Another day in paradise

My job as a teacher wouldn't be half as hard if kids didn't pick up language, manners (or lack of) and habits at home. I have in my Y7 class a little Madam, who can be very cute but also very manipulative. She moved form into my class a couple of months ago, apparently after some problems in French lessons. Let's call her Amy. Amy's very quiet, lacks confidence and is not the brightest of girls, although she does pick up some knowledge in lessons and is not quite bottom of the class. Her quiet, manipulative ways are much more damaging than a kid who explodes with rage in front of you. Let me explain what I mean. At one point, a few weeks ago, she started refusing to come to my lessons, and the first I knew about it was when I was informed of it by my head of department. I had no idea that she felt so bad about it, as she's never said anything and her results, as I said, were not as bad as some other people in the class.
So the school bent over backwards to try and persuade Amy to return to the French lessons. They asked Mrs G, a behaviour manager (quite high up on the food chain and an ex-languages teacher) to sit with Amy in her French lessons for a while, in order to boost her confidence. As if Mrs G had nothing better to do with her time, but that's beyond the point. It seemed to do the trick. Little Madam still asked at the start of each lesson if she could sit in this/that/the other seat, and I gave in more often than I would for a normal kid, trying to boost her self-esteem.
Until today. Students had a list of ten words to learn for homework, and as always, I did a test at the start of the lesson, which students then peer-marked. A lot of kids did quite badly (I think the idea of homework is beyond them), but when I asked students to give me their results out loud, Amy came to show me her test, marked 0/10. I did not comment, and when she asked if she could go outside, seeing that she was nearly in tears, I allowed her, thinking that I would go and speak to her as soon as the class was settled on the next task.
Only when I did, Amy had gone. Which in itself is not allowed, but I thought she'd gone to see Mrs G, and as it was just 5 minutes until break time, did not contact the students managers.
Only, Amy had used those 5 minutes to call mummy, who immediately came into school and asked to speak to me, just as I was about to make myself a coffee (damn!). Mummy, it turned out, was anything but warm and cuddly. The first thing I noticed was her blurry eyes (not good), her chavy outfit (I want one of those!! not) and smoker's face. The language was quite elaborate as well. She started off: "Don't ask Amy to read out her mark in front of the whole class, when you know she has confidence issues, that's why she had to move sets, because the previous French teacher was crap" (more or less). But then when I explained I didn't ask Amy to read out her mark because she'd shown it to me already, she exploded: "And why do you let another kid see her test and mark it?" (hmm, adorable daughter obviously forgot to mention that the other kid was her best friend, and that through whining and begging she managed to be allowed to sit next to her). Is this the point where I should mention peer assessment? Or volunteer lovely mummy to mark all 60 kids' tests that I gave on that day? Probably not, I think to myself. I'd realised mummy wasn't really waiting for an answer anyway, continuing in a linguistic crescendo, to finish with the dramatical, delightfully well formulated statement: "My kid ain't f**ing coming to your f**ing French lesson no more!!"

Gutted!!

Update

Well, firstly, a mea culpa about Powergen: the day after I left my raging message on their answerphone, a guy from the complaints department phoned me back, saying that he'd sorted it out and even found out that we'd paid too much, so gave us a 40 quid refund, thank you very much. I don't know whether to laugh or cry really - does this mean I should contest every single bill I get in the future as a matter of fact, because there WILL be a mistake in it?
On a more positive note, I've just spent a week in beautiful Switzerland for half-term, and although taking my bikini proved a little optimistic, we had a very relaxing time, going bowling with my brothers and sisters, eating horse steaks, watching the snow fall (well, on TV at least, in some higher parts of the country), and doing the Swiss things.
I have to admit, I do not understand the taboo about eating horse meat around here. It is absolutely delicious, tender and very tasty, and yet when I say I've eaten horse, people look at me with a ferocious, scandalised way, as if I was an active human flesh-eater trying to justify my deeds. Somehow the cute factor, which also strikes a ban on veal (which you find just next to the horse section in supermarkets in my country, between beef and chicken) does not extend to the poor little lambs... Strange!




Mmmmm, yummy steak, I don't care that horses look so cute, they're animals!

Quotes from the day

Y7 kid : "Miss, I’m going on holiday to Spain on Friday !"
Me: “Oh, lucky you, I love Spanish food!”
Y7 kid: “Me too, especially MacDonalds, it tastes much better in Spain!!”

Girl from my Y8 form: “Miss, can you have a word with Quietgirl (another girl from the form)”
Me: “What happened?”
Girl: “Well, she’s spreading rumours about me. She’s saying that I don’t wear a bra!”
(Oh rage and outrage, I can’t decide between burning Quietgirl or making her hang upside down for a day for saying such a horrid thing!)

Y10 kid, at the end of a long explanation about UMS grades for GCSE:
“Miss, so how many M&Ms is my coursework worth then?”
(three, one blue, one yellow and one red, you monkey!)

Bunch of incompetents going, going, gone!

Here's the thing. I have worked in an office. For a month. Updating a massive backlog of addresses for Norwich union. And I know how it works. There was 4 different systems on which to find change of addresses as communicated to them, one of which could only be accessed by the "Perpetua" of the section (Bridget Jones fans will understand). There was about 10 different letter templates addressed to lots of different people to try and find an address for one of the mysterious "goneaways" (no really, that was their names). I was tempted to write one to Father Christmas and see if I could get away with it!
Just to say that I know what's going on there and I'd never work in an office of my own accord.
Episode one of the "Neighbours' adventure in Northallerton". We move in mid-August 2006, to reduce the length of my commuting to work. Among the pile of letters waiting for us was one from Powergen, welcoming us to their network, blablabla. We didn't take any action, as Matt had set up Scottish Power (previous provider) to do the change of address automatically.
After two months, in October, we get a hefty bill of 150£ for gas and electricity. Thinking that maybe the change of address with Scotts hadn't gone through, we phone both Powergen and Scottish to make sure. As we thought - internet changes of address forms not so great after all. So I make a request to change back to Scottish, seeing as though they're 3 times cheaper, and pay the bill at the post office. Bill is in the name "New Customer" but I give my name to Powergen, just so they can update their records.
After 4 weeks, Powergen have heard that we're leaving them and are inconsolable. 7 letters in 3 weeks, sometimes twice a day!! Honestly - even as a teenager I wasn't that desperate when blokes rejected me! How pathetic.
Anyway. We start paying bills to Scottish, Christmas comes and goes, and then in January, second episode of the drama: we get a bill from Powergen for 200 quid plus, to close the account. So I phone them, inform them that we've left them a while ago and that we already paid up 150 quid before we left, and the girl on the phone says, ah yes, but the bill was in the wrong account! But she's going to sort it out.
Two months later, new letter, "we're going to send the bailiffs" kind of niceties. A bit like in a divorce I guess: first you beg, then you get nasty. So I write to them, with copy of the bills we've already paid, saying that basically all we owe them is about 50 quid and we'll pay it as soon as they send us a bill. And you can't beat a teacher's seriously angry, telling-you-off and to-the-point tone. I do it all day long. And said teacher is Swiss and will not depart from any hard-earned money until proven guilty.


So I get an apologetic letter from a guy in the company, trying to make excuses for why there seems to be two accounts to the same address, for the same length of time, assures me that no, they're not charging gas and electricity twice (I know they are! Explanations are flimsy). I ask if I can get my final bill for 50 quid and a leaflet about their complaint procedure. Yes ma'am, it will be in the post tomorrow.
And guess what: three weeks on, I still haven't received either, but instead, I get another "nice" letter asking me to be pen-pals with the Debt Collection agency and blablabla. The thing is, even after the 20 minutes phone-call to their hopeless hotline I've just had, I don't believe this is the end of the story. Can't wait for the next episode, which of course will be posted here. How thrilling!
Can you take people to court for criminal incompetence?

A "pen" in the backside

Every now and then at school, there is a staff meeting scheduled, for staff to raise issues about anything they please. No one has yet had the guts to write "how did the head's affair with another member of staff start" or "is it really true that the governors' board has demanded both you and your lover are gone by September?". To be honest, the joke is a bit worn out now, apart for the other schools in the LEA, who apparently still find it hilarious. Anyway.
So instead, people try to hold off from writing anything on the agenda, so that we can all go home early (or more likely, write the 90 reports that are due next week). But not this time. Someone had to write "pupils' lack of equipment - what is the policy of the school". Unsurprisingly, it was a maths teacher.
So off we all go to the hall, where an extremely interesting discussion followed for about 45 minutes. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of other pointless meetings we attend, but I thought this one was particularly revealing in the kind of suggestions people made. Mr Rottweiller (the maths teacher who raised the issue) suggested that form tutors should check that pupils have a pen, pencil and their equipment at least once a week and give detentions to those who failed to pass the test. Unsurprisingly, staff were not impressed at having to babysit yet more kids at lunchtime. Then Swiss national (yours truly) suggested the school should sell pens like they do ties or planners (to be frank, I've started my own business, Tesco value ones! At the pace I'm selling them and with the profit I make on them, I'll be a millionaire in 100 years). The Head saluted it as a positive solution. Mr Rottweiller said it did not teach kids to be responsible, so it wasn't good. Then Mr Webmaster suggested that we should have a special page on our computerised registration system so that there is a record of who did not have a pen when, and then follow up with detentions, or send letters home etc.
As usual, no solution was found. We were nearly at each others' throats by the end of the meeting (more accurately, at Mr Rottweiller's throat for going on and on about it and insisting on the detentions instead of dropping it). So I guess in the meantime I will keep getting notes from him informing me that Ritalin Kid and other of my tutees did not have a pen, pencil or calculator in his lesson (read "you're a bad form tutor, you should control their organisation better) while I will keep recycling his notes (they're the perfect size for 10-question-tests) and making a 4.7p profit on each pen I sell to beef up my bank account. I think I'll go shopping now!

Shopgirl is back

I've managed 10 days on the detox, which is 10 days more than I thought I would do... I gave up when I went out with my colleagues for a meal and realised everything on the meal contained meat. It was one of those American pizza places. Still, I did quite well. Another low point was when I realised that the Scottish oatcakes I'd been eating contained, in fact, 14% cheese. Fourteen percent!!!
Anyway. Apart from breaking wind more because of all the beans and chick peas I'd been eating, I didn't notice loads of difference. My skin looked a bit better, but that might be the placebo effect.
I hate January with a passion. No Christmas to look forward to, dark nights all around, rain instead of snow - mind you, we've been getting a bit of the white stuff in the past 2 days, it's brightened things up a bit. In the past, I've usually had to wait until February for any improvement in my well-being. But not this year, oh no!
It was a week ago, I suddenly noticed that the phone was flashing, indicating that a message had been left. That's the annoying thing about this phone (that and the fact that you need to use so much force to press each button, the tip of your fingers get blue!): because we always forget to put it back on its charger, it tends to die every now and then, and I never reset the date and time, which means all the messages we get tend to have a "received Monday at 12 am" voice-over. Anyway, I worked out that last time I'd used the phone was two days before, so the message couldn't have been there for too long. It said: "Hi I'm Natalie, from Debenhams press office, I'm ringing regarding the £2000 competition, if you could ring me back on etc...". And that's when I remembered that I'd entered a competition to win a shed load of vouchers for clothes. I had to wait until Monday to ring the woman back and confirm it, so didn't dare hope too much.
When I rang her, she confirmed that I'd won, only, it was one thousand, not two. Still, no more January blues, I'm hitting the shops. Woohooo!!

New Year New You...

Hmm, resolutions... Like, "will post a blog twice a week..." Obviously, I've been so busy celebrating that I've not posted something for the past 3 weeks. Shame on me.
Well, there was my 25th birthday on the 20th. I quite like being 25. I remember one day at sixth-form, whilst studying Rousseau in French, our teacher asked us what age we imagined we'd be all "sorted", and as if she was guessing my thoughts, she said that a lot of people at our age answered 25. Uni over, started a stable job, got married, living in a nice house with my own furniture... Seems pretty sorted. I remember she said that 25 was extremely young and that once we'd reach it, it wouldn't seem so far away and perfect, and I kind of agree with her now. Still, I think 25 is pretty cool.
Anyway. I got a gorgeous dress from my other half and it fits absolutely perfectly, which got him some brownie points. Then we went to one of my favourite restaurants in York to celebrate. Perfect birthday.
On Christmas' Eve, we flew to Switzerland to spend a few (non-white) days with my family. That was really nice. My sister went crazy when she got her usb missile-launcher, and my cousin was pleased with his Chelsea shirt, whilst his mum was worried how much it must have cost, seeing that it wasn't a fake. Thank goodness for eBay, I don't know how I could have lived without it. I'm tempted to start next Christmas' shopping already!
One tradition that was started a few years ago in my family is what we call "The Ugly Presents". Les Cadeaux Affreux, in the original text. Throughout the year, we collect all sorts of small and not-so-small plasticky, tacky and kitsch objects, and then do a raffle at Christmas. Receiving an Ugly Present is a terrifying yet delightful experience, and I'm always relieved when I see that the size of the present is small and therefore will not take too much space in the luggage/drawer (waiting for next year). Oh yes: some Ugly Presents make it from year to year, if not broken inbetween accidentally-on-purpose.
Anyway. This year, I got the Award for Most Revolting Presents Collected, as I managed to find some truly ugly decorative (ahem) spoons with colourful fruits stuck at the end, as well as some bright red vanilla-scented boxing gloves to put in your car. But the best present of the evening, the one that got everyone in fits and tears of laughter, was what I found hidden on a shelf in Matalan (this by the way is not a criticism of Matalan as I love their clothes and jewellery): a Father Christmas collectable-type painted clay figurine, complete with elves, presents and sled, and three snow-bubbles stuck on it. So horrific that I found myself apologising and explaining away to the shop assistant. My aunt got it and sure enough, I have a feeling that this object might be a regular feature on the Ugly Presents.
Anyway. Now that we are in the new year, I've made some resolutions:
1) Will start by doing a 2-week detox. So far, it's working, but I've only done 3 days and a bit. I'm not allowed to drink wine, tea or coffee, I can't eat meat, fish, eggs, wheat nor anythink dairy, which I was shocked at, because I thought that this was pretty much all the food there was in the world. So I'm turning into a mobile garden, with all the fruit and veg I'm eating. And oats and beans and lots of seeds. And SOYA. Actually, soya milk is not too bad, in fact I can't really tell the difference.
2) When my knee has recovered, will join a gym and go once a week in order to keep in shape.
3) Will try and keep the house tidy and keep on top of housework by making sure the house is hovered once a week, the bathroom gets cleaned once a week, and that the recycling gets emptied twice a month. Only one word springs to mind: Maaaatt!!