How Many More Sleeps???

You know the year is coming to an end - at least leading to a holiday - when the students drive you up the wall more than normal. In all fairness, it would be hard to tell the difference for someone who isn't at the school every day, but for us that have been there so long, we've noticed the wackiness of our kids. It got to the point that today I had to send out two kids for repeatedly talking in class (more so than normal) and after I'd told them to stop at least 5 times. When I asked them to leave, there was a lot of back talk (making it worse) and just smart-ass comments from one of the two students in particular. After he walked out, another student said, "Black people are so funny", to which I responded with a "Get out" for a racist comment. Okay, it seems pointless, but at the same time, I thought it would have been better if he just said, "Noel is so funny", there was no need to bring up the colour of his skin - and racism is a major problem at our school...don't let the brochure fool you.

Then, with my high year 10 group, who I normally enjoy, I had another 4 students stay after school for stupid behaviour and comments - oh and one for keeping the door shut in the book cupboard with students in it for a joke. I had these four students stay behind because of their behaviour and had each write lines of things they will no longer do. For the student who locked the people in the cupboard, he had to write, "I will not shove people in the cupboard" 25 times. When he wrote his last one, he made the comment, "Well, the only thing I learned from this lesson is how to spell cupboard". I looked at him, pointed at his paper and said, "I will not be cheeky...25 times!" He laughed and said, "You're joking miss, right?" and I said, with a smile, "Nope". As he handed in his next 25 lines I said, "Next time you make a comment like that, wait until you are out of my room!" [Note to self, I will have to ask him tomorrow if he can still spell "cupboard".]

We received an e-mail yesterday from one of the TAs asking us to keep our ears open around a student who is in year 7 for any comments he might make about his behaviour. It appears that he has often threatened this person with slashing his tires (spelt "tyres" here) and the other day he went to the carpark to find that all 4 of his tires were slashed. However, it is speculation that it was the student in question, but as there aren't any cameras in the car park, there is no way of knowing. ...Says a lot about our students, huh? (Year 7 = 11 year old)

Interesting facts:

1) In case you missed it in the main body of my blog, they spell tires as: tyres which I find very odd.

2) One of my new favourite phrases is "Oh my days!" and "You're doing my head in", followed by my favourite word, "Dodgy" which has many uses.

3) Calling someone a "donut" is an insult (I wonder what they'd think of calling someone a Timbit...oh well, only Canadians would get that anyway); and to call someone a "bugger" is apparently worse than calling them an "ass".

4) I found out where the term "fortnight" comes from. For those that don't know, it means two weeks time, but it's the short term for fourteen days...or I guess nights in this case - hence 2 weeks.

5) Many people have asked when I'm flying home and I think they're getting insulted when I say, "Not soon enough"...LOL (Just kidding, I only say that to those I trust and they just laugh with me).

6) Dee asked me yesterday what would happen if we chose NOT to come back to the school - how obligated are we to the school - how much notice do we give. I looked at her and said that I think we have to give some time according to our contract, but in reality, what would they say if we just didn't come back. Ken, another person at the table who works in Science said, "That's it! You can never work in Kettering again!" to which we all looked at each other and I said, "Is that really supposed to be a threat?" and we all agreed it wasn't really...LOL. [As an aside, I think that a lot of people are worried the Canadians won't be returning, especially after Chris left a couple weeks ago...maybe that's why they're being so nice to us].

7) Little John explained the difference between "Public schools" and the schools we work in. Whereas back home a "public school" means publicly funded and hence available to anyone, here the term "public school" means paid for by the public and, hence, a private school. Apparently Eaton is the best public school in England and parents pay for tuition by the term (somewhere in the terms of 15000 pounds)...yikes!