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Why don't the Germans all speak English Miss?
Today. my boys learnt about war and peace and rock 'n' roll. They learnt about buring babies, Alexander Fleming and men on the moon....
Today I gave my kids a whirl-wind tour of the 20th century and by the end of the lesson only one kid still thought that the 1966 world cup was the most significant event...
I'm knackered.
Fasten your safety belts...
This is really hard.
I have just spent the last few hours in the company of a small brown cat and a large glass of red wine filing lots of pieces of paper into three huge grey files.
So now, I should feel like my life is in some sort of order right?
Well, wrong.
Today I taught a leson to a group of 14 year old boys who didn't swear, fight or kill me. This should feel like a victory right?
Again, wrong.
Today I feel deflated and I feel scared.
When I embarked on this latest *journey of self discovery*, and *following-my-dreams vision* I said some very noble things. I decided had never had to work hard for anything. I ws tired and disallusioned with a life that didn't throw me any challenges. I wanted to use my brain and I wanted to be challenged.
Well, my darling 20sixers... be very very careful what you wish for!!!
This mountain that I am still at the foot of suddenly seems huge. The challenge seems beyond me, and I once liked to think that nothing was beyond me. Oh, it's very easy to be smug when you get a great grade in an easy degree and then spend six years in a variety of offices where the biggest challenge of the day is where to buy your morning bagel. Very easy indeed.
I'm exhausted today... and its Monday. The thought of the fact that tomorrow morning a group of 11 year olds will walk into my classroom expecting me to provide them with an all singing and dancing lesson on the Roman Empire is more than I can deal with right now. Oh, sure I have the lesson - right here on my PC... I'm just not so sure that I can also provide the dancing.
And I wonder, if I am so tired from this, then how will I ever be able to deal with a day when I have to teach 5 lessons... have I really got the energy and the drive? Being Robin Wiliams 'oh captain my captain' is a damn sight easier on film when they can yell *cut* if you're not being quite inspiring enough...
Am I going to be inspiring enough?
I am relieved to be completely single, because I have no time to fall in love, I have no time to eat... Ironically everything I have ever stressed about in the past has faded and left the building. I am thin, my skin is good, my cheeks are rosy and I don't need someone to love me. They'd never see me anyway. I know this because I have turned away fun dates with nice men.
I don't understand at all why such a great day, where I probably achieved more than I managed in the whole of 2003 should leave me feeling so gloomy.
Tomorrow will be the first day that I have ever wanted to throw a sickie, and actually don't... because there are too many people who I could let down... not least myself.
Is this how being Grown Up (TM) feels then?
Chalk? Wasssat?
Today was hysterical as, I approached the staffroom in total terror about my powerpoint based lesson on the Romans, to find that every PC in the school was down... and so nobody could teach anything anyway.
Dust was blown off many a neglected text book as teachers tried to remember long forgotten days of ink and blackboards.
Poor kids - death by worksheet... what a way to go.
As for the teachers... well, we had tea and homemade flapjacks to ease the pain.
PS I'm teaching the significance of WWI tomorrow... I may not have a PC or an interactive whiteboard, but I do have a poppy and some regained passion - so, wish me luck.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
I just finished planning my lesson on World War I for tomorrow.
It's very nearly the 11th November.
Makes you think.
Past, present and future.
I feel so much better.
The boys brought their homework in this morning, and they had really tried hard. Mr Ringo and I stuck all of their pictures of important 20th century events along our timeline (there was a bit of a class rebellion about my inclusion of the Spice Girls is a significant 90's event... but no matter. I am teacher and what I say goes (see, girl power!!)...
The presentation on WWI was quite a success and as I showed the kids pictures of the graves in Flanders field and explained that every grave was a person with a mum and a dad and a family... a person who was perhaps not very much older than them, there was proper silence (respectful I like to think, rather than asleep or plotting or dead).
Now, all I have to do is learn the entire history of Islam for next week... Although I did persuade the maths guys to take my lesson on the fact that Muslims discovered the number 0... Something to do with dividing by 0 and discovering infinity....??? No matter, the eyelash batting in the staff room has ensured that it's very much not my problem. I am prepared to learn.
PS - So, that's the past and present bit of this entry... words fail me a bit on the future though... All I can say is: Bush? Gutted. Really.... I hve a very bad feeling about the next 4 years.
Painting by numbers...
I shouldn't beat myself up about an especially nasty email I sent today right?
When does the week end?
I lifted myself out of my hangover at 8.30 this morning to write a presentation on teaching learning objectives or some such nonsense.
I am about to head off now to a two hour exam... numeracy and ICT skills... Woo!!
Tonight my friend is coming over and we are eating pizza, drinking buckets of wine, watching the X factor and then getting an early night, because we are so fucking knackered...
...and then tomorrow I am very much looking forward to writing a lesson introducing 30 odd 12 year old boys to the history of Islam.
I think I need to get a life...