Ah open evening – one of the highlights of the academic year1. Children come to look around ‘big school’ and get excied about the range of activities teachers have cobbled together to show them. These activities are designed to get the children to be students, so they are invariably exciting and fun.2 In some cases, schools will decorate the corridors with plants to make the whole place look less like a prison.
My first school did this, but of course it was let down by the students in charge of showing parents around exclaiming, loudly, ‘we never have plants in this corridor3‘. My last school decided to do a ‘treasure hunt’ around the building, where students had to find members of staff , or to look at displays to answer questions . This was a great idea, and led to a really nice buzz around the school.
The question to which I was the answer was ‘Which maths teacher writes horror books?’. Always nice to do a promo for my other work, but it led to me answering questions about writing all night, rather than other, less important things like the maths curriculum or what our pass rate was. One parent spent the whole evening giving me the side eye, like she wasn’t sure if I was going to eat her kid4.
Lots of parents already know they are going to send their kid to the school they visit, which lends the entire evening an overlong promotional event for people who are already buying your product. It is great to get parents into schools though, something that our wonderful Primary colleagues do better than us. Seondary schools really could do more work to get parents involved.
Mini-rant incoming so feel free to skip this paragraph.
Probably around 10%5 of parents who visit haven’t made their minds up yet. You can tell these as they come armed with a notebook and write down the things you say6. They ask good, pertinent questions about SEN7, even though their kid doesn’t have one. Most of these questions we can’t answer because we don’t want to get in trouble by overpromising or saying things the SEN department can’t actually deliver. It’s a funding thing – SEN is woefully underfunded in this country, which inevitably leads to dissatisfaction from parents and unhappy students. It’s criminal really, but successive governments (including, sadly, this one) have implemented pay rises for teachers8 but fom ‘exisiting budgets9‘. For me, education should be party free with guaranteed levels of funding. Having an educated populace is surely not up for debate, whichever side of the political fence you sit.
Enough of Open Evening. Just know I wish you luck and all the tea and biscuits the school can provide. Also know I won’t miss it!
If you are reading this on Friday afternoon10, then you’ve just survived your first full week of teaching. Congratulations! I hope it went well. Here’s a little story about a disastrous first week11.
In my second school, at the end of the first week, two year 7 lads decided to go on a rampage around the school. They banged on classroom doors, shouted and yelled into rooms where people were teaching. They were chased by two members of the senior team12 but continued banging on doors and shouting, swearing etc. Eventually, they ran out of school13 and jumped on a bus, where they went to the back seat and flashed v’s and wanker signs out the window at the pursing teachers.
Obvioulsy, the two lads got a permanent exclusion, but at the governors hearing, their defence was ‘how did you know it was us?’
Anyone got any great Open Evening stories? Feel free to drop them in the comments and if you are enjoying these ramblings, please share!
In the ever so sinister words of one of my favourite year 11 students, until next time14.
- This is a lie. ↩︎
- And never seen in a classroom. Until the next open evening of course. ↩︎
- Or, on one memorable occasion, “what the fuck is this shit?”. Actually, that was one of the teachers. Possibly me. ↩︎
- Ridiculous. I was full of tea, cheap biscuits and Celebrations by that time. ↩︎
- 43.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot – Steven Wright. The American comedian, not the sycophantic British radio DJ. ↩︎
- Never my book titles. Bastards. ↩︎
- Special Educational Needs. A terrible name, as every student has a need and is an individual who thinks in a different way to the person sat next to them. ↩︎
- Yay! ↩︎
- FFS. This means if I get a pay rise, there’s less money for things like resources, or Learning Support Assistants, or trips or, or, or. It’s outrageous. ↩︎
- Thank you. You are a lovely human being. ↩︎
- It’s a story. It definitely happended, but it was a long time ago so the details might not be 100% accurate. ↩︎
- Never chase kids. a) they are faster than you and b) it gives them the attention they crave. This was the late 90s though, and this sort of thinking wasn’t common then. In anycase, the little shits needed stopping. ↩︎
- This wouldn’t happen now. School buildings are locked down during school hours. ↩︎
- Alfie, you legend. Every lesson he would leave my room saying those words. Sometimes with a smile, sometimes not. ↩︎
David Watkins 
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