeup.

7.45 - 8.00 am: Leave for work.

8.15 - 8.30 am: Arrive at school. I enter through the front office, go to the staffroom and put my lunch in the fridge and check my pigeon hole for any new mail etc. Check the whiteboard calendar and extras list (where extra classes are listed if needed). Take my stuff down to my office, which is in a separate corridor.

8.45 am: Staff briefing. Our Assistant Principal plus one of our four leading teachers let us know about the day’s events, give us the week’s focus (e.g. correct uniform, attendance etc) on Mondays, etc. Then staff make announcements. Most of these are either about student behaviour (suspensions and so forth) or curriculum.

8.58 am: Grab my class roll and the student bulletin. Head to my home room.

9.00 am: Get my kids lined up in “two quiet lines, please”. Wait until they’re lined up properly and quietly and ask them to “go in, and stand quietly behind seats”. I can spend up to 10 minutes with my class standing up because of how noisy they are. During this time I do the roll and hand out any notices etc. Once the kids are sitting, I announce all relevant material from the bulletin plus anything I or other teachers/staff need them to know, e.g. room changes.

9.15 am: Period 1 starts. Today I wasn’t teaching this period. I visited the staffroom, had a cup of tea and checked my work email, printed and photocopied worksheets.
Read the rest of this entry »

Thank Bona Dea, my dentist tells me my wisdom teeth are coming through straight. So it’s not likely I’ll need surgery. Whoo!

On a completely different topic, I’m currently on school holidays (second week). I found out in the last few weeks of last term that I’m teaching new subjects this coming semester. I found out several weeks ago that I was teaching a Year 7 SOSE class (sadly not my homegroup, but I like these kids so it’s all good). During parent-teacher night, which fell on our last Monday of term, I looked up my new timetable and found out I’m teaching my homegroup’s Health class. I panicked even more when I realised that my class’ current Health teacher was on camp until the last day of work. Things worked out fine, however, and I finally caught up with her and found out I was teaching Alcohol as my first topic. A trip to the photocopier later and I was prepared. SOSE is a different story. My class will be continuing some work from last term for the first few weeks, but after that I start a new topic. Which will be ‘Art in SOSE’, which I don’t quite understand.

As far as media goes, I’m currently overhauling my Advertising unit to include more interactive activities and more computer work, particularly since one of the classes I have this coming semester has low literacy. I’m also adjusting the unit so that I don’t rely as heavily on cameras and other equipment, given that I had quite a few issues with equipment last semester (like one of the two digital video cameras committing suicide while my students were trying to capture footage). My budget also can’t afford new equipment yet, I’m waiting until the end of the year in case I have any surprise expenditures between now and then. I’m also taking advantage of the existence and awesomeness of The Gruen Transfer by using the footage and other materials available in the site’s Consumer’s Revenge section so my students don’t have to film footage in order to get practice editing and coming up with messages and persuasive language and the like. I’m also planning on getting the kids to do The Chasers War on Everything inspired ad road tests, though I’ll probably be getting them to do them more like scientific reports (after enlisting a science teacher to go over this stuff with me, as it’s been a while since VCE Psychology). My brain is finally firing into action after a week of sleep and watching new tv (Eureka and The Middleman, by the way, both of which are quite awesome). Good thing, too.

Listen to my uncle on ABC’s Radio National program Perspective on the difficulty of finding work when one is mentally ill. Word. Clearly I’m biased, but he’s absolutely right. I have a mental illness myself, which at one point had an incredible impact on my ability to find work (as did four deaths in my family within six months while I was job hunting the first time around). Since being employed, I’ve disclosed my mental illness to my principal. Not for safety issues so much as how it could effect my performance. This article gives an overview of how much of an impact my disorder can have on my daily life. Teaching, as a job, involves a lot of peer evaluation of one’s teaching. It’s taken me a semester to become comfortable having student teachers and colleagues visit my classes.
But employment can do wonders for someone with a mental illness. I am much more able to speak in public and have found teaching has done wonders for my self-confidence. Employment can also create an anchor to society that can be lost when you suffer from a mental illness. Simply having somewhere to go every day and a reason to get out of bed is incredibly healthy, particularly for those of us with anti-social tendencies.

Anyway, on another note: George Carlin. I’m watching the recent HBO special right now. So much love.

When asked why the following advertisment may have been controversial, a student answered:

It could have been controversial because she’s white and most Africans are black and it says she’s African in the advertisement but she’s not from looking at her. And the necklace around her neck if that’s supposed to be a culture thing.

Try reading that one aloud and you’ll get a good idea of the speech patterns of my students.

Four Year 7 girls who have apparently decided they don’t like me very much. My guess it’s because they’re little cows and I won’t take their abuse.

Two of the girls are in the same class, who I had this morning for ICT. They spent the lesson either glaring at me, bitching about me loudly to other students so that I would hear and, when I attempted to help them they told me they wanted the teacher I team teach the subject with, not me. They also clearly had other students in on this last part, as one kid told me I’m “not (their) real teacher anyway!”

I thought I was over dealing with them for the day when our Assistant Principal took them out, most likely because they’re also giving their science/maths teacher (the other first year teacher at my school) hell. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the last time I had issues with them. Near the end of recess I headed back to my classroom from the staff room to set up a data projector so I could work with it as soon as the next class came in. Instead, the four girls decided they’d stop me from moving through the corridor by linking arms and blocking the way out. I pretended not to notice and talked to one of my students but when I tried to move around them, they also moved. At one point, one of the girls left and the other three surrounded me still linking arms and didn’t let me out. I somehow managed not to do something illegal/inappropriate and instead said “I hope you guys enjoy your after school (detention), because you’re getting one”. At this point they scattered and moved onto their class. I went to my classroom and tried to calm myself but unfortunately ended up taking it out on my next class. I’ve reported it to the Assistant Principal, but the Year 7 co-ordinator is out this week on professional leave. My only hope is that my AP decides not to allow them on the excursion I’m going on tomorrow, because I can’t deal with them without at least the long weekend (go matriarch I can’t give to shits about!) to recover from this bullshit.
Clearly this was something pre-planned. That makes me even angrier. I think I’m personally too close to make parental phone calls or any decisions about what happens to them, but I’m hoping for at least a suspension. The thing that really upsets me is that I lacked some control in that situation. I’m the authority figure in the relationship and they took that from me, if only for a minute or so. I didn’t deserve that and they didn’t have the right to try it. At the moment, I refuse to have them in one of my classes again, but we’ll see how I feel when it’s a less fresh and new.

Anyway, the lighter (and frightening) side of teaching: kids’ comments/questions during exams. These aren’t all verbatim, and not all things I personally witnessed, but they’re still amusing. Or at least worrying.

Year 9 Photography Exam
Perpetually stoned boy: You know those trays in the darkroom? Are they the enlarger?
Me: *slack jawed* You’re scaring me, Perpetually stoned boy.

Year 9 Developmental Maths Exam
Baby talking girl: Do I need to show my working out if I’m just guessing the answers?

Year 10 English Exam
Lovely but non-academic girl: Can I write my essay in dot points?

I just noticed my assistant principal’s home email signature includes an ASCII Dalek and a Terry Pratchett quote.

He is such a nerd. Who knew?

Dear Channel 10 reporter,
The J in the word “junta” is not pronounced like it is in the word “jump”. It’s pronounced as an H. Next time like it up on wikipedia. It’ll only take you a few seconds, just like it did me. Please stop advocating incorrect pronunciation of words, I have enough trouble with the kids I teach. While I’m at it… Kids, it’s “ask” not “aks”. Really.

From,
Frustrated teacher

I really need to post more here, if only to maintain some contact with the outside world. I sometime feel like this job is swallowing me whole. There are so many negative things going on with my classes at the moment, but I want to talk about a positive, if only for myself.

My Year 10 Multimedia class is currently working on the pre-production stages of a class film. Some rather industrious students wrote a script with little to no prodding from me. It’s a little overwritten but not bad for 15-16 year olds. Example:

Dean: Face it. We suck, we have no gigs, we have no fans, we have no life! The last time we played for an audience is when your Nan asked us if we knew how to play waltzing Matilda…and I think we made her go deaf.
Dan: well.. deaf-er… but that’s what rock is
Chris: rock is dying is what rock is.
Wayne: so what? We’re just stuck in a bit of a rut.
Dean: we’re not stuck, we’re effing trapped. Same old stuff, same old gigs, same old chicks winging about the same old drugs.

So, yeah. Not the best ever, but I’m still quite impressed. One of the kids who contributed to the writing keeps approaching me in the halls, in his English class (which I took today) and so forth to talk more about it. He’s so into it that I’m worried he’s going to be disappointed by the apathy of the rest of the kids. One other has apparently purchased a clapboard. I’m assuming it’s a novelty one, but it’s still more commitment than I ever expected. I’m a little overwhelmed by the kids’ genuine interest in the work. It’s the first time I’ve seen such a large group of kids care about their work (other than when I took the Year 7s out to use the digital cameras, but that was fleeting, particularly when we realised the library hadn’t properly charged the batteries). It’s going to be hard to tell the class on Monday that one of the video cameras we were relying on died (rather spectacularly, with smoke and the works) in one of my classes this week. I was supposed to get my budget today so I could determine whether I can afford to replace it, but our bursar was out sick. Such is life.

And on a completely different topic, I have an mp3 to offer.
Hard N’ Phirm - Rodeohead

It’s a bluegrass cover medley of Radiohead songs. Which is an almost incomprehensible sentence. In any case, it’s awesome and hilarious.

And a teaching related PSA: support professional pay for Victoria’s teachers. Teachers with the same amount of training and experience as me in NSW make around $4000 more per annum than I do, simply because of their government. I and my colleagues deserve better.

Random student comment from today’s Photography class:

“I just don’t like looking in holes, that’s all!”