The End?

Ah, the famous closing credits to Flash Gordon, and sadly there wasn’t another one so that really was the end, so does that mean today is the last blog post?

Well, yes, is the short answer. This is the end of what I initially conceived as my memories of teaching but ultimately became a bit more than that. It seems logical to end it here, at the end of the academic year¹, but what about the future?

Some of you may know that, despite my best efforts to get out, teaching has, to quote Al Pacino, pulled me back in. As of September I will be working in a school in Thailand, so somehow back to working full time as just a teacher. Given I’ve only been ‘just a teacher’ for one year of my career, this will be very interesting! I’m really looking forward to it, not just to get back to being in the classroom and practising what I’ve been preaching all year, but also being in Thailand²!

So whilst my arm looks like a pin cushion with all the jabs I’m getting, and my bank balance looks rubbish due to the price of flights thanks to the orange man-baby, let’s have a look at some of the things that I would say are essential for a teacher:

• You cannot drink a lot of alcohol on a school night. You can try, but you will regret it.
• This is related to the previous point: if you do drink a lot of beer, then go for a curry on a school night, make sure you walk around the classroom a lot the next day – and for god’s sake, open a window.
• Don’t bend over in front of kids if your trousers/skirt/dress are/is too tight.
• If you hear an emergency call for help and first aid at the same time, don’t go charging over, just to be almost sick when you see the state of the students injury³.
• Make sure you talk about the right Michael⁴ at parents evening.
• Try not to scoff when someone tells you the latest buzz word in teaching⁵, which is a fancy name for something only a moron wouldn’t do.
• Don’t hoard the whiteboard pens at the end of term. Instead raffle them off in exchange for something like a new car⁶.
• Look at the weather forecast in the summer. If it’s going to be hot in a week or so⁷, get those computer rooms booked and revel in the sweet air-con.
• Talk to the kids about important events. Bugger this ‘non-political’ stance, that’s nonsense. They don’t listen or take on board advice such as ‘yes you should turn the page now you’ve reached the bottom’ so it’s safe to say they’ll ignore you pointing out what a bunch of hypocritical borderline fascist grifters⁸ Reform are.
• Never take the piss out of a student’s teams performance in a league. If they do it to you, take the moral high ground until next year when you win and can build in the scoreline in subtle ways⁹.
• If on a school trip, make sure you add the right people to the trip WhatsApp group¹⁰.
• If you can’t find the correct shade of pen to do your marking, fuck it and use whatever is to hand. Do SLT want the books marked, or do they want it in the exact shade of violet/pink/tartan¹¹ that is trendy this month?
• Centralised resources and PowerPoints you are meant to use do not resolve you from doing any planning¹².

That’s it. The end. Now, who’s up for Could Do Better: The Paradise Years?

Until next time?

FOOTNOTES

1. Lots of schools break up today, but let’s spare a moment for those who are working into next week. Poor buggers. ↩︎
2. Just intolerable, I know. ↩︎
3. It was minging. He’d tried to climb a fence and had slipped, tearing the skin off his wrist. Bones were visible. ↩︎
4. Other names available. ↩︎
5. My favourite is ‘thresholding’, or meeting the kids at the door to your classroom so you can say hello to them. Who the hell doesn’t do that? ↩︎
6. This also applies to glue sticks. ↩︎
7. And if the forecast is wrong, you still have a computer room booked. Yay! ↩︎
8. It’s not even borderline to be honest. ↩︎
9. As a Welsh rugby fan, I’ve had more than my fair share of wooden spoons or kids laughing at how crap we are. I mean, I wasn’t playing so what’s your point? The following year, when we win, I always use the exact scoreline in my examples but don’t point it out. Haha. ↩︎
10. Bit niche this one, but I wasn’t added to a trip once, but the organiser swore blind I was. Turns out she’d added a random Dave (that she didn’t even know). I’m still not sure how that happened. ↩︎
11. I once saw someone spin out because they couldn’t find a purple pen. I also had a mate who was colour blind and every time he marked he had to come and check he was holding the right colour. Fuck that rule, and whilst we’re at it, what the hell is wrong with red? ↩︎
12. Well, I had to sneak a serious one in somewhere. ↩︎