A Week In The Life Of A Bog Standard Teacher

Now is the time of year that those who are thinking of doing a PGCE next September are spending a fortnight in a school observing things as part of the preparation for the course. We have a few in our school, and I pity them. I've therefore decided to write a week-long diary so that if they search for "Typical Week For A Teacher" in a well-known, or even not very well-known search engine, this might appear to warn them off. Please remember that I don't teach in an inner city school, I teach is a pretty well-to-do town in a leafy county. I am also not making any of this up!

Sunday:
I've got some planning to do today which should take a couple of hours, plus I want to spend some time with the family (wife, children etc.). They will probably have to wait because I don't want to get caught on the hop with a "drop-in" from senior management, which is bound to happen if I put this planning off.

I did the planning and spent the rest of the day barking at my daughter and wife because I know I have to go back to school tomorrow and try to get "above average" progress out of a load of pupils who genuinely care for little other than gossip, where their next cigarette is coming from, and social networking sites. All my planning since I got my current timetable has been to try and create interest in my subject with kids who have no interest themselves and are supported fully in this attitude by their parents.

Monday:
I have 4 lessons today, two with Year 11 who have mocks starting soon and are currently fairly keen, although having said that during one of the lessons the guy sat in front of me talked all lesson about computer games various other irrelevant stuff despite my attempting to persuade him that perhaps those conversations weren't the most productive. He's a nice lad too, intelligent, nice parents who should do fairly well in the summer but won't get what he should do because he will leave everything to the last minute, which rarely works.

My other two lessons are with bottom sets, one in key stage 3 and one in key stage 4. These will be constant battles to stop them talking, essentially playing musical chairs until we find a seating arrangement that is quietest. In fact the musical chairs in key stage 3 lasted longer than normal and my classroom isn't a hexagon, so all the people I wanted to sit in corners (ie. as far away from the people they wanted to talk to), I couldn't. The key stage 4 lesson was actually worse where they all think that qualifications are irrelevant because they have "work experience", to the tune of pot washing in a cafe, selling weed in the local park etc. You ask them to get on with some work and they look at you as though you've just torn them away from a close relative's funeral. The teaching assistant was equally baffled as to what to attempt, so I said she could go and help some people who actually wanted it.

Meeting after school to discuss all the students in my house who has "cause for concern", The list was lengthy, although I know that we actually get off quite lightly. Nine of the names that cropped up were from my tutor group, and that doesn't include my Year 11s, many of whom are being mentored separately. It all boils down to the same thing: "the kids mess about in lessons (not just mine), and when their teachers ask them to do some work they turn on them". The meeting was not a happy one and consensus seems to be that behaviour is on a very slippery and steep slope at present.

I arrived at about 7.45am this morning and am now leaving at 5.15pm. I still have a bit to do when I get home.

Tuesday:
I woke up at 2.30am and eventually got up at 4.15am having attempted to get back to sleep but my mind distracted by various work issues, mainly centred around a boy in my tutor group who I also teach. He can be unpleasant, but hasn't really been recently. I did get a snotty email from the school's head of special needs the other week regarding him though, and I need to feedback to her on his recent performance in my lessons, which include attempting to talk to seagulls in the playground, annoying/distracting as many people as he possibly can, and shouting at a bloke walking past the school. A far as I can see the only thing that's wrong with him his that he's a sociopath, but I've not doubt that he's been diagnosed with some form of special need as his parents try to excuse their inadequate parenting with medical certificates.

Not many lessons today due to Year 11 mock exams, which is great. I do have reports to write though, and various other things to get my teeth into, so it won't be a tea and chat day, I will be sat at my desk for almost all of it. I may even have a look through some exercise books and write a formative comment along the lines of "Well done Johnny, your method for doing this is excellent, but next time, to push you on to the next level, why not attempt a question like this...". The kids won't read my comments, but Ofsted will think it's wonderful, and that's the main thing I'm told, as we are expecting them soon.

Quite a nice day actually due to the mock exams and even the student who ruin every one of one particular class' lessons wasn't in today, so superb. Spent about 3 hours marking, but it's out of the way now so I don't have to worry about it any more. Tomorrow will be worse, so I made the most of today! I still arrived at 7.45am and left at 4.45pm plus did a couple of hours in th

Wednesday:
I teach every lesson on a Wednesday and it's hard work! II woke up but as most teachers will tell you, being away is more hassle than going in when you rubbish. What many don't realise is that a sick teacher still has to get up and plan all their lessons, which isn't easy when you know that the person covering is unlikely to be a specialist in your subject.

I made it anyway, and got a bonus free due to mock exams. Only got sworn at once and had a massive struggle trying to get a couple of classes to do something was like extracting blood from a stone, mainly due to a couple of snowflakes coning down early on.

I got in as usual at 7.45am and left at 4.45pm but have marking to do when I get home which will take a good hour and a half. I will probably cook dinner for the family and then settle down to it after that.

Thursday:
Four lessons today, but two tests thanks to the fact that we have to track every student and therefore they do an exam paper every half term. This is so that we knbow how each child is progressing, but puts pressure on teachers to fit the entire curriculum in, but on the other hand at least the kids get used to exams and the types of questions that are asked. It does add marking pressure on to teachers, but we can get the class to mark their own for some of it - in a different coloured pen of course, to avoid cheating!

What is the main thrust of this though? You guessed it, Ofsted. As time has gone on it does appear that everything that schools and teachers do is geared to what Ofsted would think rather than what's best for the children. In general Ofsted are trying to do the right thing, with little success, and seem not to have grasped the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and a teacher has to have a bit of time for sleeping and eating. Take, for example, out new marking policy, all based on what Ofsted expect to see. We have to mark every book fortnightly, which doesn't sound too bad, but not when each book has to be checked and the3n around half a page covered with some praise, a tip on how to move onto the next level, plus a challenge question for the kids to have a go at. Marking a set of books takes between an hour and 90 minutes, and at my school each teacher has around 6 classes. That's 9 hours per fortnight, which is all your free time at school. Add to that the lesson planning as well as other paperwork a teacher has to do, meaning that in order to get by you have to work at least a 9 or 10 hour day during the week, plus a bit at weekends.

Started at 7.45pm and left at 5.15pm, plus did a couple of hours in the evening. I forgot to mention that I had duty (unpaid) before school, during break and after school.

Friday:
Five lessons and lunch duty on the playground. Ok, so I get paid for the duty but I didn't choose to have it on a day when I have no free periods - I was stitiched up a bit by the guy who organises it and isn't a teacher. There you go.

The day went as usual with a mixture of apathy and abuse, and that was just from the staff! In all seriousness it was a pretty miserable day where one student, who has already been told that they should think about applying for another school before he forcibly has to find another school told me to "F Off" and was generally vile. As well as that I got a volley of abuse from one of my tutor group who had a detention, not set by me, but another subject area. I was just the messenger, but had to take it as that's just how it seems to work with students from a certain background who are essentially untouchable discipline-wise.

This time of year as we near the end of the longest term of the school year, the children are tired as are the staff. It's dark and cold and thoroughly miserable. One comes to accept the fact that the students will get a bit tetchy and so will the staff.

Started at 7.45am and left at 5.15pm. I've decided to leave the work I need to do for the weekend. A couple of hours should do it.

"Segregated Schools"

It's union conference season at the moment and the ATL (Association of Teachers and lecturers) have just completed theirs in Manchester with a summing up speech from their leader Mary Bousted. She has always come across well on television but does get paid a lot of money to do so at well over £100,000 per year. I struggle, as a teacher on around £30,000 per year to take union leaders seriously as champions of teachers' causes, but they are the only people we have, so I suppose I don't have any choice.

Bousted's speech hit the now regular union buttons of having a go at politicians and Ofsted, and three cheers for that, but her speech was ultimately useless and designed to win applause rather than bring to light real issues facing teachers. [Click here to see the article]

Her speech centred around the fact that schools and classes are "segregated" on the basis of class. She went on to say that teachers are regularly blamed for the failure of children from poorer backgrounds failing to achieve their potential academically, and with this she has a point, but is it really news? This situation is frankly always going to happen for the following reasons:

1. There may be more choice when it comes to choosing a secondary school for your child, but most will choose the closest if at all possible, purely for convenience. If the closest school to you performs poorly then you will only go elsewhere if you have academic aspirations for your children, otherwise you don't really care, as long as your children attend and therefore the authorities keep off your back.
2. As a result of the above, it therefore depends upon the situation of the school and what sort of housing is in the vicinity. Teachers can't help that, no matter what statistics you throw at it as a politician. Ok, Wilshaw turned around his academy in Hackney, but only by reducing the life expectancy of his staff by forcing them to work longer hours and deal with increased stress by offering the children a safe environment compared to the estate they inhabited. That's his vision for the future of teaching though, which doesn't bode too well.
3. Those that Bousted was going on about have no aspirations at all, and haven't needed them as the state has paid their way through life by providing them with cheap housing and spending money through benefits. Again, this is not teachers' fault, but teachers bear the brunt of the criticism as students from these backgrounds enter the "family business" after their compulsory education ends. If you have the means and the will to give your children the greatest opportunity to succeed then you will travel to get your children into a supposedly better school. You regularly hear of people moving home to get into a certain catchment area, and catchment areas can add thousands on to property prices.
4. As I said in my previous post, with few jobs available and being brought up in an environment where work is not part of the equation doesn't encourage children to perform to their academic ability.

I would like to say that not all children from a certain class, the class Bousted was talking about, have zero academic aspirations, but with the lack of opportunity in the market for young people, there seems little incentive to break the social mould.

Bousted has highlighted a valid point, but this is hardly news to anyone, despite it being rarely mentioned by politicians. - I suppose that's why she spoke about the issue After all it's far easier to blame a profession who have a history of moaning but doing little of substance. The trouble is that those who are left in the profession are beginning to do something about it, with the ATL actually striking for the first time in decades towards the end of last year over pensions. The best news from the conference was that Schools Minister Nick Gibb was heckled so badly that he had to pause during his speech, three times whilst the heckles died down. I hope he felt as small as the teaching profession does every time he and his colleagues in Whitehall open their mouths.

Interesting times ahead, but please teaching unions, stop stating the obvious.

Next year's topic for debate: the exodus of teachers from the profession due to government and Ofsted policy.