Mountains and corners

My blog has been very quiet recently.
There are two reasons for this.

One is that I have been too busy to wash my pants, let alone write interesting entries into this.

Second, is that this blog was designed to be a place to store up all the lovely memories I have of my first tentative steps into teaching; a deliberate, one-sided treasure chest of the fantastic things I have been fortunate enough to experience this year. Some of the bad days have been included; you can't truly appreciate the highs if you've forgotten the lows; (and, with a nod towards my "scienceisnotareligion" friend(s) it helped construct a more balanced version of reality).

Over the course of the last four weeks (which have felt more like four months) I have experienced precious little worthy of writing about in this blog.

Excpetions include:


A maths lesson last week. The look on the children's faces when I wrote in pen in one of their maths books (one child struggles to write, and as writing the date and title were not part of my learning objectives, I saved him 5 minutes of pain in 15 seconds flat. This led to gasps of horror from the other 3 children I was working with:
Child: Miss - you've written in PEN!
Miss : ?!?
Children in unison: You must write in pencil in maths!
Miss: Oh. Right. Ben, can I use your pencil then?
Ben: Yeah.
Miss: And your ruler?
Ben: Yeah.
I then quickly drew the child some margins and tried to hand his book back . . . met with more gasps
Children: MISS! You've not counted THREE SQUARES THEN TEN SQUARES THEN THREE SQUARES TO DRAW YOUR LINES!!
At this point, I was the one sat with my mouth agape. The children I was working with are particularly needy - it is a challenge to teach them anything and for it to stick for 24 hours. However, they have learnt by heart and were able to repeat it to me, without skipping a beat, that they must set out their books by counting little squares, underline their date and title, always use pencil, use a ruler to draw margins, which much be three squares width, - this process takes them ages. They have a heightended sense of anxiety about the whole process. Can one of them explain multiplication? No.


ICT lesson last week - child who had played up all lesson came up to me at the end and apologised. A heart warming moment, which for a second, made it all worth it.

Unfortunately, it was a very short moment amidst a sea of hours of desperation. This last four weeks have been some of the most difficult I have ever lived through. Despite being only 3 weeks away from finishing, last Thursday I was on the verge of quitting.

On Friday, I heard news from other people on the course. Most felt the same. They are exhausted. They are on the verge of quitting.

Other students at my school came to me that afternoon.
Hazel! I can't take it! I'm exhausted! Nothing I ever do is right!
You're learning, I tell them. That's the point of teaching training, I say. Don't expect yourself to get it right first time.

I'm considering setting up a teacher-training counselling service.
The problem is, no-one would have time to use it.