Class action

I started in a posh private without training or any realistic plan. Best advice: don’t smile till Christmas & focus on the classroom ritual. Good luck!

I was quite tired today and a bit ratty so I used it to my advantage by taking some of it out on a class which is teetering on the brink of insurrection, and I think I might have reeled them back in at the last minute.

These stories are fantastic. I’m sorry for all the discomfort but it’s great fodder for your loyal readers.

So these are not underprivileged students? I hope you don’t finally snap and kick one of them in the teeth but it’s going to be difficult. What can you threaten them with? What are they afraid of?

No, they’re not underprivileged. Their parents have got tons of money. I want to make them afraid of me. I’m working on it.

Tell them you’re a (Lancashire) Cossack. I don’t think the Kazakh hordes ever had much luck against Cossacks.

Neither am I.

i think you may have found the key - if YOU don’t give a shit either, you can let your irritation flow. as exile said, figure out what they’re afraid of… clearly, not teachers, or administrative punishment. failure in life? losing their status? becoming less privileged?

sorry you had to eat horsemeat. when i was in Peru, i felt obliged to taste guinea pig. it was bony. if i were going to eat rat, i think that’s what it would taste like.

All you need in teaching,( it was once put to me) is a loud voice and a straight face. So I think the notion of not smiling is a good one.
Hard to do, but, do what your enemy least wants you to do. This may mean befriending the leader of the group, getting them on your side and the rest will follow. I was once called a £nut by one of my charges. I didn’t react when it happened, but when the session finished, I called him back and face to face with me and alone, he burst into tears.
I taught some real bastards in my time, and I know what it’s like when there is no backup. However, you are far more interesting and intelligent than most of the people teaching them and they know this.
Great blog.

I don’t give a shit about the fate of the children or how I’m contributing to it, for good or bad. When, as a teacher, you start thinking that way, then it’s time to leave the post you’re in. I’ll see it out till the end of the year – or at least until I next get paid – but the prospect of coming back here in September…I can see myself ringing them up on 30th August saying my mum’s died or something.

It is comforting to know that students are the same everywhere, lol!! I’d listen to Leslie, there some good points up there… oddly people always thought i’d be a great teacher, they say i relate well to kids well, i just treat them like people and take no shit, of course being 6′4 i’m sure helps haha!!

Yeah, 5′8″ doesn’t help :)