Back to School

I started my final placement recently, so for the next 5 weeks I'll mostly be pretending to be a teacher, and trying to look like I know what I'm doing. (This is a running theme in my life - I pretend this alot. Alot alot.)

During this year at uni I've been to several schools on placement - the Headteacher (HT) at this most recent school described my experiences as ranging "from the sublime to the ridiculous", and I'm pretty much with her on that. I've taught in a very poor area, a very nice area and somewhere in between, and seen various ranges of resources, types of social and economic backgrounds and issues which go along with them.

This new school is, however, by far the "best". It has a flawless HMIe report, Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) up the wazoo, a body of pupils entirely made up of middle-class, pretty well-behaved children, a young, energetic, innovative staff, and a brand new school building choc-a-bloc with brilliant ideas and resources for the kids.

Obviously I can't tell you which school I'm at, any more than I can tell you any of the other schools I've been to - for starters I might decide I want to say something rude about one of the children, and then where would I be? Up Shit Creek with no paddle, that's where... (And obviously all that confidentiality stuff too, etc etc, yadda yadda).

So, I'm feeling very lucky, but don't think for a second that this means everything will be fine and dandy: all children have issues, all jobs have downsides: one school is much like another in that sense, it's just a question of how much easier or harder the situation is made by external factors like money, colleagues and parents.

Placement proper begins on Monday, which is also when the teaching (blagging)and working (panicking) really begins, and I am looking forward to it in a way. It's nice to be in the classroom again, and not at bloody, bloody uni (sorry, I literally can't help it - I've developed Moray House related Tourettes Syndrome), and the kids are lovely, as is the teacher I'm working with, so I'll be sure to share all the good stories I'll inevitably collect over the next five weeks...

...'Cos kids just say the funniest things, don't they? Funny, cute things? You know, all the funny, cute, not at all terrifying and inappropriate things 11 years olds say, ask, repeat?...

Watch this space.